comment by Warmonger (U10140)
posted 10 minutes ago
England are home sick at their back yard. Yesterday was surrender is humiliation for any sportsmen
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Can't disagree... unsure what the answer is either...India are a very good side, and we need to step up to that level damned sharpish

This needs to start by actually picking and coaching players that can decide what balls to leave alone, and adopt better technique on those they do play

Credit to Indian, they lost the world test championship but they are only team that are winning consistently a home and overseas. Batting and bowling is world class

Players mental attitude (something that has been very prevalent of late) plays a big part in this too...you have to be in the right frame of mind, and have a will to succeed in these situations...we need to weed out those that lack this

Sibley come to immediate mind

Great win from India. Have been pretty good over the last few years and results are coming now. Consistently winning matches away from home in tough conditions. If middle order clicks in remaining matches, this series is India’s to win.

England fans were throwing bottle corks at Rahul in the field.

No action from the ECB yet.

Bet that would have stoked a few fires in the Indian dressing room.

This England team are seriously bad at test cricket. Needs to be a long term plan put in place to resurrect it and bring young players through. They all want to be Buttler's rather than Trott's these days.

Obviously still congratulations to India on their win but they really should be beating us anyway.

comment by Lefty (U17934)
posted 19 minutes ago
England fans were throwing bottle corks at Rahul in the field.

No action from the ECB yet.

Bet that would have stoked a few fires in the Indian dressing room.


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They should have left the ground immediately to signal their protest

comment by Warmonger (U10140)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Lefty (U17934)
posted 19 minutes ago
England fans were throwing bottle corks at Rahul in the field.

No action from the ECB yet.

Bet that would have stoked a few fires in the Indian dressing room.


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They should have left the ground immediately to signal their protest
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I don't think it warrants walking off the pitch.
ECB does need to address it though.

comment by King of the Gil (U7905)
posted 12 hours, 34 minutes ago
I don't think personnel changes will make a huge difference. You can take out a useless Crawley and replace him with a hopelessly out of his depth Hameed, the result will be the same.

After India batter us, and we lose the Ashes 5-0 we need a root and branch change in philosophy similar to the way we did after the 2015 world cup.

We currently have 2 world class performers, a promising talent in Robinson and a mish mash of white ball players and county cricketers.

The ECB need to change their philosophy to put tests first and at least have some red ball cricket going on during test series so others can stake their claim and join the team with a bit of confidence.

Today we were asking the likes of Moeen, who had been smashing 5 ball overs last week to block out a test match v a world class attack. The system is currently a shambles.
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By currently I assume you mean who are fit but I agree with the majority of your post. Stokes is a big gaping hole in this team that we tried to fill with Curran, Lawrence and Bairstow and then for this test tried to fill with Curran, Moeen and Bairstow.

Broad is also a miss, as much as he can seem like a petulant child when he's bowling, he is known as being quite a decent strategist and it's difficult to know whether he and Stokes would have made a difference with some more leadership on the field yesterday. Perhaps not but we'll never know.

There does need to be a greater focus on red ball cricket but that's not coming any time soon with the introduction of The Hundred. If we lose this series to India and then get battered by the Aussies, I think Silverwood will probably step down (or lose his job). I imagine Root will stay on as captain though if he's continuing to score runs.

Obviously everyone is pretty upset with what happened yesterday and it's very easy to say "drop the lot, none of them are good enough bar Root and Jimmy", I'll admit I felt like that one they quickly mopped things up at the end when it looked like Buttler and Robinson were carrying us to a draw. However there was 3 days of really good cricket by England and I think that's the problem, we can string some good cricket together but too often blow it in a session. As someone said yesterday, usually it's the batsmen putting pressure on the bowlers but yesterday the bowlers put pressure on the batsmen. They still should have coped but yesterday, everyone was culpable.

comment by Neo (U9135)
posted 22 minutes ago
This England team are seriously bad at test cricket. Needs to be a long term plan put in place to resurrect it and bring young players through. They all want to be Buttler's rather than Trott's these days.

