Oh and Nasser Hussain, the greatest of them all, nailed the Stokes situation as only he can.
https://twitter.com/SkyCricket/statu...08403222396928
The ECB should pay him whatever and give him the keys to English cricket.
Oh and Nasser Hussain, the greatest of them all, nailed the Stokes situation as only he can.
https://twitter.com/SkyCricket/statu...08403222396928
The ECB should pay him whatever and give him the keys to English cricket.
He’s not posh enough sadly
That is quite true. Fucking Ed Smith, do me a favour.
The Nasser thing touches on it but generally I hope this whole affair really pushes Stokes on to properly realise his talent because he arguably hasn’t yet. A player of moments rather than series.
Rishabh Pant plays for India, great talent. I really like Kohli btw, sorry guys.
He's growing on me this series, in the same way Shane Warne did in 2005.
Genius selectors done us no favours here but it means the brown hats get a fired up Curran for the pink ball day/nighter, so
I do like players who react well under adversity, and who learn from previous failures. I like Kohli a lot, and he's learned from his last tour in England.
No idea. Especially when they aren’t getting runs and dropping chances in the slips.
Openers is a more pressing and longstanding issue. I’m sure Cook will chisel out a score at some point in the series but Jennings hasn’t done anything and looks to be getting worse.
Pathetic stuff again
Hey can we pick some batsmen please
English conditions are just anathema to the modern cricketer.
We'd be better off picking Chris Jordan to open. At least he's good in the slips.
A century each for Jimmy and Rash. No danger.
Didn’t see this lasting until tea so fair play to Buttler and Stokes. Shows that it wouldn’t have been beyond the realms of possibility if we had a top order.
Vince in as cover for Bairstow. Yay.
Remember they dropped Sam for the last match. Fucking geniuses.
Root must go.
I didn't realise how much I was taking for granted back when we had a top order
It's probably about time for Cook to play another career saving innings, but I'd imagine that will be saved for the fifth test.
Nice to see big Mo back on board.
Roy and Hales in for the Oval. Is it at the Oval?
Just seen Jennings' dismissal.
Put him in the mincer.
Cook
Burns
Bell
Root
Bairstow
Pope
Stokes
Moen
Curran
Broad
Anderson
fuck it
Not to labour a point, but Keaton Jennings has a worse first class batting average than Chris Woakes (34.02 plays 34.88, 6000 runs v 5500 so it's not an anomaly either).
Dropping Buttler would be unnecessary.
It's gravitating towards it so they should just play the ODI team, less Morgan and with Broad and Anderson.
i'd argue picking him in the first place was even more unnecessary but away from my semi-facetious fantasy selecting i would keep him in for now.
also i imagine that woakes' fc average is somewhat inflated by red-inkers but yeah jennings is hopeless and surely they must be considering burns. shame haseeb's form collapsed so much, i thought he was going to be the FUTURE, made him my facebook cover photo and everything. barely gets in the lancashire 1st XI atm
Last edited by igor_balis; 30-08-2018 at 05:41 PM.
Aye, unless you have him as 'keeper, but he's batted fairly competently which is more than can be said of most of the other 'specialists'.
I'm definitely on board for a bit of 5th test heroics from Ronald, but we'd probably rather concede the series than countenance that.
Aye, I'd agree with that. IN FAIRNESS I think having Buttler as specialist bat at 8, whilst seeming well wacky, would raise less eyebrows in a less dysfunctional side. Also think his selection is more a symptom of the lack of top-order options knocking around than anything else.
Buttler looks pretty good tbf. I think he will score runs at this level. Fuck it just bat him or Moeen or Bairstow in the top three - have a dart at the new ball instead of being terrified of the bloody thing.
Sky kept talking up the Jennings dismissal as some masterful bowling becuase he chucked a couple outswingers beforehand. He is hopelessly out his depth.
tense stuff on the verdict
We need a Trott plus someone to stick around opening with Cook. Root could then be at 4 and things would be a bit better. The other thing I take from all this is that Root looks more out of depth than Cook ever did as captain and that's saying something.
Watching the Debate and fucking hell Cork just won't countenance any criticism of England's top order, will he?
The problem they have is that ELITE sportspeople all think in the same way, which is basically 'back yourself to succeed'. This is because at their peak, because of their massive talent, success came easily and they didn't have to think about how to do it. Sky pundits are the same, because they're all ex ELITE players, you'll never see them take a sideways look at things or find a creative way around a problem. It's all CONFIDENCE and EXECUTE YOUR SKILLS and so on.
What they actually need is to stop using shit hunches and select people who can actually bat in Test matches. They also need to fire Root as he's developing a crony selection which I don't like.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 30-08-2018 at 09:42 PM.
Cork was being particularly mental. Any criticism of Cook was met with "But he's CLASS"
He had an excuse for everything.
The continued selection of Jennings is horrendous, he is barely good enough for county cricket never mind test cricket. His 34 average in first class is actually inflated because of one freak season for Durham. Rory Burns is far, far better and I would prefer Stoneman too. We would even be better off with Stokes or Woakes opening. I'd push Stokes up to 3 (he has the best technique among our batsman) and open with Burns and Cook.
Surely Stokes is far too shit-or-bust to be playing at 3?
Also I just saw Jennings' dismissal from yesterday. I don't think I've ever seen LBW on nearly the back of the back leg before. Cork's defence of it seems even more ludicrous.
Last edited by Ian; 31-08-2018 at 07:33 AM.
Why did Hildreth never get a go?
I'm with Martin on that, if any of those mugs are going to bat 3 then better Stokes than Buttler or Bairstow.
Or the bloke that bats there for his county and scored a double hundred there last week...
Maybe only for a decider against India to potentially avoid embarrassment but not exactly a long term fix.
It is a tough one in the sense that we have a lot of very talented players who shouldn’t really be batting higher than five and ideally would be at 6/7 but you can just pick them all and hope it works out can you?
I'd be up for putting just about anyone at 3 just so root can play 4. Fuck it, stick mo there.
Cook at 3 isn't the worst idea, tbh.
Saw this elsewhere, and since I presume we are talking Bell here and not Mo as he did the same thing last week I figured I would post it
Bell has made four Championship centuries this season but three of them, including his current high score, have been against against Glamorgan, who are bottom of Division 2.
I saw a stat earlier that shows if you remove his performances against Glamorgan he is averaging 34.15 this season.
Root has massively underbowled spin today. Hopefully that’s recitified now and might escape with a manageable deficit.
Mo bowling more than Rashid. He must be very good for team spirit cause we are using him for fuck all else
I'm not a big believer in only counting runs vs the World XI on a minefield. Runs are runs.
My boy at it again. Always in the game with bat or ball. Great cricketer.