Reckon hameed will ever get back to his previous form?
Reckon hameed will ever get back to his previous form?
There's obviously a player there, but Lancashire are run by absolute morons so probably not. He did at least average 56 for Formby in club cricket so it's obviously not a mental capituation, just an extended run of shit form.
The biggest danger would be tumbling out of a contract anywhere as he obviously doesn't have a lot of white ball value (which is probably why he bombed in the first place with people in his ear about it). The best wicketkeeper in the country, Michael Bates, plays club cricket only as no county will take him with a batting average of 20.
Getting into good nick for the Ashes here.
At least there's Mo.
Look what you did
That was ages after my post, wasn't it? I imagine my jinx will have worn off.
I have literally no idea what sort of score that is.
I love the look of the pitch, proper Brian Lara Cricket feel, as if the colour saturation on the tv has been dialed way up.
Could do with a wicket really.
West Indies have been class so far this series. Their prodding and poking to 30-0 tonight was one of my favourite sessions of the series so far.
John Campbell attempting to lap sweep Broad, getting hit in the face, and then staring him down without a flinch was class.
That was amazing from Broad.
Jimmy's face.
England getting battered is only bearable if TMS is on the air. The 'Cricket Social' with Cook and friends? Stick it up your fucking arse.
lol
What's going on here then?
Think they might get these
Did seem when we bowled we beat the bat about a million times, whereas they were a lot more efficient at making and taking chances (see both of Root's dismissals). Bowling at the stumps was quite a good idea too, which is something we should have done a lot more of.
What, trying to take wickets? You'll never make the ECB at this rate, Niko, you moron.
We just fundamentally can't bat and we aren't trying to bat either.
Root is a poor captain who doesn't understand the game and seems to have far too much power (why do we continually build the team around Bairstow, who is bang average?). The personnel isn't far wrong, the attitude is appalling. Some of his comments after this game are worth the sack.
Bravo's was genuinely my favourite test match innings of all time. What an absolute hero. Makes a fucking mockery of the English "play your natural game" orthodoxy. Twats.
I thought CHEF was an annoyingly passive and conservative captain, but he was light-years ahead of Root. I don't think you can even say Root is a bad captain; he just ISN'T a captain. If that makes sense.
The only reason he is captain is because he's literally the only player we can't drop from the test side aside from Jimmy. People keep banging on about our mad long batting order, and we're happy enough to let Rashid be a passenger bowling like 10 overs a match, so fuck it. My mad proposal would be to just figure out the absolute standout captain in county cricket, and just have him be Mike Brearley. Even if it's some joker who bats at 7 in division 2 and averages 30 odd without bowling, fuck it. I can't see what we'd actually lose.
Last edited by igor_balis; 03-02-2019 at 12:50 AM. Reason: i typed the opposite of what i meant
I was thinking earlier we could do with some absolute underqualified madman going in to be coach, much like Bumble did in the late 90s. Just insert some passion and dynamism in there, it all seems so flat with the Human Sunhat in charge. The same applies to captain really. I love my unhinged evil captains, like Jardine or Ranatunga. Someone who will do anything for the team to win. Kohli has some of that in him. Root is just a wet blanket.
His twitter feed is a genuine embarrassment as well.
You know occasionally when footballers get shamed for accidentally copying and pasting the whole message from the marketing guy as their tweet like "alright mate can you post 'great performance from the lads today, buzzing for next week' or something like that on twitter please?"
I've never been on his twitter but I assume it's just wall to wall tweets like this, except without the offending stage directions?
It's much worse than that. He just posts shameless and cringeworthy ads for his sponsors, mostly 'Village Hotels' but also others. He's also starting guitar-strumming in the dressing room so he's right in the middle of the continuum between Brent and Partridge I think.
Here is a random example I picked from April:
I mean fuck it, I'd happily give him a go over Root but I think part of what makes Jimmy so good is how single-minded he is. Like I reckon my mum could set a field for Moeen's bowling throwing pins on a photo of a cricket pitch based on her I Ching and horoscope bullshit as well as Jimmy could.
