Got £20 on India at 5/1 so if we can slip in another familiar collapse then Christmas drinks are on me.
Stokes gone. Hello!
Got £20 on India at 5/1 so if we can slip in another familiar collapse then Christmas drinks are on me.
Stokes gone. Hello!
If we lose this, they should execute three members of the squad entirely at random.
It might even be WDYTOE-worthy if it wasn't a result of such painful inertia.
And guess what, in this match my old mate Trashwin is back with figures of 1 for 206, and yet here's Ravi 'fucking hell' Jadeja with eight wickets.
Merry Christmas Max!
There used to be a thread on the Betfair cricket forum (no idea if it's still going, forum or thread) in which they tracked the long term results from backing/laying the various results in Test matches and at the time, the only one which showed a profit was laying the draw. There's some wisdom in there.
Root topped the batting and the bowling averages. Give me strength.
We scored 6 hundreds in that series and lost 4-0.
God bless the England collapse.
I predict Cook will resign the captaincy.
I mean losing by an innings when you make 477 first up. You have to laugh.
Won four tosses. So many amazing stats.
I think it'll be a temporary bump in the road. Our next few series are:
South Africa (home, 4)
West Indies (home, 3)
Australia (away, 5)
New Zealand (away, 2)
West Indies (away, 3)
India (home, 5)
So we've got about two years to find a decent spinner, and probably to replace Anderson.
Cook
Hameed
Jennings
Root
Bairstow
Stokes
Moeen
Buttler (gloves)
Woakes
Curran S
Broad
I think we'll start the Ashes with that, although it's contingent on Sam continuing his development and the batsmen (mainly Jennings and Buttler) not being shite in the interim. I don't think Jimmy will make it and I don't think you can play Rashid, and I also don't think you should play Rashid instead of Moeen.
The Duckett/ Hameed bit in that rings true in particular.
I think the Duckett vs Hameed thing is the clue which proves the gist of that right. Tricky Trev has his merits I think but I don't understand who, having experienced any amount of cricket, would look at Duckett and look at Hameed and then conclude that the former is the Test opener.
I'm a bit uneasy about giving Root the captaincy, the problem is there are no other alternatives, have any of the others captained a game ever? You could bring Ian Bell back as captain but that feels like something from the 1970s.
EDIT: High five, Ian.
Splitting the coaching seems logical. But Bayliss taking home £500k a year to wear a sunhat and tell Jos Buttler and Jason Roy to hit sixes is maybe a bit much and I don't know who you'd bring in to coach the Test team.
o/Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Root is going to be captain and it is going to be because there's nobody else. Who the fuck else do you even trust to be in the team in the long term?
Be bold and headhunt that Sri Lankan who runs Bangladesh (brilliantly). That would stick the shivers up a few people at Lord's.
https://twitter.com/DanielHarris/sta...02357787086848
The festive backdrop second only to that time when he called for the entire management to be sacked whilst sitting in front of a glorious, shimmering Caribbean sea.
His absolute indifference toward being matey with the players/SET-UP is what makes him, and a couple of the Sky cricket pundits, so good.
He may not be the best sports pundit working at the moment, but I think he's my favourite.
HEADS MUST ROLL
Even a classic "Well Charles..." there. Great to see.
Another thing I like from that article the more I think about it, and something I think isn't talked about enough when people are discussing great sporting teams, is personal accountability.
It's easy to think that once you're a team it's a fairytale, musketeer-esque all-for-one approach. And although it's impossible to say when you're not in the dressing room you can imagine the England cricket team buying into that sort of nonsense. And the idea that THE TEAM protects them from having to personally own up to playing like an absolute twat. Because if most of the team did it then somehow your small part doesn't matter as much, right? I remember when Red Nev was new to Sky and Dave Gayer was still a flaky hatrack of a goalie for United. After he chucked one in against Spurs Neville basically went through various players in the footage and how they clearly weren't going to give De Gea the "It's okay, mate" treatment and were fucking fuming with him.
You feel like England, unless they're hiding it well, just think they're a top bunch of banterlads that when they're doing badly you just crack on with it, stick to The Plan, play your natural game and everybody's home in time for tea with their ECB-approved family.
I might be totally wide of the mark with all this and I don't pay as close attention as some of you guys do, by a long shot, but I can't help but feel that we need a few more players who treat it like a personal slight when somebody manages to take their wicket.
You're right and the great thing is that Haseeb Hameed is the antidote to literally all of it.
