English cricket 2015 - NZ, The Ashes, Pak and SA

DiseaseOfTheAge said:
If we want to get both in, I'd move Compton to open, Taylor three and Bairstow five.
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It would be a bit weird though to pick a keeper who's a fairly poor gloveman (Buttler) because of his batting, drop him because he can't buy a run and is still a fairly poor gloveman (although he improved) and then re-pick him over a guy that is actually scoring runs despite not scoring a run in anything close to that format in between.

There's no doubting Buttler's talent, but he doesn't have the record to back up any sort of claim to the Test team at the minute, either as a gloveman or a batsman. At the very least he should have a month with Lancashire batting in first class cricket to prove his form.
 
NinjaFletch said:
It would be a bit weird though to pick a keeper who's a fairly poor gloveman (Buttler) because of his batting, drop him because he can't buy a run and is still a fairly poor gloveman (although he improved) and then re-pick him over a guy that is actually scoring runs despite not scoring a run in anything close to that format in between.

There's no doubting Buttler's talent, but he doesn't have the record to back up any sort of claim to the Test team at the minute, either as a gloveman or a batsman. At the very least he should have a month with Lancashire batting in first class cricket to prove his form.
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Yeah, I agree, to be honest. I'd rather we take the line with Buttler, that we have with Morgan, and just get him to focus on one day cricket. Relatedly, I'm a bit disappointed Broad's been added to the one day team, as I thought having him as a test specialist seemed a rather good thing.
 
ForlansHair said:
That's what I would be tempted to do, Buttler's too good not to be playing test cricket and I don't think Hales ever will be. Vince and Ballance will have something to say about it though.
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What does that even mean though? A first class batting average of 32 for a keeper thats being picked for his batting rather than his keeping certainly doesn't suggest he's 'too good'. There's no doubt that Buttler's talented, but he needs to learn his first class game.

DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Yeah, I agree, to be honest. I'd rather we take the line with Buttler, that we have with Morgan, and just get him to focus on one day cricket. Relatedly, I'm a bit disappointed Broad's been added to the one day team, as I thought having him as a test specialist seemed a rather good thing.
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I think its a little too soon to be that drastic but yeah, I certainly wouldn't have him on the team on the basis of his ODI form and I'm glad that that knock vs Pakistan didn't get him back into the side. I understand he's being fairly strongly pushed towards an IPL contract which suggests, for the next test series at least, he's not being considered for red ball selection.
 
ForlansHair said:
That's what I would be tempted to do, Buttler's too good not to be playing test cricket and I don't think Hales ever will be. Vince and Ballance will have something to say about it though.
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Based on what? Averaging 13 in his last 7 tests. Runs vs the worst WI bowling line-up in history and in home condition vs toothless Indian bowlers doesn't make him 'too good not to be playing tests'.
 
Thought this Cook fella was an up-an-coming talent. Turns ut he's 33 with 11k+ first class round and a HS of 390!
 
NinjaFletch said:
What does that even mean though? A first class batting average of 32 for a keeper thats being picked for his batting rather than his keeping certainly doesn't suggest he's 'too good'. There's no doubt that Buttler's talented, but he needs to learn his first class game.
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Buttler may not be the best keeper in the world but he has improved immeasurably since he came into the side. He has far too much natural talent not to succeed in my opinion. His temperament is there, he's proved that in limited overs cricket.

You've seen what happened to Ben Stokes. His numbers were average, arguably still are, but he has produced moments only a few other cricketers in the world can. Who else could score 250 odd like he did? Buttler is one of these players.

Stokes was dropped, Root was dropped. They both came back as they were both young, extremely talented high class players. Buttler is the same.

Samid said:
Based on what? Averaging 13 in his last 7 tests. Runs vs the worst WI bowling line-up in history and in home condition vs toothless Indian bowlers doesn't make him 'too good not to be playing tests'.
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Sometimes you just have to trust a player's natural talent. He's had 3 good series and 2 poor ones. He's not going to be consistently brilliant yet. He probably has needed a break, I think he himself admitted it, but he'll be back, no question about it.
 
