Cricket

Just turned over to see England go 2 down for 25 runs.

Why do I bother anymore? I'm seriously considering giving the Ashes a miss. I can't recall ever missing watching as much of the Ashes as I could, but I've been saying it for months, this upcoming series has 5-0 written all over it, and I reckon it could turn out to be the biggest kicking England have taken since the 80's and 90's.
 
Wanted to catch on some sleep. Switched on TV to watch Ballance bat. Feeling very sleepy within few overs of watching.
 
Why was Trott opening and what's happened to Moeen??
 
Good partnership by these two, no thanks to KP, he had his chance but decided to be a tit instead. Dont want indivuduals like him in the dressing room. England have a number of up and coming batsmen to choose from. Was happy with the team today but would have preferred Rashid to Treadwell, that was a stupid selection.
 
Good partnership by these two, no thanks to KP, he had his chance but decided to be a tit instead. Dont want indivuduals like him in the dressing room. England have a number of up and coming batsmen to choose from. Was happy with the team today but would have preferred Rashid to Treadwell, that was a stupid selection.

According to George Dobell, who's been on this tour since the first day, Rashid is bowling absolute shite in both the nets and two practice games. Made himself unselectable.
 
According to George Dobell, who's been on this tour since the first day, Rashid is bowling absolute shite in both the nets and two practice games. Made himself unselectable.

That's a shame. We must really be struggling on the spinners front if Tredwell gets a game. He's a good one day bowler but his first class game is not very good.
 
That's a shame. We must really be struggling on the spinners front if Tredwell gets a game. He's a good one day bowler but his first class game is not very good.

Yeah its a shame, you'd hope they'd have gone with someone like Kerrigan or Riley with Ali injured but I think the lack of red ball cricket going on at England at the minute hurt them, whereas Tredwell is a known quantity to the England team having been with them all winter. He was playing 2nd XI most of the summer iirc apart from List A/T20
 
It's a travesty that Sulieman Benn is not a fast bowler. How did they let someone as big and confrontational as him to turn to spin?!
 
Yeah its a shame, you'd hope they'd have gone with someone like Kerrigan or Riley with Ali injured but I think the lack of red ball cricket going on at England at the minute hurt them, whereas Tredwell is a known quantity to the England team having been with them all winter. He was playing 2nd XI most of the summer iirc apart from List A/T20

Problem with Kerrigan was that when he was picked, he took all his wickets in the 2nd division so the step up was a bit much for him. Riley looks promising but again might be better off in the Lions for now. we are struggling in the spin department though and need a decent spinner to come along to compete with Moeen. Having a team with Moeen and Stokes as all rounders and then picking 3 main bowlers looks a great prospect on paper and it will also deepen the batting lineup.
 
A decent enough comeback from the position we were in, but given the score we had, there's no excuse for not going on to post 400+. We never seem to hit 400 nowadays.

Oops, haha.
 
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That's a good nut from Anderson.

Problem with Kerrigan was that when he was picked, he took all his wickets in the 2nd division so the step up was a bit much for him. Riley looks promising but again might be better off in the Lions for now. we are struggling in the spin department though and need a decent spinner to come along to compete with Moeen. Having a team with Moeen and Stokes as all rounders and then picking 3 main bowlers looks a great prospect on paper and it will also deepen the batting lineup.

I don't know how much the gulf between second division cricket and Test cricket is exaggerated or real. Ali made the step up easily enough. Kerrigan's problems were two fold I think. He struggled with nerves in those first two spells and lost Cook's confidence, I don't think Cook rates him at all and not bowling him in the second innings of that Test was bizarre.

I haven't seen enough of Kerrigan to know if Cook's right to rate him or not, but I don't see him getting another shot whilst he's captain.
 
Good to get Chanderpaul out early.
 
104 is a good lead. Still 7 sessions to go in match, batting 3 sessions and giving WI min. 375 to chase in 110-115 overs will be the plan I think.
 
