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Two all-rounders in the side? Combined match figures:
84 overs, 4 for 251.
40 runs in 4 complete innings.
Curran's had a 'mare. Moeen's bowled alright, Root's drop at slip was poor this morning, but overall has he justified a place ahead of Leach? Not really.
You'd have to look to Pakistan. Waqar, Aaqib Javed, Imran, Mohammed Asif... inswing was their stock swinging delivery. Asif was the best at bowling both types. What a career he should have had.
The return to popularity for in-swing is interesting. It really was out of favour for quite some time. I would put it down to DRS. Inswing increases the chances of hitting the pads, umpires are more likely to give out people on the front foot than 20 years ago, and you've got a chance with a referral.
If there is/was one think wrong then you can look at that and adjust as required - But so many thinks wrong you can't see a quick fix, based on options available and time available
The whole team/squad selection has not made sense for a while - Ali not required, so bring in Leach + Bess into the squad - Neither played this summer , so without doing anything wrong, both are pushed back to allow Ali to come back - Last summer Crawley was the new hope and without much chance to play red ball cricket this summer, he is now dropped, for an opener to come in at 3 - Can go on, but nothing is logical - No quick fix with 3 tests left then the big tour
I didn't forget. I just don't think we had three good days.
Day 1 - India take it (276/3).
Day 2 - honours even. We bowled them out for lower than expected, they've got us three down for
Day 3 - England take the credit for the lead but I'd say it's a monumental individual performance that covers over another poor team performance on a day when batting was at its easiest all Test. This is why that Bumrah over to Anderson matters. It gave India something to spark about at the end of a long day.
Day 4 - at the end of the day with India 186 for 6, you'd say England have won but the pitch has changed. The turn is there, the bounce is a bit more up and down. Credit to Rahane and Pujara for grinding it out. Pretty much honours even.
Day 5 - we've had a near-perfect start and we've given away that advantage. We then get blown away by a fantastic pace attack. Chap on Sky was saying India have found a superstar: nah. They found him some time ago. He looked the part in Australia and this is just continuing on from that.
We failed today because we were outpsyched by that Bumrah over and we've been dismissed and swing and seam, the very approach we gave up on this morning.
Fixt these issues and we might win the next test.
Try something and if it comes off then more of a fluke rather than progress - Someone might come in and score a double hundred like Crawley did against Pakistan and we think alleluia - Yet 3/4/5 matches later they are dumped
No consistency from the selectors down and the batsman up
The cynic in me agrees and it also says it's not cynical. This has been the plan for some time, to reduce the counties.
Even if that is the plan, then introduce a franchise based T20 tournament, rather than this abomination that does away with fundamentals of the game like overs.
Give the selectors some credit. they haven't gone for the in and out selections that us oldies can remember from the 80s (that bloody awful 1989 Ashes comes to mind). Crawley's had 15 Tests since November 2019, Sibley's played 22 Tests since November 2019, Burns has had 27 since November 2018. Lawrence has been in and out for a number of reasons (team balance and some indifferent form), Pope's had injury problems and would have played more without them.
So the top three have had chances and they have been backed prior to the Test just completed. There's not a single batsman out there who can say that they've been dropped whilst performing well. Bit of a different situation for both sides when you consider that the top 3 wicket takers from the winter series are all on the sidelines (Ashwin, Patel, Leach) and may not feature all series.
If we're genuinely going to change tactics, then we start by picking more experienced batsmen. We've thrown the kids in, most have had chances, they haven't worked. We dropped Joe Denly for scoring too slowly and not progressing as well as we wanted and replaced him with younger people who average less than Denly and occupy the crease less than Denly did. As I noted earlier in the week, we seem to be happy to debut bowlers later in life: why are we in a fixation with young blood batsmen?
basically: it's time to give James Hildreth the international chance he deserves
I'm going for Jack Brooks and Rushworth to open. The headband cometh!
I'd pick him for sentimentality reasons and because why not (sic). The first side I drafted out for the next Test was actually quite balanced but then I started getting silly and fell upon picking oldies for the hell of it. Stuckfast brought that plan back to mind!
Young player development is shot. It beggars belief that you can have a guy like Devon Conway come into NZ colours in all formats and play for Somerset and be a huge success and yet you'd get folk in this country who would say that we shouldn't be picking new players of his age.
Bringing Malan back has been touted and I'd support it. The figures don't support it. It's very close to dropping Sibley and replacing him with a guy whose figures are actually worse. That's not meant as a slight of Malan as I think he's been horribly mismanaged.
One aspect that has changed: a number of players in the Fletcher era came into the international side via ODI cricket first. Tresco, Strauss, KP, Collingwood would be obvious examples of players who went this route. Fletcher in some cases treated the ODI side as a 2nd XI: perform in 50 overs, you'd get a chance at Test cricket. For someone like Malan, this would have been a good route to take but his opportunities at ODI level have been very limited. He has taken it at T20 level but the jump from twenty over slap to Test cricket is a large one. Graeme Swann also played ODI cricket before he made his Test debut.