ForlansHair said:
Buttler may not be the best keeper in the world but he has improved immeasurably since he came into the side. He has far too much natural talent not to succeed in my opinion. His temperament is there, he's proved that in limited overs cricket.

You've seen what happened to Ben Stokes. His numbers were average, arguably still are, but he has produced moments only a few other cricketers in the world can. Who else could score 250 odd like he did? Buttler is one of these players.

Stokes was dropped, Root was dropped. They both came back as they were both young, extremely talented high class players. Buttler is the same.



Sometimes you just have to trust a player's natural talent. He's had 3 good series and 2 poor ones. He's not going to be consistently brilliant yet. He probably has needed a break, I think he himself admitted it, but he'll be back, no question about it.
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What about Morgan? He certainly shows a great temperament and talent in limited overs. Do you think we were wrong to give up on him as a test player?
 
Back on topic - Not been watching, so don't know whether it's due to good bowling or bad batting, but England could be getting back in to this one.
 
ForlansHair said:
Buttler may not be the best keeper in the world but he has improved immeasurably since he came into the side. He has far too much natural talent not to succeed in my opinion. His temperament is there, he's proved that in limited overs cricket.

You've seen what happened to Ben Stokes. His numbers were average, arguably still are, but he has produced moments only a few other cricketers in the world can. Who else could score 250 odd like he did? Buttler is one of these players.

Stokes was dropped, Root was dropped. They both came back as they were both young, extremely talented high class players. Buttler is the same.
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There's plenty of players with bucketloads of natural talent that couldn't hack it in the test arena. Buttler wouldn't be the first or last and whilst I agree that he shouldn't be written off as a test player he's got an awful lot of issues to work at. Even then, if he was a great gloveman you could make the argument that he should be playing over Bairstow as a virtue of that (especially as England have proper batsmen all the way down to 8), but he isn't, you're right to say he's improved since he has been in the test side, but I'm not even sure he's better than Bairstow let alone significantly better to get in on the merits of his ability as a keeper.

I'm not sure Buttler's proved much in ODI cricket, other than he's a very good ODI hitter, and I certainly don't see anything that suggests, right now, that he's got the 'temperament' for Test cricket in his ODI game. He's a fairly poor leaver of the ball, weak against spin (in the test arena, not so much shorter forms), vulnerable around the off stump, to the moving ball, and has a fairly poor defensive technique. I'm not saying he can't solve those problems, in fact I would back his ability to do that, just that the arena for him to work on those issues is in the County Championship with Lancashire not in Test cricket with England.

Stokes are Root are different, firstly I'm not even certain Stokes was dropped from the Test side, but at any rate scored a hundred and took a 6fer in an otherwise disastrous tour of Aus and secondly Root was incredibly harshly done by to get dropped averaging 36 with 2 hundreds (including 180 vs Aus opening the batting) despite being shuffled around the order more times than was fair to him. Even in the context of that tour his 27 average with a highscore of eighty odd wasn't awful. The hype for both of them has largely been based on their performances in the test team.
 
I am a big Buttler fan and I did advocate moving Compton and Root up to bring him in but honestly with the way the series has gone it might be a bit pointless. Root, Stokes and Bairstow (and Broad and Ali mind) can all bat very positively I think Buttler would be overkill. In terms of glove work I'm not too worried with Bairstow yet, Prior wasn't great when he first started and he got better and Bairstow's already scored the 6th most runs ever scored in a series by an England wicketkeeper.

The big issue for me with Buttler is that he seemed absolutely frazzled by spin in tests, Lyon kept doing time and again and with India and Bangladesh away coming up I would prefer a specialist batsman in the middle order. Buttler as talented as he is just is not worth the risk at the moment, his glovework is not so much better than Bairstow's and his style of batting is not what the team needs at the moment. England need a bit more upper order spine and stodginess that can let the strokeplay of Root, Taylor, Stokes, Bairstow and Ali do damage.
 
