English cricket thread

I think England's fault has been in how tentative they've been in this test. One of the advantages of Bazball was that you could put pressure on the bowlers even on bowler friendly wickets but not only are they just adding pressure on themselves by not playing aggressively but also playing a way that doesn't suit their strengths (Duckett and Crawley).

Would be interesting to see what the tactics are tomorrow, I would suspect Stokes should tell Brook to be confident in himself and play aggressively. One thing to credit the Pakistani bowlers is that they've been really good in their line and lengths, meaning it's not easy for England to work them for singles/doubles and build some confidence from there. England would have to hit themselves out of this pressure rather than try to work singles.

Going to be a fantastic day tomorrow though.

groovyalbert said:
What do you think makes a game from here? Unless the pitch just explodes into life, England need 250 lead. We also don't have spinners that instil anxiety like Pakistan.
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You don't need to instil anxiety, we'll make ourselves anxious. I did some stats a while back and Pakistan are, as I thought, worse at chasing between 100-200 than over 300.
 
groovyalbert said:
What do you think makes a game from here? Unless the pitch just explodes into life, England need 250 lead. We also don't have spinners that instil anxiety like Pakistan.
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Yep it's more our bowling that leads me to think we are toast. Pakistan would get nervous at 200.

I think we will set 140.
 
Pope needs to go back the county game. Averaging 21 in his last 6 tests, and that is massively skewed by a single excellent centuries against Sri Lanka. One score every 12 innings isn’t enough, the averages aren’t enough and he’s not seeing off enough balls.
 
Utd heap said:
Yep it's more our bowling that leads me to think we are toast. Pakistan would get nervous at 200.

I think we will set 140.
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Pakistan will chase down 140 but 200? It's England's game. Not that Pakistan are chasing anywhere near that score.
 
I have done enough moaning for a week but Bazball was always high risk cricket but the hope was that with time they will kind of nail the balance between common sense & madness but unfortunately that just hasn't happened. England still are so bad in the first innings with a casual attitude rather than grinding which is very frustrating
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
I have done enough moaning for a week but Bazball was always high risk cricket but the hope was that with time they will kind of nail the balance between common sense & madness but unfortunately that just hasn't happened. England still are so bad in the first innings with a casual attitude rather than grinding which is very frustrating
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Fully agree with you. No balance whatsoever.
 
TheGame said:
Huge captaincy errors today from Stokes, persisted with Leach and Bashir when he needed to bring on Rehan and Atkinson.
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Bowling to the tail is a weakness, he gets a bit too funky and tries to basically bowl to one batter (the tailender). I sense had he had Mark Wood available though he might have turned to him earlier.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
I have done enough moaning for a week but Bazball was always high risk cricket but the hope was that with time they will kind of nail the balance between common sense & madness but unfortunately that just hasn't happened. England still are so bad in the first innings with a casual attitude rather than grinding which is very frustrating
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Steady accumulation and timing when to push the tempo, it seems only Root and Smith are capable of doing this.
 
There’s quite a few questions brewing for England long term here.

Pope and Crawley in the top 3 doesn’t work for me, it’s one or the other. Two inconsistent guys like that in your top 3 is hard to build on. I still think Root should have a look at batting higher up and I’d be tempted to have Smith as a 3 long term but it’s probably too early for that. I wonder if between Cox, James Rew and Ollie Robinson England could go another way with the gloves, improve the batting unit and invest in Smith long term as a specialist bat.

Stokes in Asia is crap, it’s like having another tailender in the team but they won’t bowl. By the time they tour in the subcontinent again he might have retired, if he hasn’t they should consider the team composition without him anyway (even if he’s captain!). His general record with the bat as captain hasn’t been good either and I’m starting to worry he’s declining with the bat and if he can’t bowl, it will start to get hard to justify his spot in the team.

I think England need a reckoning with how they play spin, between India last winter, the ODI World Cup and the last 2 tests here it’s clear their method isn’t good enough. Sure the rest of the world is relatively bad at it too now but England might be amongst the worst. If they want long term success vs spin they have to use their feet more and get used to steady accumulation. You can’t bash your way out of everything!

