Looks like we've gone with a quick man in place of Leach (as per above), so no spinner.
Looks like we've gone with a quick man in place of Leach (as per above), so no spinner.
This may sound a bit "Brexit Britain, we're better than you" but watching a Test in England is just better than in other countries.
Contrast these opening few overs with the Tests in the sub-continent early this year and it's miles better. An insanely green ground, a much better Dukes ball, a more manageable start time and less inane commentary.
A little known fact is that we have the best cricket weather in the world. Yes it rains, which is balls, but what that rain does is bind the soil and bring all aspects of the game into play. Elsewhere it tends to be more one-dimensional (be it flat paradise, crumbling spin show, or hard and fast).
Conway's looking very comfortable.
Good time for Wulliamson's soft heeeeeends to be his undoing. Conway feels good for a debut ton though.
100 on dayboo, at Headquarters, he may as well call it a day after this innings.
This is a truly awful pitch, with an over rate to match. Hinry Knuckles settling in for a three-day hundred.
Yeah this has barely done anything. We've managed to slow them down for stints but there've also been long, godawful stretches where there's been zero threat.
https://twitter.com/englandcricket/s...50999667560449
Bit of a weird overreaction given that another member of the England squad for this match told an Asian player to 'go back to your own fucking country' on the pitch a few years ago and no one seems to bat an eyelid about that.
I must have known that but I don't remember. Who was it?
I'm not even sure how the supposedly sexist tweets were actually sexist.
C.Overton, and you probably didn't as it was very under reported (as are the ongoing Yorkshire racism enquiry, and the ECB's enquiry into themselves for failing to promote deserving non-white umpires for years).Originally Posted by Ian
Hey but he said that he was nice to Azhar Ali when they played together so it’s probably fine.
I read that Azhar Ali line too and nearly spat out my future false teeth.
Could do with something, anything, happening here.
This is a draw pitch, but I'm sure we'll find a way to lose by an innings anyway.
Oh absolutely, once they've declared tomorrow afternoon we'll be 23-3 within no time at all.
There's one wicket at least.
Get a wicket on the second morning and only now does BJ Watling stride to the crease ready to take part in another world record partnership.
They've still got big Colin to come as well.
Conway in carrying his bat areas here. Don't think he's quite going to contend for Bannerman (the most ridiculous record in all of sport) but he's not miles away.
If their number eleven could stop roflcoptering our bowlers for boundaries that'd be lovely.
This Jamieson fella looks fucking enormous.
Here we go.
Vince-esque from Crawley.
That one looked to swing like a motherfucker but he should still have left it alone.
There is a strong can't resist, won't resist streak in our batsmen when it comes to driving at wide ones early on. It's fine obviously as Root will double ton.
https://wisden.com/stories/exclusive...lankan-sojourn
Part five. Lots of good stuff in this one including him making up some heroics against famous names again.
I love how formulaic the emails get, and how much Shankar seems to assume cricket team scouting is based on emails from random fans emailing them.
Given the weather down here I'm guessing there isn't going to be much cricket at Lords today.
It looks worse to me on the radar than any of the weather apps are prepared to admit.
It'd be nice if just once, ever, both our batsmen could survive the first over of a new day.
Could do without bowling them out here lads, just keep them bogged down so they don't declare and roll us for 50.
Baz McCullum would be declaring about now. Ya hiv to be prepeered to lose, to wun.
Declared. Can we get through 81 overs? Will they turn on the floodlights for us?
Quite an aggressive declaration, that.
Bored 'em to death.
The sort of target where a good team would have a dart (and sometimes win), while a bad team blocks and will then trot put a load of platitudes about percentages and 'taking something positive from this game of cricket'.
Yeah there was definitely a point where we could have at least tried to turn up the pace a bit and see if there was anything happening but we just looked totally disinterested.
It's not ideal when you've batted an innings in which the biggest cheer went to a fella successfully putting his coat on the right way round.
I did lol a bit in the post-match analysis where all the pundits were giving it the big "have a go and then shut up shop at 4 or 5 down if you have to".
Lads, have you ever watched England bat before?
The correct way to do it is build a platform, then have a little go, see where you are and adapt accordingly.
Instead we just said 'nah, mate'.
Yeah, but our 'adapt accordingly' sees the middle order disintegrate and the tail being asked to hang on for 20 overs so I'm fairly comfortable we were never going to get those runs with the personnel available.
Accepting that you don't have the personnel to win a Test match is so English and is part of the reason why we are nearly always shite.
If you don't even have a go in home conditions, when will you ever push the boundaries for a win? May have been a different story if Stokes/etc. were in the team.
Don't think the declaration is made if Stokes/Buttler were playing.
I'm not completely against the approach. We were 111-2 in the 1st innings and lost a lot of quick wickets, and the Kiwi bowling unit can easily instigate collapses like that. They could have maybe tried to accelerate when we needed 200 from 40 overs, but even that is a large amount of time for the customary England batting implosion to take place.
What is the jeopardy if we lose whilst having a go? It's not part of the Test championship, the rankings are meaningless, so is the series result. It was a completely free shot and unlikely to result in defeat anyway, unless they really made a cunt of it.
All you have to do is get to say 70/2, see where you are and tell Root, Pope and Lawrence to have a biff. If they all get out, then you bat a session with five wickets, boo hoo, oh the horrid risk, we can't be doing that in front of the first home paying public in two years, they'd rather see us block the fuck out of it for four hours in a Test that has already been blighted by a truly disgusting over rate.
And if you don't trust the players to not read "up the run rate to" as "waggle your bat at anything within reach" then you've either picked the wrong players or you're failing horribly as a coaching team.
Robinson suspended pending an investigation.
Are these tweets not from the better part of a decade ago? If there's been zero evidence of anything since and the charge is "you were a right dickhead when you were a teenager" then... I don't really know what punishment you can really lay on him.
He's brought the t-shirt wearing solidarity into disrepute.
His crime was to write it down for posterity, rather than, like Overton, to say it with real menace during a county game just the other year.
Well now the culture secretary has tweeted his opinions about it, so that should definitely sort everything out.
Now Boris is wading in.
I wouldn't have picked him as the sort to have friends in high places [Robinson that is].
Another sign of context meaning absolutely nothing. In this case, not the context of what he said it, but when he said it and the fact that when it came to light he immediately apologised. Those things seemingly count for nothing.
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