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NinjaFletch said:
Root was incredibly harshly done by to get dropped averaging 36 with 2 hundreds (including 180 vs Aus opening the batting) despite being shuffled around the order more times than was fair to him. Even in the context of that tour his 27 average with a highscore of eighty odd wasn't awful. The hype for both of them has largely been based on their performances in the test team.
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He was so 'harshly done by' that I do suspect it was a quite deliberate 'we've got one a bit special here, we need to look after him' drop, rather than any doubting his ability.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
He was so 'harshly done by' that I do suspect it was a quite deliberate 'we've got one a bit special here, we need to look after him' drop, rather than any doubting his ability.
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The heads were so scrambled by the end of that tour who knows what was going through their minds? They gave Borthwick a debut batting at number 9 and picked an injured Boyd Rankin.

I reckon you're not far wrong though, I think they just wanted to give Ballance a run, and though it easier to drop the kid who lives with him over anyone else. With the added benefit it would, at the very least, take him out of the firing line and might give him a little nudge.

Either way, he's gone stratospheric since then, so whether it helped him or not, it definitely hasn't hurt him.
 
NinjaFletch said:
The heads were so scrambled by the end of that tour who knows what was going through their minds? They gave Borthwick a debut batting at number 9 and picked an injured Boyd Rankin.
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That is true. I am potentially giving more credit than is deserved...
 
Would have given that not out on impact on the grounds a pitch shouldn't have un-even bounce on the second fecking day.
 
Would say that's SA's day, again, but not too dominant, as yet. England's best two bats still going. Could be a pretty good match.
 
Stokes will be approaching god tier if he can get England out of this mess :lol:


Oops, sorry folks :D
 
Pretty good stuff from England. If they can get the lead less than a hundred they give themselves a chance.

Rabada is increasingly impressive.
 
Anderson's batting really annoys me. He just refuses to take it seriously, these days. Even when there's a guy at the other end approaching a half century.
 
i've not bothered watching any of this test, it was obvious how it would go. england aren't ruthless enough. whenever they win a series early against any of the big sides, you can guarantee they'll lose any dead rubbers, except maybe in an ashes series. they don't have that killer instinct the likes of which australia do, they never want to inflict further damage or really show their dominance. it's annoying.
 
Never seen that before :D Rabada takes Bairstow's wicket, only for the delivery to be deemed illegal. Very next ball, he takes him legitimately :lol: The kid has had an awesome match.
 
Too many players caught playing shots they should've left. We were never going to get 380, so why take the chance? I understand people feel like they're playing for their place in the squad, but surely playing the game how it needed to be played would've been more sensible than playing at easy to leave balls.

Anyway, amazing by Rabada. 13 wickets in the match.
 
Poor performance with the bat but we went there to win the series, and we've done just that so I won't lose any sleep over this.
There is however a longer term worry over the form of Hales (who may very well not play Test cricket for England again), Compton and even Taylor though I think the latter 2 will survive in to the summer.
Bowling attack still looks fine to me and when back in English conditions against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the summer, I think today will soon be forgotten.
 
Still not sold on Compton. He's pretty bang average compared to some of our other batsmen.
 
Sassy Colin said:
This chap who got the 13 wickets, still the token 'black' player?
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I don't think anyones said that about Rabada to be fair.

But either way the point of the quota is to make sure talented black cricketers who were otherwise being overlooked get a chance. The stunning success of Rabada this series (and to a lesser extent Bavuma) just emphasises that.
 
Good character from Hales to score a quick 50 after a pretty terrible test series. England playing great here.
 
Without wishing to sound too critical of Ben Stokes thats another really daft dismissal.
 
Gotta give mad props to the team as a whole for that batting performance, though. So many of the top order did what they needed to do, although it's a shame no-one really kicked on and posted a huge score.
 
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