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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 17, 2017 20:48:22 GMT
Good god their bowling attack is pedestrian. Good batsmen will feast on that dreck - I'm sure I heard from here Boycott talking about his mum playing that bowling in a pinny with a stick of rhubarb. What happened to their cricket?
But... Good batting from Root and Cook to just take the game away. I'm not sure the pink ball works on TV and the TMS commentators were complaining it was hard to spot. Surely an orange ball would work better?
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Post by saddletramp on Aug 18, 2017 7:32:57 GMT
It's also good that the batting line up is more right and left hand balanced. Should make the opening bowlers work that little bit harder for the wickets ? Both Stoneman and Malan are left handers. So both openers are lefties. Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Stokes, Ali, Broad, Anderson. 7-4 in favour of lefties is not balanced in my view,far to many. Its no coincidence IMO that the biggest scorers in recent years have been Bairstow and Root,both Right handers. With the exception (and a big one) of Cook,have we had another big scoring leftie since Gower ?
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 18, 2017 7:35:34 GMT
It's also good that the batting line up is more right and left hand balanced. Should make the opening bowlers work that little bit harder for the wickets ? Both Stoneman and Malan are left handers. So both openers are lefties. Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Stokes, Ali, Broad, Anderson. 7-4 in favour of lefties is not balanced in my view,far to many. Its no coincidence IMO that the biggest scorers in recent years have been Bairstow and Root,both Right handers. With the exception (and a big one) of Cook,have we had another big scoring leftie since Gower ? Graham Thorpe? Andrew Strauss?
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Post by makv on Aug 18, 2017 9:34:13 GMT
? Both Stoneman and Malan are left handers. So both openers are lefties. Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Stokes, Ali, Broad, Anderson. 7-4 in favour of lefties is not balanced in my view,far to many. Its no coincidence IMO that the biggest scorers in recent years have been Bairstow and Root,both Right handers. With the exception (and a big one) of Cook,have we had another big scoring leftie since Gower ? Graham Thorpe? Andrew Strauss? Trescothick?
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Post by foley on Aug 18, 2017 10:22:00 GMT
It's also good that the batting line up is more right and left hand balanced. Should make the opening bowlers work that little bit harder for the wickets ? Both Stoneman and Malan are left handers. So both openers are lefties. Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Stokes, Ali, Broad, Anderson. 7-4 in favour of lefties is not balanced in my view,far to many. Its no coincidence IMO that the biggest scorers in recent years have been Bairstow and Root,both Right handers. With the exception (and a big one) of Cook,have we had another big scoring leftie since Gower ? Moeen and Stokes have scored a fair few (especially where they have been batting)
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Post by flean on Aug 18, 2017 10:23:51 GMT
Graham Thorpe!
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 18, 2017 12:12:29 GMT
Ben Stokes has had 2 (I think) double hundreds in the past couple of years
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Post by gingerox on Aug 18, 2017 16:57:26 GMT
Ben Stokes has had 2 (I think) double hundreds in the past couple of years Cursed it!
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 18, 2017 20:57:42 GMT
Ben Stokes has had 2 (I think) double hundreds in the past couple of years Cursed it! Did I curse Moeen as well?
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 18, 2017 21:07:42 GMT
England scored 514 and did not hit a single 6. Must be a record
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Post by gingerox on Aug 18, 2017 21:15:26 GMT
Did I curse Moeen as well? Stokes also dropped a catch for the first time ever...
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 18, 2017 21:42:38 GMT
Nah, pretty sure he did that in the SA series.
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Post by ZeroTheHero on Aug 19, 2017 11:57:53 GMT
Really not sure about the day/night thing in English conditions. Although the pink ball hasn't misbehaved as many predicted, the extended twilight gives a difficult period to bat every day and quite a few of the crowd seem to go home before the end anyway! Also I'm not convinced that many people will go along after work - that's an expensive three hours cricket. So you'd have to take the afternoon off and be able to get there by 2pm.
At the moment it looks like not much more than a novelty, but then as far as test cricket is concerned I'm a bit of a old traditionalist so I may be biased!
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Post by saddletramp on Aug 19, 2017 12:44:34 GMT
? Both Stoneman and Malan are left handers. So both openers are lefties. Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Stokes, Ali, Broad, Anderson. 7-4 in favour of lefties is not balanced in my view,far to many. Its no coincidence IMO that the biggest scorers in recent years have been Bairstow and Root,both Right handers. With the exception (and a big one) of Cook,have we had another big scoring leftie since Gower ? Graham Thorpe? Andrew Strauss? Exactly,David Gower was Englands 479th capped player,Mark Stoneman is 680,so out of 201 cricketers since Gower you come up with TWO decent left handers,(Trescothick as mentioned by someone else is another) Don't get me wrong,its essential to have left handers in the team so you can rotate the strike,but 7 is way to many especially in Oz. P.S. My comment was aimed at your post about the team having more balance now regarding R/H,L/H batters. The 2 players who came in,Stoneman and Malan are left handers,replacing Jennings and Balance,also left handers,so we had a 7-4 split at the start of the summer and we have a 7-4 split now. Not balanced IMO.
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Post by SteMerritt on Aug 19, 2017 12:53:59 GMT
Not English, but Lara, Clive Lloyd, Sobers and Allan Border could all hold a bat despite their left-handedness. Wasn't Pollock a leftie as well?