England's top 3 needs to feck off. None of them should be playing on current form.

They'll win this series, but NZ & Aussies will be a much different prospect, even in home conditions. I'd be surprised if England won either of those series.
 
There are better players than KP in the pecking order. Don't want KP anywhere near this team.

What is this based on? If KP doesn't make runs for Surrey fair enough but in his last test series he scored the most runs in the team. The balance of the side would need to change however for KP to come in, I wouldn't want Root to open again to be honest.
 
Also a big thing for me is how one paced the top 5 is, Bell can score quickly but the rest are far too slow, Root can score quickly too but he's far too circumspect in Tests. Cook, Trott and Ballance is just a painfully archaic top 3 isn't it? If Ali comes back in will he bat at 6 with Stokes and Buttler dropping down? If so that's a very deep and slightly lopsided batting lineup. An opener and 3rd seamer should be top of the list priorities for England before Pietersen, if the Australians dish it out I wouldn't be surprised to see him come back mid-series however.
 
Trott needs to get dropped first and replaced with a more attacking opener. See how that works before making any more changes.
 
Also a big thing for me is how one paced the top 5 is, Bell can score quickly but the rest are far too slow, Root can score quickly too but he's far too circumspect in Tests. Cook, Trott and Ballance is just a painfully archaic top 3 isn't it? If Ali comes back in will he bat at 6 with Stokes and Buttler dropping down? If so that's a very deep and slightly lopsided batting lineup. An opener and 3rd seamer should be top of the list priorities for England before Pietersen, if the Australians dish it out I wouldn't be surprised to see him come back mid-series however.

Ballance's strike rate is 51 from his 8 games so far from which he averages 60. Of the people currently playing with an average >50, Hashim Amla's SR is 52, Michael Clarke is 56, Joe Root is 46, Younis Khan is 52, AB De Villiers is 54, Du Plessis is 42, Steve Smith is 55, Chanderpaul is 44, Sangakarra is 54, and Angelo Matthews is 49.

That is to say Ballance's strike rate is pretty typical of those players. I don't think there's particularly anything wrong with Trott and Cook's strike rates either, the issue is that they're not scoring, not that they're not scoring quick enough. You'd have to be doing really terrible that scoring too slow in test cricket was actually an issue. It speaks to the one day mindset that people seem to think test cricket should have. Yeah its great if someone can come in and get 70 off 100 balls but you don't get any points for doing it. England got to the top of the world rankings with Cook, Strauss, and Trott as the top 3 and no one was compla
 
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Ballance's strike rate is 51 from his 8 games so far from which he averages 60. Of the people currently playing with an average >50, Hashim Amla's SR is 52, Michael Clarke is 56, Joe Root is 46, Younis Khan is 52, AB De Villiers is 54, Du Plessis is 42, Steve Smith is 55, Chanderpaul is 44, Sangakarra is 54, and Angelo Matthews is 49.

That is to say Ballance's strike rate is pretty typical of those players. I don't think there's particularly anything wrong with Trott and Cook's strike rates either, the issue is that they're not scoring, not that they're not scoring quick enough. You'd have to be doing really terrible that scoring too slow in test cricket was actually an issue. It speaks to the one day mindset that people seem to think test cricket should have. Yeah its great if someone can come in and get 70 off 100 balls but you don't get any points for doing it. England got to the top of the world rankings with Cook, Strauss, and Trott as the top 3 and no one was compla

It's not a slight on Ballance, but the the Top 5 has no one who can come in from the go and counter attack, situationally there's far too much pressure on Ali, Stokes and Buttler to either come in and change the pace of the game or dig and steady the ship, it's a lopsided batting order at the moment. There's no opening partnership to speak of and the team is completely reliant on Ballance, Bell and Root. If they go cheap then England are fecked.
 
England have batted at faster rate than I expected. Now they can easily give WI 4 sessions to bat with target close to 450.
 
Serious question

Assuming Pietersen does score runs in the CC between now and the NZ test who would he come in for?