English cricket thread

Widow said:
England on the other hand, they'll go for this Baz Ball that looks good but it can easily got you out cheaply. Take the last test, England where praised for the Baz Ball approach but it only got them to a standard first innings total. The second innings was a disaster with batsman giving away their wickets.

Baz Ball may work some of the time but against a top team like Australia, they'll demolish you!
Click to expand...

In my opinion, this England side are more likely to get to 400 adopting an attacking approach than by taking their time.

The approach looks cavalier but it is based on common sense. If you have attacking players, they are more of a threat unshackled.
 
This England attack is tumescent. Just 4 blokes firing it down at military medium. No variation whatsoever. I don't even believe Tongue's speed guns but to be fair, he's done alright and you'd expect the senior bowlers to be carrying most of the responsibility. Not good at all. I get the feeling if England had been batting in these overhead conditions we'd be 290-8.
 
Abraxas said:
This England attack is tumescent. Just 4 blokes firing it down at military medium. No variation whatsoever. I don't even believe Tongue's speed guns but to be fair, he's done alright and you'd expect the senior bowlers to be carrying most of the responsibility. Not good at all. I get the feeling if England had been batting in these overhead conditions we'd be 290-8.
Click to expand...

If you blurred out the bowlers I genuinely don't think you'd be able to tell who is bowling what over.
 
There's still something in this pitch occasionally. That's a bit worrying with this score as I can't see us playing the right balls all the time. We missed a chance for some wickets this morning though with the way the ball was moving.
 
Australia going up a gear here. This could be out of sight by close of play tonight. Woeful bowling and fielding from England.
 
I didn’t think much of Head in his early days but he is a very fun player to watch
 
LDUred said:
In my opinion, this England side are more likely to get to 400 adopting an attacking approach than by taking their time.

The approach looks cavalier but it is based on common sense. If you have attacking players, they are more of a threat unshackled.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The shelf life a lot of England's players is about a 100 balls whether they're going at 100 SR or 50. At the end of the day you need to score runs, and the likes of Crawley, Duckett and Bairstow aren't capable of playing through multiple sessions
 
Skills said:
Exactly. The shelf life a lot of England's players is about a 100 balls whether they're going at 100 SR or 50. At the end of the day you need to score runs, and the likes of Crawley, Duckett and Bairstow aren't capable of playing through multiple sessions
Click to expand...

Agreed, but Root and Stokes can. The former does it the right way, but Stokes best innings are when he plays himself in and goes slow for the first 10 or so overs then speeds up. Overall we're doing the right thing but the timing of the attacks needs a bit of work occasionally. I think that will come though.
 
I’m assuming we have no hope of getting to 80 hours in this light.
 
Balljy said:
Agreed, but Root and Stokes can. The former does it the right way, but Stokes best innings are when he plays himself in and goes slow for the first 10 or so overs then speeds up. Overall we're doing the right thing but the timing of the attacks needs a bit of work occasionally. I think that will come though.
Click to expand...

Yeah stokes' approach at times doesn't make sense. He needs time to settle in even in limited overs games, and then puts the burners on later.

Root has also tended to be a bit over aggressive for the sake of it too, especially considering he's just a fast accumulator anyway.
 
Abraxas said:
This England attack is tumescent. Just 4 blokes firing it down at military medium. No variation whatsoever. I don't even believe Tongue's speed guns but to be fair, he's done alright and you'd expect the senior bowlers to be carrying most of the responsibility. Not good at all. I get the feeling if England had been batting in these overhead conditions we'd be 290-8.
Click to expand...

Would be 190-8
 
Bad day. They happen in cricket. No need to decide we are the worst team to ever play the game.
 
As a die hard England fan it pains me to say it, but I love watching Steven Smith bat. He is what test cricket is all sbout.
 
It's not really the batting in this series, is it?

I'm not saying there's no concerns about the batting whatsoever but the real point is we don't look likely to take 20 wickets on good wickets which equals limited winning chances. We got close last time, but that feels like a best case scenario, this feels like a relatively normal situation with our samey attack not really threatening consistently. We're praying for Australia to make mistakes or really favourable conditions to take wickets with 4 blokes firing it down the same way.