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 19, 2017 12:54:18 GMT
The line up has more variance. We had Root and Bairstow at 4 and 5 earlier in the summer and a whole bunch of lefties.
Anyway, not sure what the point of day night test cricket is when test grounds over here are usually sold out, or near capacity. Unless you use the old Olympic stadium and get a big capacity, it feels redundant other than as a spectacle
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Post by SteMerritt on Aug 19, 2017 13:03:46 GMT
The line up has more variance. We had Root and Bairstow at 4 and 5 earlier in the summer and a whole bunch of lefties. Anyway, not sure what the point of day night test cricket is when test grounds over here are usually sold out, or near capacity. Unless you use the old Olympic stadium and get a big capacity, it feels redundant other than as a spectacle Agree with you about day/night tests over here, but I think this one was just because of the day/night test in the ashes this winter, we didn't want our first experience of it to be in Australia.
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 19, 2017 15:15:14 GMT
The line up has more variance. We had Root and Bairstow at 4 and 5 earlier in the summer and a whole bunch of lefties. Anyway, not sure what the point of day night test cricket is when test grounds over here are usually sold out, or near capacity. Unless you use the old Olympic stadium and get a big capacity, it feels redundant other than as a spectacle Agree with you about day/night tests over here, but I think this one was just because of the day/night test in the ashes this winter, we didn't want our first experience of it to be in Australia. Good point. The Champions Trophy rather messed the schedule around as late May would be a better time to do it. It's not like India or Oz where the sun goes down quickly. The Windies batting is terrible. Infact, the team are terrible. Which is very sad indeed.
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 19, 2017 20:33:38 GMT
The West Indies are just dire, even more dire than we were for large part of the 90s. Such a shame that a once great cricket nation is such an embarassment
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Post by nige01ox on Aug 19, 2017 22:55:37 GMT
Went on Thursday for day 1. First time at a test match, really enjoyed it despite the poor opposition. Was sat in the Hollies Stand and got pretty noisy in the last session. To me it's played out pretty much exactly as a red ball match would've done, just everything pushed back a few hours. Don't think there's any real need for day/night tests to become a thing over here, but at least the boys have a bit of experience of one ahead of the Ashes.
As for West Indies, I don't think they'd have surpassed our total even if they batted a third time.
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Post by Best Mate on Aug 20, 2017 9:15:00 GMT
We bat deep but I am still concerned that 3 of our top 6 have question marks before a very important tour.
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Post by Best Mate on Aug 20, 2017 12:28:44 GMT
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/6uqlfb/a_beachball_was_confiscated_during_a_cricket_game/
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Post by Bue Guado on Aug 21, 2017 8:41:47 GMT
While delighted with Broad and Anderson's efficiency yesterday, I now struggle to watch them without a newfound sense of disappointment: Up-and-coming Sussex left arm quick bowler George Garton (who I happen to know through my old man and his dear mother having been...acquaintances...a few years back) recently spent some time training with the senior England set up after impressing with the England Lions and the U-19s. While he said the whole squad had been extremely welcoming and willing to offer him plenty of advice, by all accounts not only were our two top speed bowlers not as welcoming, but they were actually distinctly cold towards him. While he may feasibly, some day, rise to the position where he takes their spot in the squad, surely this treatment is far from sportsmanly, particularly from England's all-time-leading wicket-taker, and from an MBE? In what is generally considered a gentleman's sport, this sort of behaviour seems pretty unfitting. In football you always hear about younger strikers coming into the England fold being taken under the senior strikers' wings, but evidently this isn't the case at all with the fast bowlers in the cricket. Disappointing
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 21, 2017 12:06:39 GMT
Anderson and Broad have a bit of reputation for being major dicks at times. Broad more so than Anderson
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Post by cj on Aug 25, 2017 10:21:41 GMT
Batting first, England!
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Post by andystroud on Aug 25, 2017 11:46:12 GMT
Another poor start. Perhaps Root needs to move to number three, to give any new players a bit of protection. We won't get away with depending on the middle order against the Aussies.
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 25, 2017 12:22:57 GMT
We didn't see the first hour off and paid for it. But the dropping of Root could be a big one
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Post by Junior on Aug 25, 2017 12:23:55 GMT
First time I've seen Stoneman bat and I don't think he will last at test level. His technique looked very poor. Always seemed late on the ball with anything above 85mph. What's he going to be like in Aus on auick pitches in lads pinging it down at over 90mph
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Post by Gary Baldi on Aug 25, 2017 14:55:53 GMT
A poor middle session from England. Some good bowling and like the test against SA after we won easily, the minds of the players seem elsewhere. Will struggle to get 250 at this rate on a good batting pitch
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Post by tonyw on Aug 25, 2017 15:26:14 GMT
Given the strength of our lower order (and the mediocreness of the Windies attack), we could still get 300 here.
But the worries over our top order are only getting worse. Going to Australia with holes at 2,3 & 5 is going to be a nightmare.
Too late to find anyone new now though - some of these guys who we've tried and have struggled (Jennings, Stoneman, Westley, Malan, Ballance, Hameed) are going to have to step up and play out of their skins if we're to have a chance down under.
Slightly worrying times.....although we have generally been spoiled by the quality of the England test team for much of the past decade and a half.
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