Finally, England also need a reckoning with how they develop spinners. Rehan Ahmed just isn’t going to turn into a world class spinner bowling for Leicestershire and Bashir won’t even play for Somerset, they both develop more actually playing for England. This might work out for this regime because they create a great environment to develop players but long term this is not a sustainable way to develop spinners.

The entire attitude within England to spin is just broken really. How they bat against it, how they react to spinning pitches, the type of spinners they select, how they captain them, the lines they’re encouraged to bowl. We need a complete shift of mentality. It’s also frustrating to me that winning in say India doesn’t seem to get the same level of motivation and planning that winning in Australia does.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
I have done enough moaning for a week but Bazball was always high risk cricket but the hope was that with time they will kind of nail the balance between common sense & madness but unfortunately that just hasn't happened. England still are so bad in the first innings with a casual attitude rather than grinding which is very frustrating
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If we're talking Bazball, think we need to distinguish between ex-Asia (where our record is excellent) and in Asia (where we're about to lose a second series out of three).

The biggest issue, for me, is that our spinners just get out-bowled consistently. Leach has been a fine servant for England but this should be his last test.

Tbh though, the problem will most likely fix itself. We've got two absolute gems in Rehan and Bashir and by the time of our next Asian tour, they'll have a bagful of caps to fall back on.
 
ArmchairCritic said:
There’s quite a few questions brewing for England long term here.

Pope and Crawley in the top 3 doesn’t work for me, it’s one or the other. Two inconsistent guys like that in your top 3 is hard to build on. I still think Root should have a look at batting higher up and I’d be tempted to have Smith as a 3 long term but it’s probably too early for that. I wonder if between Cox, James Rew and Ollie Robinson England could go another way with the gloves, improve the batting unit and invest in Smith long term as a specialist bat.

Stokes in Asia is crap, it’s like having another tailender in the team but they won’t bowl. By the time they tour in the subcontinent again he might have retired, if he hasn’t they should consider the team composition without him anyway (even if he’s captain!). His general record with the bat as captain hasn’t been good either and I’m starting to worry he’s declining with the bat and if he can’t bowl, it will start to get hard to justify his spot in the team.

I think England need a reckoning with how they play spin, between India last winter, the ODI World Cup and the last 2 tests here it’s clear their method isn’t good enough. Sure the rest of the world is relatively bad at it too now but England might be amongst the worst. If they want long term success vs spin they have to use their feet more and get used to steady accumulation. You can’t bash your way out of everything!

Finally, England also need a reckoning with how they develop spinners. Rehan Ahmed just isn’t going to turn into a world class spinner bowling for Leicestershire and Bashir won’t even play for Somerset, they both develop more actually playing for England. This might work out for this regime because they create a great environment to develop players but long term this is not a sustainable way to develop spinners.

The entire attitude within England to spin is just broken really. How they bat against it, how they react to spinning pitches, the type of spinners they select, how they captain them, the lines they’re encouraged to bowl. We need a complete shift of mentality. It’s also frustrating to me that winning in say India doesn’t seem to get the same level of motivation and planning that winning in Australia does.
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As a Lancs fan I'd be more than happy if Rehan or Bashir came to us!

I'm sure this tour will spark a proper, serious conversation about how we both face and bowl spin. The kookaburra should help, for a start.
 
JohnnyKills said:
As a Lancs fan I'd be more than happy if Rehan or Bashir came to us!

I'm sure this tour will spark a proper, serious conversation about how we both face and bowl spin. The kookaburra should help, for a start.
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My fear is it will be ignored because everyone’s thinking about the Ashes.
 
Bashir is really the perfect example of how different the game is at test level. He's generally done pretty well for England but is basically no threat at all when playing domestically. It can't just be a Somerset thing because even when he went on loan he struggled. On spinning pitches for the last couple of games of the season he was comfortably out-bowled by Archie Vaughan, different format but he couldn't even get into the 50-over side when they had 10+ players missing. He's still very inexperienced at county level so I'm sure with time he'll be successful there too but it's understandable in a results business that he might find it difficult to get enough playing time when he's not offering enough.
 
