The cricket thread

NorthernGooner

RandallFlagg said:

Shane Warne on commentary, I could punch his hair weaved, plastic surgery ridden, botox filled head. He was talking complete bollocks earlier. He thinks he's such a playboy, drooling over Isa Guha with the occasional smarmy comment.

It's an awful thought isn't it Flaggers......  he has got form. He's probably got her back to his hotel room about now  with a nice Margaret River chardonnay on ice ready to flip her his 'wrong 'un'.   

Stuckfast

Well, I am Moeen Ali's staunchest defender but unless he produces something special with the bat, even I think he probably needs to be dropped after that bowling performance. Eww.

scrumhalf

Not the greatest start...

earwighoney

Another umpiring howler from Joel Wilson. 

It's quite incredible how poor a test match he's had. 

crunchman

Wilson has been awful.  I'd rather having Billy Bowden being annoying.

camf

The Aussies must be scratching their heads by now, wondering how on earth they're going to get Jason Roy out. 

Heartfeltdawn

Stuckfast said:

Well, I am Moeen Ali's staunchest defender but unless he produces something special with the bat, even I think he probably needs to be dropped after that bowling performance. Eww.

Moeen has a lot of ability and he's been used poorly throughout his career. Fill a gap here, be our lead spinner here, get dumped there. I don't think the calendar this season has helped him one bit. No overs in the CC, 4 overs in the Blast, 4 overs against Ireland in the Test, and not much else. You can bowl in the nets as much as you want, it won't prepare you for going full tilt on a wicket where you are expected to run through a batting side. 

scrumhalf

Whoever agreed to an Ashes series in the same summer as the ODI world cup needs to have his head examined. To have any chance in the Ashes you need to have a decent run of red ball cricket to acclimatise.

And now Root's gone and we're four down for less than a hundred and it's not lunch yet.

According to TMS Roy has never batted longer than 3½ hours. I'd never have guessed.

crunchman

With Root out, we are probably doomed. 

The weather forecast is quite good for the rest of the day in Birmingham.

I can't see Buttler or Bairstow batting 4 hours.  Stokes has it in him, but he's at a big disadvantage as a right hander against Lyon.

Dopesick

97-7

All over in ten mins.

crunchman

I suspect we doomed in this series unless Archer can turn things around.

Foakes and Leach must come in for the next test.

Bairstow is only averaging 22.9 in test cricket since the start of the 2018 home test summer.  Foakes could do that, probably better, and he's a much better keeper.

Moeen is ok as a second spinner on a helpful pitch, but he's too flaky to rely on as your front line spinner.  They also said on TMS or Sky the other day that Steve Smith's record against left armers is a lot worse than against off spinners.

Foakes will add a bit more adhesiveness to the batting, but we still have too many flaky one day players.  Roy is not a top order test batsman.  He has talent, but he should be batting 5 if he plays at all.  He would be better off going back to county cricket to work on his game.  I don't know much about Sibley or Crawley, but the least bad option is to bring one of them in.  They don't have as much talent as Roy, but they are probably a less bad option - if we can't talk Cook out of retirement.

I don't like making wholesale changes that look like a panic reaction, but the problem is that they got the selection so wrong for the first match.  That's not just hindsight.  If you look at my previous posts, I've been banging the drum for Foakes for months, and also said ahead of this match that Leach should be playing.

RandallFlagg

Chin up everyone. England have won 5 of the last 8 Ashes series, it was never going to be 5-0, we may go 0-2 down at Lords but all will come good in a 5th Test, day 5, last session thriller! Positive visualisation, see it and it will happen.

crunchman

RandallFlagg said:

Chin up everyone. England have won 5 of the last 8 Ashes series, it was never going to be 5-0, we may go 0-2 down at Lords but all will come good in a 5th Test, day 5, last session thriller! Positive visualisation, see it and it will happen.

I bet you aren't confident enough of that to go down to the bookies and put £100 on it.

scrumhalf

Poor, poor batting in the second innings.

Too many players not fit for. or to be, selected.

Heartfeltdawn

crunchman said:

I suspect we doomed in this series unless Archer can turn things around.

Foakes and Leach must come in for the next test.

Bairstow is only averaging 22.9 in test cricket since the start of the 2018 home test summer.  Foakes could do that, probably better, and he's a much better keeper.

Moeen is ok as a second spinner on a helpful pitch, but he's too flaky to rely on as your front line spinner.  They also said on TMS or Sky the other day that Steve Smith's record against left armers is a lot worse than against off spinners.

Foakes will add a bit more adhesiveness to the batting, but we still have too many flaky one day players.  Roy is not a top order test batsman.  He has talent, but he should be batting 5 if he plays at all.  He would be better off going back to county cricket to work on his game.  I don't know much about Sibley or Crawley, but the least bad option is to bring one of them in.  They don't have as much talent as Roy, but they are probably a less bad option - if we can't talk Cook out of retirement.

I don't like making wholesale changes that look like a panic reaction, but the problem is that they got the selection so wrong for the first match.  That's not just hindsight.  If you look at my previous posts, I've been banging the drum for Foakes for months, and also said ahead of this match that Leach should be playing.

One or two bowler won't turn around an uncertain opening pair and a failing middle order. 

Our defeat here, Test failures, and WC win have all resulted from a fundamental change in the direction of English cricket. You can see the same in women's cricket as well as it's relevant to compare the men's game to the abject asskicking the women have just received from the Australians. The domestic game for both genders is failing and the Australian domestic game has moved a long way ahead of us.  

RandallFlagg

 crunchman said:

RandallFlagg said:

Chin up everyone. England have won 5 of the last 8 Ashes series, it was never going to be 5-0, we may go 0-2 down at Lords but all will come good in a 5th Test, day 5, last session thriller! Positive visualisation, see it and it will happen.