I'd give it to Buttler, from the current team. I'd also drop Bairstow just because he needs taking down a peg or two.
If we had to pick a captain from the current team I'd do the same.
And on the latter point...I sort of know what you mean, but worry I might be reading too much into tabloid hyperbole. Certainly it's been made to sound like he's being proper stroppy and entitled about keeping the gloves, in which case I feel justified disliking him, but I don't like making assumptions. It might be he's annoyed in a like...frustrated but professional way, like "I really worked hard to improve my keeping, and I want to prove I'm the best" or he's a twat and saying "Foakes and Buttler can fuck off, how dare they take the gloves from me". They're very different, but could be presented the same way in the gutter press.
After being dominated in the first three games, we're hammering India in the last two games. The obvious difference is that there is no Kohli for these last two games. I wonder how much of a difference he makes to the entire team performance?
We've dropped Foakes for the next game and recalled Jennings. Genuinely nonsensical.
Are you saying we don't have a plan here?
The way things are going it'll be Roy and probably Foakes opening in the first ashes test.
As least Bairstow has the gloves back and everyone (him) is happy.
Jennings has had three lives so far to reach 7*.
That over was hilarious, he is so far out of his depth. I reckon Sir Chef is gonna come back this summer.
14.5 0
Roach to Jennings, no run, pitched up, juicy and swinging, Jennings flails like a drowning man with barely any footwork... Fails to connect! Roach shakes his head with a smile and walks back to his mark
Glad we brought him back
I've finally worked out what's happened in the selection.
They've decided to leave Curran out, fair enough so in comes Wood. That leaves Foakes at 8, Moeen 7 and so on as you were. That's when the brains trust get together and decide that they're going too hard against the new ball, and so Bairstow at 3 isn't right. They decide to move Bairstow down to 7 to bat against the older ball, OK, so now Moeen's got to go up to 6, Stokes to 5, Buttler to 4... no no no, because you want those players later. You want people to bat watchfully against the new ball, so you bring in KEATON JENNINGS, and Foakes has to miss out as he isn't DYNAMIC like Stokes, Buttler and Bairstow and doesn't offer the off-spin of Moeen.
Absolute nonsense, partly caused by their awful selection of batsmen in the first place, and partly caused by the people out there now not having a clue and having a remarkable need to build the team around Bairstow.
If we get to 200 here I will be astonished. Root looks so bad.
Get Bairstow out of the fucking team.
He is such a disgrace. Spent most of that innings having a massive cry, including to the umpires at one point for reasons that elude me.
Mark Wood has changed his shitty short run-up into a long one, and is now bowling like peak Shoaib Akhtar. Let's hope his knees don't collapse again (narrator: they will).
Has there ever been a worse top 3 than our present iteration?
It's harsh to throw Burns under the bus with them, but Jennings and Denly would probably drag Matt Hayden into the argument if he was unfortunate enough to be lined up with them.
For England? Probably not. Top 3 has historically been our strength.
Burns is good, just needs to learn Test cricket fully.
I've spent most of this series slating Root for various things, but his hundred notwithstanding, there are probably very few people who will fully appreciate just what it will mean to some other people to hear the England captain say 'there's nothing wrong with being gay' in the way he did, in the heat of battle. A very small minority of sportsmen would have done that.
Not that I would hold it against Gabriel saying things, we all say stupid things, but just to hear that retort from the England captain is really something. He's gone a long way up in my estimation.
Yeah it's not something you can imagine happening, or being noticed, elsewhere.
Given how much the BBC love the stump mic stuff sometimes with the little clips and videos they put on I find it odd that they haven't put that on there at all.
EDIT: Ah, they got there in the end.
Last edited by Ian; 12-02-2019 at 08:43 AM.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/47230497
Is this based purely on Root's response or have the umpires heard what he said?
He's admitted the charge, whatever it may have been, so I'm not sure why half of Indian twitter is screaming that there's no proof, or why Indian twitter cares in the first place.
The Maharaja of bad takes Sanjay Manjrekar said that this and the Sarfraz thing the other day meant that we really need to look into the volume of stump mics, clearly the real issue here. Not racism and homophobia.