Obviously still congratulations to India on their win but they really should be beating us anyway.
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Burns, Sibley and Hameed are defo not trying to be Buttler. The template for the top 3 is there, they just need to score some facking runs.

I don't mind the rest of the players being more attacking on that basis although I do think we're missing a Collingwood type at 6. An old head who can bat with the lower order and maintain calm. Pope seems like the one who the selectors are keen on because he can score heavily in county cricket but he keeps facking his shoulder. He also seems a bit frenetic but then he is so similar to Bell who was equally frenetic as a youngster.

Our batsmen, Root (and to a lesser degree Bairstow) aside, don't have the balance right at the minute. They're not all trying to be Buttler, as TCM says, but the trouble is there's a lot of natural runscorers (see: Buttler himself) who are trying too hard to be dogged, which isn't their natural game and is doubly difficult because of the pressurised match situation they keep finding themselves in due to top-order failures. Either that or they're natural "Trotts" (see: Burns, Sibley, Hameed) who keep getting stuck in ruts, Sibley especially.

And in both situations, the batsmen find themselves struggling to dig themselves out of that rut and keep the scoreboard ticking over. There simply isn't enough ability to release the pressure valve with a dabbed single here and there. It's either full-scale offence or full-scale defence, and very little in between. To me, that smacks of issues in the coaching department, because these are players who are more than capable at ticking over at a healthy strike rate in the 40-60 range, but they go too far in either direction, far too often.

There's an issue with pretty much every bat in the team at the minute.

Burns: questionable technique. Definitely shown he's up to the challenge and once he gets going he tends to stick around, but out for nowt/single figures too often.

Sibley: questionable technique, can't tick over, invites pressure even when he isn't out for nothing. Needs dropping and the chance to work on his game at county level (in 2022 ).

Hameed: mentally clearly has a barrier when it comes to Test cricket. Needs to get a 50 under his belt and hopefully he'll kick on but it could all go horribly wrong if he gets another couple of low scores.

Root: absolutely fine.

Bairstow: looks better technique-wise than recently, able to keep scoring, but still only ever one straight ball away from a stupid and avoidable dismissal. Ultimately not reliable enough for the #5 spot and not high-scoring enough to be a specialist #6 bat.

Buttler: never comes in on a solid platform of runs, and when he's not free to play his shots he gets bogged down VERY easily, especially in his first series after a run of white-ball cricket. Another who can't keep things ticking with dabbed singles.

Moeen: see Bairstow. At least he's OKish with the ball now but he's not good enough in either discipline and can't be relied on to make consistent, major contributions.




Even the replacements have issues:

Crawley: on an absolutely shocking run and looks mentally and technically short of standard.

Pope: can't stay fit and keeps doing a Vince (getting a beautiful 25-odd).

Lawrence: much the same minus the fitness issues.

Stokes: obviously not a "replacement" but still, he isn't available (though when he is, I think the time has come for him to move up to #3 to be honest).

Malan: questionable ability at this level from his previous try. Since then he's become a phenomenal t20 bat... and then hit a shocking run of form in that format as well.

And then there's the likes of Jennings, Vince, Ballance, Roy etc who have been tried and tried again and simply aren't good enough due to gaping technical deficiencies.

There are more youngsters coming through (Tom Lammonby and Rob Yates for the top order, Joe Clarke, Sam Hain and Will Jacks for the middle order although the latter is looking increasingly like a white-ball specialist in the making), but I don't think any of them is ready to face the likes of India at home, let alone Australia away.

Like it or not, we're just in a bad spot for the next year at least.

Forgot about Ben Foakes, who (let's face it) should be playing. But his form has nosedived at the worst possible time too.

comment by Lefty (U17934)
posted 45 minutes ago
comment by Warmonger (U10140)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Lefty (U17934)
posted 19 minutes ago
England fans were throwing bottle corks at Rahul in the field.

No action from the ECB yet.