Leadership plays a part too and Cook doesn't strike me as a natural leader. His teams have won when they're better and lost when they're worse - there isn't a sort of charismatic, demanding personality in there who can flick anyone's switches when the team's up against it, and I don't think Bayliss is one of those either. Root might be good at that, I don't know.
When the chips are down you need somebody who demands that the team everything they have into rectifying the situation, and for the team to do it because they know the leadership figure in question isn't asking anything of them that they don't demand of themselves. As you say, it's hard to see anybody in the England team at the moment who fits the bill. It's not even a case of having to be blood and thunder about leadership, it's just being the guy who when push comes to shove the rest of the team take absolutely seriously.
Maybe the cheeky chappie smirks bely some greater depth but as much as I love Root it's hard to imagine him getting anybody in line.
Everything I've read assumes Root will get it without any real competition.
Are there any other figures in the side who could do a job? Broad or Bairstow, perhaps? Especially if Buttler can take wicketkeeping duty.
Much as I'd love to see Stuart Broad lead us out at the Gabba, there's more chance of me getting it.
Gary Pratt for captain.
Watched a bit of the Big Bash (mate) this morning and was astounded by the quality of the catching. Save for Jordan and Pollard showing the cobbers how it's done there were some absolute howlers dropped.
The security guards too
https://gfycat.com/AncientDrearyFrenchbulldog
Yeah, he was good.
Probably the highlight of the match. Did they chase the runs down in the end?
Ten short. I liked following the game on Cricinfo purely because 'Mark Steketee' flows quite beautifully in my cod Australian accent.
Quite an achievement to blow it from where they were.
Cook captains the ICC test team of 2016 whilst Kohli misses out.
Steve 'good chat' Smith too, although he gets to carry the drinks.
Best shuffle this one under the carpet asap.
Broad getting booed in the Big Bash because he did 3.5 years ago exactly the same thing Steve Smith did in Australia's last Test match
'Aww, look, mate, it's different.'
Broad is in the Big Bash?
Getting absolutely smashed by Jason Roy currently
Ian Ronald Bell is also in it. No idea.Broad is in the Big Bash?
Is that why there is a massive gap in the schedule between the tests and limited overs stuff?
And do we really not play another test for 7 months?
Champions Trophy next year chief. England might actually win it
We have the Champions Trophy en Angleterre next, and then we're somehow fitting seven Tests into the summer after that.
We've played a farcical amount this year so they could do with a break.
I've pointed this out before but the Indian TV-inspired CT schedule is a thing of beauty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_ICC_Champions_Trophy
Can't wait until Jamie Porter, Ben Sanderson and Benny Howell have Bangladesh five down before 11am in our opener.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/super-sm...y/1073798.html
Poor Jade. Imagine the shame of being duscuplunned by the fucking Wellington Firebirds.
It's not different. It's a stupid thing to boo him over.Broad getting booed in the Big Bash because he did 3.5 years ago exactly the same thing Steve Smith did in Australia's last Test match
'Aww, look, mate, it's different.'
It was stupid at the time and it's stupid now. But now he's grown into a pantomime villain there, so what are you going to do.
Cricket needs more pantomime villains tbf. Dave Warner
Ben Stokes has such potential in the role, but he needs to stop apologising.
The thing is, being a pantomime villain is very little to do with what you actually do.
Warner's basically been on his best behaviour since 2013. Doesn't even chirp that much in the field. Broad, aside from general low-grade sledging, is largely decent and well-behaved. It's all about picking a single incident and blowing it wildly out of proportion indefinitely.
We were talking about World XI lineups a few weeks ago, and the opener position was a little troubling.
When I went digging, I saw that Azhar Ali has the best overall numbers this year, although that's boosted by his triple century against the West Indies. Nonetheless, I've had a little while to look at him in this series, and I think he probably is the best opener going around at the moment. Just got to his hundred against us as I type.
He's careful, and values his wicket. A thoughtful batsman. I rate him.
He only moved into the opening spot during the series against us in the summer, because Hafeez and Shan Masood (lol) were averaging about 4 each. Good move, it's turned out.
Quite enjoying this South Africa v Sri Lanka Test, the latter are giving as good as they've got in what for them are pretty hostile conditions. Batting looks shaky to say the least though against the moving ball in the early overs.
What I didn't realise was that Cricket South Africa don't consider anyone who played pre-isolation to have been a legitimate South African player. So Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Hugh Tayfield, Mike Procter just don't exist as far as they are concerned.
I realised this upon seeing that Temba Bavuma has '85' on his hat.
Rangy Herath counter-attack ongoing
I do wonder what it has all come too when the colour of Andre Russell's bat appears to be some kind of ongoing news saga.
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