Decisions, Decisions

You can't be serious shanky? Dropping Swann would be absolute madness.

Hes played on two pitches that offered very little. On one he was injured and hardly required, on the other he did a fantastic job of holding up an end on a pretty slow and unresponsive deck, which allowed the quicks to toil away at the other end and build pressure in effective partnerships.

You can't ask any of our seamers to bowl 30/25 or even 20 overs in a spell if the pitch is flat or one of their batsmen gets set.

It's ridiculous, borderline stupid to assume that we can select 4 seamers and continue to destroy India for <300 scores.

I've seen him look like a batting rabbit more often than he's looked good, he's no all rounder yet.
The fact that Stewart, Hussain, Gooch and maybe Flower, all ex Essex players, admire him, is not surprising but a worry.
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stewart played for surrey, not essex.

i agree about bresnan's batting though. he has 10% the batting talent of broad. what the bejayzuz strauss is doing putting bresnan before broad in the order god only knows.

someone on here stated earlier in the thread that the key question is whether swann would take more wickets than tremlett. i think the key question is whether india would be more likely to score more runs with swann in the team than not. if we roll 3 or 4 out early again then swann isnt likely to be needed. however, if the indian top order get in then we need swann to bowl with the old ball and to tie them down. as i have said before, it is very dangerous to assume that we are always going to bowl india out for 250.

These Southener's all look the same to me.

"i agree about bresnan's batting though. he has 10% the batting talent of broad."

Yet has a higher FC and test match batting average?

fair point.

i cant ever see bresnan dominating good quality test bowling though or being able to withstand world class bowling. broad on the other hand appears to have the ability to do both of these things.

Broad was an opening batsmen as a junior and when he concentrates and moves his feet you can see he has a decent technique.
However he too often doesn't concentrate and move his feet.

Broad's certainly more elegant thn Bresnan.

You may be right.
Broad may be the more talented batsman, but I reckon Bresnan is more consistent.

Assuming Trott, Tremlett and Swann are all fit, I'd bring Tremlett back at the expense of Morgan, who to me is really struggling with the step up from limited overs to test cricket.

His movement as the bowler approaches his delivery stride is now so over-exagerated that if he goes any further his head will actually get between his knees! He badly needs to return to county cricket and re-discover his technique.

With that side we'd still have
6. Prior
7. Broad
8. Bresnan
9. Swann

Which is as good a lower order as any team playing today.

If Trott isn't fit Morgan is repreived and Bell continues at 3.

For me Broad always bats ahead of Bresnan for the following reasons:
* He has the better technique, so therefore more likely to play a longer innings.
* IMHO he is more likely to make runs when the chips are down.
* If we want him to develop into a genuine all-rounder in the Botham / Flintoff mold, then we're going to have to start giving him the platform to develop his batting and play an innings. Would Botham & Flintoff have the records thay do have if they had never come in higher than 9?

agree with all of that wideboy.