You look at all the young 'uns: Crawley, Sibley. Hameed, Lawrence, Ollie Pope as well. Crawley's the only one to have played ODI cricket, a grand total of 3 games. Cumulatively those five have 66 Tests between them. think of other people tried and dumped: Lyth, Stoneman, Sam Robson: all played Tests, none played ODI games. So when people say that the jump from county cricket to Test cricket is a bigger one now than in the past, I'd be inclined to agree with them because we used ODI cricket as a stepping stone in a number of cases.
I fully accept that some players just make it without needing the step (Cook, Bell, Root as examples of Test first, ODI second). But I do think the pathway to Tests has changed since 2005 and that's another aspect as to why the young players are finding it harder.
EDIT: Have a gander at the Indian team as well. Those who played T20 or ODI before they played Tests.
Rohit Sharma, Kohli, Shami, Siraj, Bumrah, Pant, Jadeja, Rahane.
Tests first before other forms: Pujara, Rahul, Ishant Sharma.
In the case of Siraj, he played T20s in 2017, a lone ODI in 2019 in Australia... when he comes to his Test debut in December 2020 in Australia, he's not an outright rookie.
For England, those who played ODI or T20 cricket before Tests:
Anderson, Buttler, Moeen, Wood, Bairstow.
Tests first: Burns, Sibley, Hameed, Root, Robinson, Curran.
Rushy's putting his hand up and absolute yes for Fletch.
For most/all July/Aug they will have had no chance to play a 4 day red ball game - The whole program needs attention if we want to produce a test team as well as one day teams
If you play a lot of games early season and late season, then you'll end up on wickets predominantly helping seamers and not spinners that also don't have a lot of pace and bounce. if you play on those wickets then average bowlers can succeed and the top bowlers aren't needed. You then end up on a shirtfront batting track (rare this year with the weather: quite mad to think that the driest wickets I've seen have all been league wickets in bloody April) and your batsmen who have grown up and developed on April-September seamers can't play a long innings because they're not used to it, they can't face the spinners in the second innings because they're not used to it, and the young bowlers used to darting the ball about on greentops find it hard to cope with a tougher wicket and their development stalls.
Compare that to the Indians who have grown up with wickets where you can bat all day. The batsmen learn how to play the long innings from a physical and mental standpoint. The bowlers have to learn other tricks like the wobble seam, reverse swing. the spinners learn how to bowl in a containing manner for the first innings and then how to attack in the second.
When I played, I went to a higher league club around the age of 15 whose wicket was a shirtfront. it was located on an area with a lot of chalk in the soil, it had some pace and bounce, and one of the county sides who came there for the old limited overs competition that featured Minor County sides said it was the best wicket they'd batted on outside of the professional game. A few colleagues in my county age group asked me why I went to a club with a wicket that didn't give me much assistance when I bowled leggies. Simple: if I could bowl them well there, then dump me on a wicket that did help me and I'll do absolutely fine. Any spinner can bowl on a shite track and get wickets as the like of Michael Clarke and Joe Root have shown against India, and we have some of that in the CC because we play at times when wickets and climate aren't always at their best.
We do have some good performers out there, no question. But it's nowhere near as strong as it was in 2000.Take someone like Hampshire in 2000. Mullally played half of the CC games. They had Warne, Udal, and Mascarenhas. Alex Morris was never close to international selection but ended with a solid average and SR. Leicestershire had Kumble for most of the season, Ormond, Vince Wells, DeFreitas (amusing when you look who finished bottom of the Leics bowling averages that season). You look at Lancashire and it's quite ridiculous. Over the season they had Ian Austin, Chapple, Keedy, Joe Scuderi, Chris Schofield, the perennially underrated Peter Martin, Gary Yates was very handy in the one day game, and they had some dude called Flintoff... perhaps not full top notch internationals but
Just look at the Surrey FC averages for 2000 when they won Div 1.
https://i.imgur.com/n1cs2aw.png
You had McGrath and Warne both playing county cricket that year. Not one or two games but double figure numbers (and McGrath was astounding).
Now the first central contracts were announced March 2001. All 12 of them! Yorkshire were hamstrung by White, Gough, and Hoggard being on the list and their availability was limited (CC games that season Gough played twice, White 9 games, Hoggard 7). So who else did they have? Chris Silverwood, Steve Kirby, Gavin Hamilton, Ryan Sidebottom, Richard Dawson...
Squads had better first class quality depth back then and this was helped by the Kolpak situation. When you look at the list of folk we had come over, there's some damn good cricketers on there who were also proven at international level (Murray Goodwin would have gotten into any country's 1st XI when he Kolpak'd over).
Strip the first class game of quality pros like that and quality overseas players, arse about with the schedule, it's going to suffer and when the first class game suffers then so will the Test side. We saw that in the overworked days and we're seeing it again.