I'd be worried about Rakheem's gravitational influence at first slip.
I'd be worried about Rakheem's gravitational influence at first slip.
Nice grab at slip for the big man.
Last chance in Tests for Buttler?
It should be but it won't be, Mister Ed hasn't got any more outriders left if he goes.
Bowling slow, non-turning "spin" really is guaranteed wickets against us, isn't it?
For fuck's sake.
Needs Tillakaratne Dilshan first change
My abiding memory of the 2011 World Cup is just a series of those characters dismissing Andrew Strauss in the first over.
Come in Naeem Islam
Stat there that Burns is 14-4 against Chase this series.
Yessss Rahkeem
Buttler apologists on sky doing my head in.
Thames Ditton is down the road from me, the road you can see there is between their pavilion and the pitch, which results in one of the most little known laws of cricket being used from time to time - the timed out clock is paused if you're waiting for traffic to pass.
They also had a very old Richie Richardson as overseas around that era, which was fucking bizarre to say the least.
Pros are all mad for him, aren't they?
My take is that he's such a massive dressing room figure in all three forms that in the name of Team England and everyone's morale, the powers that be are willing to accept a -5 batting average drop and a couple of chances gone down a series.
Truth is, he averages 31 striking 59 in Tests, and 31 striking 59 in first class, it isn't going to change, time cricket is such a different thing to overs/field restrictions cricket.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 24-07-2020 at 02:44 PM.
They're still obsessed with the idea of this swashbuckling middle order.
And what we end up with isn't even collectively on it enough to earn the damning-with-faint-praise of calling it a glass cannon.
He does seem to be a key figure in the dressing room. Vice captain etc. But surely all that stuff loses its impact if he’s a drag on the side which he is approaching atm.
The bit I don't quite understand is what they think his role is in the Test side (other than 'a generational talent'). Are they wanting him to counter-attack us out of trouble? He doesn't do that. Are they wanting him to come in and rapidly turn 300-350 alright scores into 500+ winning scores à la Gilchrist? He doesn't do that either. Are they wanting him to bat responsibly with the tail? He kind of does that, but then why don't you pick the better gloveman who could do the same thing?
I think a lot of it - like the Jason Roy pick last year, like playing Wood and Archer in the same side the other week - is just wishful thinking.
Or they just sort of thought he’d work it out like Ben Stokes and move up and down the gears at will. Despite never showing anything of the sort in the 4/5 day cricket.
He doesn't move up and down the gears even in the one day game. It's either bottom handed hockey shot long hitting, or it's not. That's not to disparage his white ball majesty, but he's not a multi-dimensional player like Stokes.
Yeah even it that form the only knock that comes to mind is to complete the whitewash vs Australia a couple years back. But that probably lands more in the shepherding the tail category anyway.
Probably doing him a disservice on the World Cup final as well, tbh, but then he did also get out at the crucial moment.
Another five overs of that partnership and those margins aren’t the barest
I assume they basically wanted Roy to be our Sehwag.
I don't know that I ever saw him play in tests but I know he had a good strike rate and a great average so I assume he just knew when to turn it on? Rather than the flimsy shite we put in sometimes who think they have to try and hit everything.
Sehwag, whilst brilliant, was also a flat track bully and petrified of lateral movement, he would never have been able to go about things in the same way if he'd played half his games in England. He was also more of a square of the wicket player than Roy who is a bat-straight-and-guns-through-it man, which can get found out by the new red ball if it does really anything at all.
Sehwag was 54 average at home but 27 in England, 25 in SA, 20 in NZ.
Surrey bat Roy at 4/5/6 in first class cricket because they are run by Alec Stewart who, unlike Ed Smith, knows what he's doing. If we didn't have Stokes or Pope I could see a case to bat Roy at 6 for England. But we do.
And if Sehwag has a failure then Rahul Dravid is next in - not Joe Denly.
I loved watching Sehwag, thrilling batsman.
When I think of Sehwag I think of him in a smog-covered Eden Gardens/Wankhede with some poor sap trundling up and him vaporising it to the square point boundary, perhaps off the back foot but maybe without moving his feet at all. If watching Sachin was doing your homework, watching Sehwag was smoking something good behind the bike shed.
James Vince is your DT teacher letting you all watch The Fifth Element on the last day of term. It's sort of fun while it lasts but nobody involved really gets anything out of it.
And he starts it so late that you only watch half the film.
Letting the 2020 version of Broad smack out a quick fifty is cause enough to have your cricket team disbanded.
But then so is letting yourself get dominated by Roston Chase.
He’s always bad for it but Broad didn’t even appeal for that lbw
Weather looks shit so would need to enforce the follow on to force a win You’d think.
Quite rightly too, leave that shit to the slips.
At least we have the bowling attack to think about enforcing the follow-on.
Only Woakes' second no ball in tests?
Something really needs to be done about the proper calling of no-balls.
His first one was only recently as well. He had some ridiculous record of 8,000 international deliveries without one.
Listening to TMS yesterday I particularly enjoyed the bit about the first test ever played at Old Trafford where England's 'Monkey' Hornby managed to become (presumably) the first and still only one of 4 examples of an opener being stumped for 0 in a test.
Imagine what the captain would think if you did that said Vaughan, to which Benedict (or someone) delightedly chimed in that Monkey was the captain.
Broad homing in on 500 test wickets and potential for a ten-for. We should just stick him and Anderson in old newspaper/straw/whatever you do with tortoises over the winter.
I think we could wheel the pair of them out at home for the next 4 years.
What a great day of cricket. Root with one of most aesthetically-pleasing innings I've seen and Broad ripping through bottom and top order alike.
It might be raining all day today, but the good news is that James Vince is back in the ODI squad.
Joe Denly as well. Naturally.
In fairness, Denners's ODI average of 34 and strike rate of 71 more than justifies the decision to leave out Sam Hain (list A average 60, strike rate 86), Phil Salt (scored a hundred yesterday, list A 33/105), Laurie Evans (38/97)... who have all been de-bubbled.
Reece Topley coming in as a LEFT ARMER on the back of basically not playing cricket for three years suggests a high level of monster munch moneyballing in the think-wank.
Fuck's sake.On Sunday, Burns and Sibley put on 114 together, it was England’s first century partnership for the first wicket in England in four years, and the second anywhere since Cook retired in 2018.
And the one time we were probably banking on being a few down early doors to get the actual batsmen in.
It seems to me that the right thing to do would be for one of these two to let Broad take his 500th. It'd give everybody a big lift in these unprecedented times.
EDIT: Brathwaite being both Anderson and Broad's 500th must be some pretty slim odds as these things go.
Last edited by Ian; 28-07-2020 at 11:02 AM.
There've been some optimistic reviews today.
Typical English bowlers excel in typical English conditions.
An absolute nightmare for the bigwigs in BailAsh Towers.
I suppose the real take away from this series (other than it being an impressive fightback and a thumb in the eye for the ashes obsessed) is that the team we are going to task with said ashes recovery mission is so bad it got walloped by the Windies in Hampshire. Bodes well.
Is winter 2021/22 the next Ashes?
Yeah, think so.
Pissing it down for the presentations, as if the weather is trolling the West Indies. Some pretty poor efforts from them today really.
Yeah the timing of the pissing rain was pretty excellent.
Also Joe Root has gone from looking like a cheeky chappy to somebody's haggard auntie.
Was this already happening, is it his lockdown hair or is it the England Captain Effect?
We will lose 5-0 in Australia. I mean, everyone gets thrashed there anyway, but our current team is particularly ripe for a pounding.
India first, though, wowee, that'll be like Passchendaele but without the poetry.