England Cricket 2018

[PistoldPete2]

Losing rashid to the last ball of the day could prove costly for England. the pitch is getting slower  and it will be tricky to bowl India out with the weather set fair. I hope I am wrong. 

 

[Jimbo Ram]

21 minutes ago, PistoldPete2 said:

Losing rashid to the last ball of the day could prove costly for England. the pitch is getting slower  and it will be tricky to bowl India out with the weather set fair. I hope I am wrong. 

 

I think if we can set them 250 it could be very interesting. This has been a thrilling test series, test cricket at it's best.....

[eddie]

1 hour ago, Carnero said:

Bloody loving Sam Curran's batting, bowling, and sheer heart & bottle... I believe you tipped him a year or so back @eddie

 

I'm a big fan, but someone else on here pointed him out after I'd pushed Tom Curran into the dcfcfans limelight so I can claim no credit for Sam. Someone on here said "but his brother is even better". It may have been a one-day match on the telly when I first saw Tom. Both of the Curran brothers are gutsy 'make things happen' cricketers - and I look forward to the day when both feature together in the England Test XI.

[Wolfie20]

Not sure England can persevere for much longer with Jennings

[Carnero]

3 minutes ago, eddie said:

I'm a big fan, but someone else on here pointed him out after I'd pushed Tom Curran into the dcfcfans limelight so I can claim no credit for Sam. Someone on here said "but his brother is even better". It may have been a one-day match on the telly when I first saw Tom. Both of the Curran brothers are gutsy 'make things happen' cricketers - and I look forward to the day when both feature together in the England Test XI.

Sounds like I'm mistaken then, but yes both Curran brothers (there is a 3rd too!) are certainly made of the right stuff. Hopefully Broad & Anderson are "rested" for the Sri Lanka tour and we see both Curran's and both Overton's given a chance, plus Leach restored ahead of Rashid.

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

I'd be looking to replace Bayliss at this point. We see the same things over and over again. We might win this test and on paper 3-1 against India looks decent, but there are serious problems with our batting and it looks like they can't or wont fix them.

It's a good job our bowlers are excellent because they have bailed out our fragile batting line up repeatedly over the last two years.

[PistoldPete2]

11 hours ago, eddie said:

I'm a big fan, but someone else on here pointed him out after I'd pushed Tom Curran into the dcfcfans limelight so I can claim no credit for Sam. Someone on here said "but his brother is even better". It may have been a one-day match on the telly when I first saw Tom. Both of the Curran brothers are gutsy 'make things happen' cricketers - and I look forward to the day when both feature together in the England Test XI.

Can I point out there us third curran brother Ben. Only Sam is a curran test player though.

[PistoldPete2]

245 needed by India. Should get them , England lost last three wickets for only 11 runs. 

[AndyinLiverpool]

2 run outs. 

Rubbish. 

[eddie]

5 hours ago, PistoldPete2 said:

245 needed by India. Should get them , England lost last three wickets for only 11 runs. 

Didn't. As soon as Kohli went, the rest soon followed.

[AndyinLiverpool]

Imagine how good we’d be if we had a proper batting line up. 

Cook only gets picked because they daren’t have a new opening bat when they probably need to drop Jennings anyway; who knows what is happening at 3 and Bairstow is about as convincing a no 4 as I am. What happened to Pope?

I’m just off to Blanco my pads. 

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

I think Ali will move to three. Drop Rashid for Woakes.

If we had a good top three we would be the best team in the world.

[AndyinLiverpool]

7 minutes ago, JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta said:

I think Ali will move to three. Drop Rashid for Woakes.

If we had a good top three we would be the best team in the world.

To bat at 3 Ali will need to learn to be patient. I’m not convinced he will be able to do it. 

He’ll need all the skills of an opening bat, which is what he will be, coming in at first drop for England. 

[eddie]

19 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Imagine how good we’d be if we had a proper batting line up. 

Cook only gets picked because they daren’t have a new opening bat when they probably need to drop Jennings anyway; who knows what is happening at 3 and Bairstow is about as convincing a no 4 as I am. What happened to Pope?

I’m just off to Blanco my pads. 

There does need to be a balance between giving someone an automatic place despite everything, and discarding a player after a single failure. Cook bagged two big double-hundreds last year, but before or since, it has been a continuing story of decline, and he seems to be picked based upon historical performance. With that in mind, if we cannot find one replacement opener (for Jennings), how will we find two?

Moeen bats at 3 for Worcestershire, and he went in that position in the second innings yesterday against India, allowing Root to go in at 4. Really it makes not a lot of difference, because the chances of an England opening partnership of any significance appears to be about zero. That's probably Root's thinking as far as his self-imposed demotion goes.

With regards to Ollie Pope, I think the intention was always to just 'blood' him to see how he goes - and his relative failures at Trent Bridge encouraged England to remove him from the firing-line for a while. I'd be inclined to bring Pope back for the fifth test, have him bat at 4, Root at 3, say 'Moeen, pretty-please will you open with Cook', perhaps have Buttler as high as 5. What to do with Bairstow? Not sure.  It's a real problem. In the bowling department, if one fails, there are half a dozen ready to step up, but there just isn't a great depth of quality batsmen in the English game now.

I blame T20.

[PistoldPete2]

2 hours ago, eddie said:

Didn't. As soon as Kohli went, the rest soon followed.

Once Pant was removed, that exposed the tail. Ooh matron.

[Carnero]

I'd stick with Moeen at 3 for a while, see how he does - Root 4, Stokes 5, Buttler 6, Bairstow (wkt) 7.

[PistoldPete2]

17 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I'd stick with Moeen at 3 for a while, see how he does - Root 4, Stokes 5, Buttler 6, Bairstow (wkt) 7.

Once baiirstow is over his broken finger he should be no 5 I think. We might also consider an extra batsman. Does rashid offer us enough? Woakes probably needs to come back tho so I think he would come  in for rashid unless it's a spinners wicket. Pope was unlucky and will probably  come back sooner rather than later. 

[eddie]

7 hours ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

To bat at 3 Ali will need to learn to be patient. I’m not convinced he will be able to do it. 

He’ll need all the skills of an opening bat, which is what he will be, coming in at first drop for England. 

All his test innings - sorted by position...

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/8917.html?class=1;orderby=batting_position;template=results;type=batting;view=innings

[AndyinLiverpool]

7 hours ago, eddie said:

All his test innings - sorted by position...

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/8917.html?class=1;orderby=batting_position;template=results;type=batting;view=innings

Thanks but the link just sends my phone mental. What does it show?

[eddie]

23 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Thanks but the link just sends my phone mental. What does it show?

It's just a list of all Moeen Ali's test innings, sorted by batting number. Like all Cricinfo features, it contains a lot of embedded links (to the individual test matches). I didn't draw any conclusions - apart from the fact that the only positions he has never batted in tests for England are 10 and 11.