I think we have probably stretched Broad and Anderson a bit far and we probably needed to blood more talent rather than playing both. Albeit we have had some bad luck with injuries. Also the spinner situation is diabolical. You can't not play a spinner at test level. I don't care what the pitch is that's ridiculous. We have completely failed to unearth and then back a spinner. That should have been done preemptively a year or so ago because Leach was never the long term solution anyway and we had perfect situations to find a spinner.

I'm afraid we've made our own problems.
 
whitbyviking said:
They won’t declare until they’re around 500 runs methinks. Which will be lunch tomorrow at this rate.
Click to expand...

Weather is looking very dodgy. Would imagine there’s a good chance of there being large parts of the day wiped out.
 
Utd heap said:
Bad day. They happen in cricket. No need to decide we are the worst team to ever play the game.
Click to expand...

Some of the reactions are as bad as the United match day threads.

The bowling is becoming an issue though, it was in the last test too, Broad and Anderson are on their last legs for sure but we've known that for a while, Tongue has been decent but expensive and Robinson is just very ordinary despite getting a big wicket
 
It's worth noting that Jofra Archer, Olly Stone, and Mark Wood have not been available for selection. In times gone by, Wood has had some good performances against Australia and Archer had a few spells where he hurt Australia. Although not a given, they may have made a difference and provided a little more variety to challenge what are world-level batsmen.

Anderson and Broad haven't bowled that badly or that well but they are in the side because they are fit and available for selection.

I don't know who else aside from the injured/unfit bowlers you could realistically say would do a better job than Broad and Anderson. Maybe Woakes, but he is very much in the mould of the bowlers selected for this test.
 
Last edited:
Where are the English fielders? No one surrounding the bat yet the Aussies are finding the boundary with ease.
 
Gavinb33 said:
Some of the reactions are as bad as the United match day threads.

The bowling is becoming an issue though, it was in the last test too, Broad and Anderson are on their last legs for sure but we've known that for a while, Tongue has been decent but expensive and Robinson is just very ordinary despite getting a big wicket
Click to expand...

Robinson has been class for for 12/18 months but looks miles off it so far in this series. Possibly not fully fit. We also only want to be playing one of Anderson and Broad but are having to play both.

Still a poor bowling effort today though. They are going to get hammered in the media as pundits and oppo have been desperate to have a dig for a while. They gave it plenty of bravado when it was going well so they'll have to take it and react.
 
Gavinb33 said:
Some of the reactions are as bad as the United match day threads.

The bowling is becoming an issue though, it was in the last test too, Broad and Anderson are on their last legs for sure but we've known that for a while, Tongue has been decent but expensive and Robinson is just very ordinary despite getting a big wicket
Click to expand...

I don’t think being honest and realistic is a poor way to react. This performance is awful on every level, especially when you consider they are bowling under seemingly perfect “English conditions”. The worrying thing is the bowling has no variation and as a result the game is running away. The run rate has gone up from 3.7 to nearly 4.3 since I’ve been watching and it’s not levelling off.

This isn’t necessarily reflective of anything bigger than this test, but it is a valid reaction to what we’re seeing.

In terms of future tests it’s hard to see where changes come from, with injuries and the players available, hence the negative forecast.
 
whitbyviking said:
I don’t think being honest and realistic is a poor way to react. This performance is awful on every level, especially when you consider they are bowling under seemingly perfect “English conditions”. The worrying thing is the bowling has no variation and as a result the game is running away. The run rate has gone up from 3.7 to nearly 4.3 since I’ve been watching and it’s not levelling off.

This isn’t necessarily reflective of anything bigger than this test, but it is a valid reaction to what we’re seeing.

In terms of future tests it’s hard to see where changes come from, with injuries and the players available, hence the negative forecast.
Click to expand...

Everyone is ready to slate England for x, y or z but I've seen no one say you know what fairplay we are playing the best side in the world and not The Dog and Duck XI, it's OK for the other team to just be better than you which they are.

We need to play better for sure but even then the likely outcome is still an Aussie win.
 
Hasty decision by the third umpire. Should've told the director to rock and roll it a few more times.
 
Well done Root. I'd be seriously considering integrating Ahmed into the team as soon as we can after this series.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.