Bet that would have stoked a few fires in the Indian dressing room.


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They should have left the ground immediately to signal their protest
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't think it warrants walking off the pitch.
ECB does need to address it though.
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Thats what most nations do-respect comes first

comment by Amanda Hugginkiss (U11574)
posted 44 minutes ago
Our batsmen, Root (and to a lesser degree Bairstow) aside, don't have the balance right at the minute. They're not all trying to be Buttler, as TCM says, but the trouble is there's a lot of natural runscorers (see: Buttler himself) who are trying too hard to be dogged, which isn't their natural game and is doubly difficult because of the pressurised match situation they keep finding themselves in due to top-order failures. Either that or they're natural "Trotts" (see: Burns, Sibley, Hameed) who keep getting stuck in ruts, Sibley especially.

And in both situations, the batsmen find themselves struggling to dig themselves out of that rut and keep the scoreboard ticking over. There simply isn't enough ability to release the pressure valve with a dabbed single here and there. It's either full-scale offence or full-scale defence, and very little in between. To me, that smacks of issues in the coaching department, because these are players who are more than capable at ticking over at a healthy strike rate in the 40-60 range, but they go too far in either direction, far too often.
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Couldn't agree more, effectively we need something in between what we had with Bayliss and what we've got now. Silverwood came in and talked about occupying the crease and its clear that's what we are trying to do but the balance needs to be there, literally at the crease and also in how to bat in test cricket.

I've found that the white ball cricket is to blame for our test team failures a bit lazy because we're not seeing loads of wickets fall to rash shots like we saw in the Bayliss era. However I guess perhaps the issue is that players minds are clouded. With ODI more so than T20 which is just slog away, Morgan is very clear, he wants players to go out there, play their natural game, play their shots, if they get out early by playing a rash shot, he will back them because that's what he wants.

Test cricket is obviously far more complex and players need to adapt to the game situation and be able to build and construct their innings accordingly. It feels like too many players aren't playing their way.

I'm interested to see chooshs thoughts on the game.

comment by Snooker_49 (U10665)
posted 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
I'm interested to see chooshs thoughts on the game.
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Fairly modest on his part, no celebratory or derogatory Article on England

comment by Snooker_49 (U10665)
posted 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
I'm interested to see chooshs thoughts on the game.
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You are desperate for amusement...aren't you

Malan and Vince have been mentioned as possible picks for the next Test. Can't say I'm excited about either but what are the alternatives?

comment by Sheriff JW Pepper (U1007)
posted 2 hours, 31 minutes ago
comment by Snooker_49 (U10665)
posted 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
I'm interested to see chooshs thoughts on the game.
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You are desperate for amusement...aren't you
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I am

comment by Blue Heaven (U20912)
posted 1 hour, 1 minute ago
Malan and Vince have been mentioned as possible picks for the next Test. Can't say I'm excited about either but what are the alternatives?
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Roy...but this is still not ideal at all

Would personally go with Malan and Vince over Hameed and Sibley.

I doubt they would make a huge difference, but it's damage limitation at this stage. Those two both have a good amount of international experience and I would back them to get a few thirties, maybe even the odd 50.

That's how low expectations are at the minute. If someone can come in as an opener or 3 and average 30 they are a significant improvement on what we are currently getting.

Imo Burns deserves the series. He's made hundreds against Aus and NZ, and looks pretty good after he gets through the initial overs. I prefer someone to get 0 and 49 than 24 and 25. I feel like he could hit some form and make some important contributions. I can't see Sibley or Hameed making a half century this series.

We need a trescothick Bell Atherton Strauss Cook Trott combo type deal...this current crop are embarrassing

Get Livingstone in the side, in the form of his life

Mention Rory Burns scoring centuries. He as 3 in almost 30 tests.. so thats 1 every ten 10s test.
Massive success. I would get him the end of the series. Move Hammed upto open. No idea who plays 3.
I would get Baristow back at wicketkeepr. so we need a number 3 and number 5