I bet you aren't confident enough of that to go down to the bookies and put £100 on it.

I've paid £200 for tickets to the first day of the 4th Test at Old Trafford! I hope it's not 3-0 to Aus and the competition is already lost by then. Any Aussies want them?

I enjoyed watching this Test, regardless of result, to see a Test go to 5 days is a good thing, the result wasn't easy to call until around midday Sunday.

crunchman

Heartfeltdawn said:

crunchman said:

I suspect we doomed in this series unless Archer can turn things around.

Foakes and Leach must come in for the next test.

Bairstow is only averaging 22.9 in test cricket since the start of the 2018 home test summer.  Foakes could do that, probably better, and he's a much better keeper.

Moeen is ok as a second spinner on a helpful pitch, but he's too flaky to rely on as your front line spinner.  They also said on TMS or Sky the other day that Steve Smith's record against left armers is a lot worse than against off spinners.

Foakes will add a bit more adhesiveness to the batting, but we still have too many flaky one day players.  Roy is not a top order test batsman.  He has talent, but he should be batting 5 if he plays at all.  He would be better off going back to county cricket to work on his game.  I don't know much about Sibley or Crawley, but the least bad option is to bring one of them in.  They don't have as much talent as Roy, but they are probably a less bad option - if we can't talk Cook out of retirement.

I don't like making wholesale changes that look like a panic reaction, but the problem is that they got the selection so wrong for the first match.  That's not just hindsight.  If you look at my previous posts, I've been banging the drum for Foakes for months, and also said ahead of this match that Leach should be playing.

One or two bowler won't turn around an uncertain opening pair and a failing middle order. 

Our defeat here, Test failures, and WC win have all resulted from a fundamental change in the direction of English cricket. You can see the same in women's cricket as well as it's relevant to compare the men's game to the abject asskicking the women have just received from the Australians. The domestic game for both genders is failing and the Australian domestic game has moved a long way ahead of us.  

I don't disagree.   I did say we have too many flaky one day players.

There is nothing we can do about that in the short term, and the ECB seems to lack the will to do anything about it long term.

We need to put out the best team we can though, and we didn't in this test.

The Aussie batting is fragile - if  you can get rid of Smith.  Picking better bowlers and a better keeper will help a bit.  Like I said, we are probably doomed anyway, but we may have been able to bowl the Aussies out for 250 second time around with Leach in the side instead of Moeen.   With Leach there, even if he didn't bowl the Aussies out, he would probably have managed to go at less than 4.5 an over and keep the Aussies from declaring last night.  It might not have made much difference in the end, but we made it worse by picking Moeen.  Leach might have contributed more with the bat as well.

Foakes would almost certainly have made more runs (and taken longer about it) than Bairstow, and given away less byes.  He's also less likely to miss a crucial stumping.  He's not singlehandedly going to win matches, but he does improve the team.

Fixing it long term is a bigger issue, but there is no point in shooting ourselves in the foot by not picking our best team. 

Heartfeltdawn

crunchman said:

I don't disagree.   I did say we have too many flaky one day players.

There is nothing we can do about that in the short term, and the ECB seems to lack the will to do anything about it long term.

We need to put out the best team we can though, and we didn't in this test.

The Aussie batting is fragile - if  you can get rid of Smith.  Picking better bowlers and a better keeper will help a bit.  Like I said, we are probably doomed anyway, but we may have been able to bowl the Aussies out for 250 second time around with Leach in the side instead of Moeen.   With Leach there, even if he didn't bowl the Aussies out, he would probably have managed to go at less than 4.5 an over and keep the Aussies from declaring last night.  It might not have made much difference in the end, but we made it worse by picking Moeen.  Leach might have contributed more with the bat as well.

Foakes would almost certainly have made more runs (and taken longer about it) than Bairstow, and given away less byes.  He's also less likely to miss a crucial stumping.  He's not singlehandedly going to win matches, but he does improve the team.

Fixing it long term is a bigger issue, but there is no point in shooting ourselves in the foot by not picking our best team. 

The problem is that 'our best team' might not be that much stronger. We aren't the Australia A team circa 1999 with a wealth of people who could come in and drag us up again. 

The ECB is in a hole. The drive to get the Hundred on free to air telly is the admission that moving to Sky did a lot to fuck up cricket's visibility with the general public (still remarkable to me how we can go from cricket being given the greatest amount of coverage in my lifetime in this country in 2005 to being a fucking trickle years later. The viewing figures for the World Cup win and reaction to that prove this without a shadow of a doubt: hide shit away on pay TV and you will suffer. This is why MOTD is so important to the Premier League). Cricket needs that broadcast visibility yet the ECB can't afford to lose the Sky money. 

With the World Cup won, one objective has been achieved. The next is The Hundred. It's a huge gamble but one the ECB are willing to take. Actually turning away from this and focusing on domestic cricket and how to make the Test team better is simply not on the cards. 

England will now be terrified of batting last during this series. I'm fully up for Australia bowling first on Day 1 at Lords. 

As a side note, some appreciation for this guy is needed as he retires from Test cricket. Right up there with the very best to play the game in my book. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49241635

crunchman

Heartfeltdawn said:

As a side note, some appreciation for this guy is needed as he retires from Test cricket. Right up there with the very best to play the game in my book. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49241635

Great player.  Best fast bowler of the last 20 years for me.  I know Anderson (and Broad) have more wickets but Steyn was definitely a better bowler.

Heartfeltdawn

Jimmy is a fine bowler but Steyn is next level, up there with McGrath and Marshall and the like.