IRN-BRUno said:
Bashir is really the perfect example of how different the game is at test level. He's generally done pretty well for England but is basically no threat at all when playing domestically. It can't just be a Somerset thing because even when he went on loan he struggled. On spinning pitches for the last couple of games of the season he was comfortably out-bowled by Archie Vaughan, different format but he couldn't even get into the 50-over side when they had 10+ players missing. He's still very inexperienced at county level so I'm sure with time he'll be successful there too but it's understandable in a results business that he might find it difficult to get enough playing time when he's not offering enough.
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It’s a bit mad isn’t it, he can somehow produce better results at a higher level because of what? Captaincy, man management, coaching? What is it?

If he was dropped for England and it wasn’t Leach who replaced him, I’m convinced he’d fall out of county cricket within a few years. That margin of error for development is crap.
 
41 of Bashir’s 57 first class wickets are in tests and 22 of Rehan’s 52 first class wickets are in tests.

What happens to Rehan when England aren’t in the sub continent for the next 2 years?
 
They had the template on how to bat on this wicket. They saw Saud Shakeel bat for 70 overs but still didn't learn.
 
ArmchairCritic said:
41 of Bashir’s 57 first class wickets are in tests and 22 of Rehan’s 52 first class wickets are in tests.

What happens to Rehan when England aren’t in the sub continent for the next 2 years?
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Rehan bats as well, so you'd imagine he'd get a place in the top six in most county sides. As I say, I'd love to see him at OT and the pitches would suit him.

There is a wider point here though: given the ECB subsidises the counties, why the feck can't it insist on which players play and which don't?
 
Absolute masterclass from the Pakistani spinners, have made both the England batters & the spinners look like complete amateurs
 
Carbon copy of the Ranchi test against India where opposition was 170/7 and from that moment England just got completely embarrassed
 
This has been the worst test match under the Stokes/McCullum era. Zero positives bar the Smith counter attack.
 
JohnnyKills said:
If we're talking Bazball, think we need to distinguish between ex-Asia (where our record is excellent) and in Asia (where we're about to lose a second series out of three).

The biggest issue, for me, is that our spinners just get out-bowled consistently. Leach has been a fine servant for England but this should be his last test.

Tbh though, the problem will most likely fix itself. We've got two absolute gems in Rehan and Bashir and by the time of our next Asian tour, they'll have a bagful of caps to fall back on.
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To be fair in this match, the bowlers have done largely ok apart from the Pakistan tail scoring yesterday. The batsmen however and their ability to play spin has been dire.
 
TheGame said:
To be fair in this match, the bowlers have done largely ok apart from the Pakistan tail scoring yesterday. The batsmen however and their ability to play spin has been dire.
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You can look at it both ways right? Either their bowlers outperformed our bowlers or their batters outperformed our batters.

You could argue that it was our bowlers who lost the game by conceding 340 on a really helpful pitch. Certainly, our batters have more credit in the bank (although some are running out pretty quickly!)
 
JohnnyKills said:
You can look at it both ways right? Either their bowlers outperformed our bowlers or their batters outperformed our batters.

You could argue that it was our bowlers who lost the game by conceding 340 on a really helpful pitch. Certainly, our batters have more credit in the bank (although some are running out pretty quickly!)
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Yeah you could but the top 6 were woeful with the bat in the first innings. Only Smith and Atkinson got them out of trouble and once again they were woeful again. The selection of bowlers from Stokes when Pakistan were 7 down was also an issue. Atkinson and Rehan should have been on sooner.
 
TheGame said:
Yeah you could but the top 6 were woeful with the bat in the first innings. Only Smith and Atkinson got them out of trouble and once again they were woeful again. The selection of bowlers from Stokes when Pakistan were 7 down was also an issue. Atkinson and Rehan should have been on sooner.
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Agree. Rehan should have opened the bowling after lunch.

As mentioned earlier, this should be Leach's last test. He's had a great career but just a bit short of top quality. Rehan and Bashir have incredible potential and we should stick with them going forward, along with Hartley.

Crawley has earned a bit of time and patience (and tbh I don't think there's anyone better for the role we want him to perform) and I'd stick with Pope too. Smith looks great at 7, so let's keep him there.
 
ArmchairCritic said:
It’s a bit mad isn’t it, he can somehow produce better results at a higher level because of what? Captaincy, man management, coaching? What is it?

If he was dropped for England and it wasn’t Leach who replaced him, I’m convinced he’d fall out of county cricket within a few years. That margin of error for development is crap.
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It's not quite such an extreme difference but you can also look at the likes of Atkinson and Carse who have come in and immediately looked better than they do at county level.

