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Broad should still be front line attack with Jimmy - Not to many years left in them both - With Stokes and Curran as 3 + 4th seamers
2 spinners is a luxury these days, but if you can't get to day 4 or 5 then the benefit Rashid brings to the table is minimal
We are struggling to find 1 + 2 with the bat - Root at 4 is okay, but the rest of the batting line up is effectively a blend of all-rounders - On the day each is fine, but that is to hit n miss
Not a lot of time to get this right before the summer
They've tried Stokes at 3 hoping he'd be the next J Kallis - Yet the balance of the side normally has the all rounder at 6 - Yet Foakes can bat there, yet they currently play Butler - And I'm sure Curran could bet further up than 8, when he often comes in desperately trying to put some credibility on the score board, but runs out of partners
Not sure what the answer is - Certainly some bodge up, with what we have
As for England... pisspoor selection. Jack Leach shouldn't have been dropped after being top wicket taker in Sri Lanka. You wouldn't dump a highest run scorer in that way so don't do it to bowlers. Rashid thus far has been astoundingly anonymous. A few folk claiming he's a match winner: when?
Broad's non-selection was shite before play began. Picking a little skiddy left-armer in Curran for Barbados was predictably bad (I say that having played on that track years ago. Spinners and big tall deck hitters were fine: the wee English touch the surface seamers were hammered mercilessly).
Then the batting. It's as you'd expect with the lack of decent practice time and a lottery for the top order.
Joe Root managed to win every toss for the India and Sri Lanka series and aside from one pitch, there was never much doubt to what the team would do if they won the toss. IMO, test pitches are largely favouring whoever wins the toss in the conditions are optimal for one particular innings be it with the ball or bat (generally the team that bats first).
I watched a fair amount of the Australia India series and whichever team won the toss, won the test match.
I'm sure @Heartfeltdawn has some insights towards how important winning the toss is in contemporary test cricket.
Personally I don't think the pitches have been the primary issue when it comes to toss winning and match winning. Batting is poorer full stop: even more so when going overseas. Finlay thows up a remarkable stat about Australia's summer this year which has been lacking in Aussie tons.
For someone who grew up with the Australia dominance starting from 1989, it's almost beyond comprehension that the batsmen are that poor now.
I can't think anyone could claim that the Barbados Test was decided by the toss. When a side scores 600 in the third innings after rattling someone out for 77, there's clearly something else at work. That to me is a lack of match practice. It's incredible in a sport full of monitoring and science and training that nobody stands up and says "Lack of warm-up games fuck the Test game".
But then again we live in an age now where Roston Chase is made to look like he's bowling on a minefield.
My suggestion of winning the toss being an important part of influencing the game's outcome wasn't to exempt England's performance but it was to suggest it was a factor. IMO, England have been in a somewhat unusual position of having won 8 consecutive tosses and for the majority of the time rarely being in a position where they were chasing the game.
Yep, I heard the stat about Australian batting when I was watching the Australia v India series. Did you watch any of that series? Harris looked pretty decent at the crease but just couldn't convert his starts, the rest of the team's batting seemed very fragile at best. A few comments here and there have suggested the BBL has not had the best impact for domestic red ball /Shield cricket. It seems the standard of cricket in Indian railways is better than the standard of Australian domestic cricket... I imagine once Smith etc return they'll recover with the bat.
Back to England, IMO the selection of the XI seemed a bit odd. Selection of Rashid over Leach for the second spinner to begin with, but I'm not sure whether a second spinner was needed in the first place. As for batting they seem to not really truly acknowledge how important the no.3 position for batting is. Maybe a cliche but I was always under the mindset that it was pivotal to have a player with a technique with an adequate amount of defensive work and enough attacking intent to keep things ticking over. Looking at the English batting order, I'm unconvinced by Bairstow at 3 and for a lot of of the batsmen the positions in the order seems more about trying to get in as many batsmen as possible opposed to have the right batsmen in the right order, which isn't to say there aren't benefits to this approach clearly it does work from time to time as it does allow having a lot of batsmen in the XI.
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