But when it comes to spin, clearly something needs to be done to develop both the bowling and also the playing of it. There's a bit of a gap now but overall England play a lot in these conditions and it's clear to see for the opposition what they need to do so they'll be preparing a lot more pitches like this in future. It would probably be too costly and difficult with the amount of franchise stuff played but they need to take a Lions side of the most talented players away to Asia every year for a month where they can play 3 or 4 games. Give them the opportunity to learn in preparation rather than on the job.
 
IRN-BRUno said:
It's not quite such an extreme difference but you can also look at the likes of Atkinson and Carse who have come in and immediately looked better than they do at county level.

But when it comes to spin, clearly something needs to be done to develop both the bowling and also the playing of it. There's a bit of a gap now but overall England play a lot in these conditions and it's clear to see for the opposition what they need to do so they'll be preparing a lot more pitches like this in future. It would probably be too costly and difficult with the amount of franchise stuff played but they need to take a Lions side of the most talented players away to Asia every year for a month where they can play 3 or 4 games. Give them the opportunity to learn in preparation rather than on the job.
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Scyld Berry suggested delaying the second new ball until 110 overs. I'd go further and scrap it altogether
 
JohnnyKills said:
Rehan bats as well, so you'd imagine he'd get a place in the top six in most county sides. As I say, I'd love to see him at OT and the pitches would suit him.

There is a wider point here though: given the ECB subsidises the counties, why the feck can't it insist on which players play and which don't?
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With Rehan he’s justifying selection as a bat so it’s like his bowling already isn’t a priority. This is the trap every half decent young spinner will fall into, teams will rather select guys who can bat and bowl spin a little rather than their most talented spinner. Teams are also penalised for creating turning decks and with the way the schedule is done, spinners only really seem to come into the game with Kookaburra or at the back end of the season when pitches are dry.

In recent years the handling of Parkinson, Virdi, Hartley (I know he was injured though) and Bashir has disappointed me to varying degrees. I understand counties prioritise themselves and their results, after all the reward for developing a top player is they don’t play for you anymore but I think the system is a little broken if this is the attitude we have. There’s no actual jeopardy for the counties after all they will always be in the system and if they do develop top players the benefit is other young players will clamour to join them so they can develop too.

With Bashir and Rehan getting hot shotted into the test side and Farhan playing for the Lions already, I think it’s pretty clear the top guys in English cricket don’t believe in County Cricket as a pathway for spin bowlers. They’re ready to fast track and just develop the spinners themselves, this is pretty risky though.
 
JohnnyKills said:
Scyld Berry suggested delaying the second new ball until 110 overs. I'd go further and scrap it altogether
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You can try and tweak the rules and everything but ultimately you can't replicate these conditions, the only way is to play in them against good opposition. Noman and Sajid aren't top class bowlers, the latter played a handful of games for Somerset a couple of years ago and he was absolutely awful but at home they know what they're doing. Batters have to come up against that sort of quality to learn properly, same goes for the young spinners. Bowling at county level against players who generally don't play spin well isn't enough to prepare you for the step up.
 
NZ series is time to experiment with the batting line up and trying a new number three is optimum.

Pope is way too fragile for an Ashes series down under.

Not sure who comes in but Pope just does not inspire any sort of confidence.
 
Also as a general note, playing of spin has declined globally I think. It’s not just England, although England seem to be the worst of the lot, sometimes.
 
IRN-BRUno said:
It's not quite such an extreme difference but you can also look at the likes of Atkinson and Carse who have come in and immediately looked better than they do at county level.

But when it comes to spin, clearly something needs to be done to develop both the bowling and also the playing of it. There's a bit of a gap now but overall England play a lot in these conditions and it's clear to see for the opposition what they need to do so they'll be preparing a lot more pitches like this in future. It would probably be too costly and difficult with the amount of franchise stuff played but they need to take a Lions side of the most talented players away to Asia every year for a month where they can play 3 or 4 games. Give them the opportunity to learn in preparation rather than on the job.
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Rehan has to play every single ODI and T20I tour on spinning decks too, missed opportunity to not have him in India for the World Cup and he needs to be playing with Rashid as much as possible.
 
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