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ODI vs Ireland - Win
T20 vs Pakistan - Win
ODIs vs Pakistan - Win
World Cup - Win
Test vs Ireland - Win
Ashes - Drawn
The 2 standout moments:
https://youtu.be/Itb-3pISKt8
https://youtu.be/HrIew7-4isI
Headingley saw the start of the change. The most important knock of the summer wasn't Stokes: it was both Denly and Root getting their heads down. If you're going to pack the middle to lower order with gun batsmen who love to attack, then you have to tire out the opposition attack and wear them down a bit before the dashers come in. Had Denly and Root not done that and folded, then Stokes wouldn't have had the chance to do what he did.
You can get away with an iffy technique in short form cricket: you can't in Tests against an attack like Australia. it'll be really interesting to see what Jason Roy will do now. Will he be off to the IPL or will he spurn the money and focus on Surrey and trying to improve in the long format? I'd go with the former.
McGrath talked after the Fourth Test about how he hadn't seen Archer do the hard yards and bowl when things were tough. You did at the Oval. Stuart Broad has been absolutely superb and his figures, although still excellent, do not reflect how well he has bowled. From memory, I would bet he's had way more catches dropped off his bowling than any other England player in the last couple of years.
Someone in this thread called Jack Leach a county dobber: after 9 Tests, he's averaging 28 at home and a shade under 25 away. 32 wickets in 9 Tests, one of which he barely bowled against Ireland. He's actually outdoing Swann's record at the same stage. Hard to think that he spent the winter in the West Indies ferrying drinks behind Moeen and Adil Rashid (good luck negotiating that new county contract, Adil) and wasn't playing at Edgbaston. He surely has to be the #1 spinner now. In Formula 1, it is often said how the first person you have ot beat is your teammate. Slow bowlers have that rivalry with the oppo spin bowler. If their guy gets five wickets bowling first, the pressure is on you. Leach has come in after Lyon got a load of wickets in the 1st Test and he's outbowled him since then in the four Tests since his recall:
JL - 12 wickets at 25 @ 50.8 SR
NL - 11 wickets at 46 @ 97.4 SR
I said previously that we have a real attack forming now. The value of Curran has been seen and he should have been in there earlier.
Burns and Denly should be secure for the winter. Credit to Denly for showing some fight.
So 20th November is our next Test:
Burns
Denly
Root
Stokes
Pope/Crawley/Sibley
Curran
Foakes
Anderson
Leach
Broad
Bairstow needs to go. I thought it said a lot about his keeping that his stumping was heralded as something splendid when it was relatively easy. I'd also drop Buttler. You play him as a specialist bat higher up the order or not at all. Yes I am not picking Archer for NZ. A gem like that should not be wasted on a fairly meaningless two-Test trip to NZ. Keep him for South Africa because he will get pitches there that suit him. Instead bring Anderson back and see if he's got a future for England or whether it's time to prepare the carriage clock.
I've said for far to long that I want to do a Aussie tour with the Barmy Army - Needs to be soon as the big 60 is only a month away
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49710531
Agnew: "I think players in the second division are largely unselectable for Test cricket because the standard simply isn't good enough."
To which Marnus Labuschagne says: hold my beer.
Look at a country like New Zealand. Their player numbers are fucking tiny yet they maximise their resources as well as anyone in Test cricket. You can think back to the days when Zimbabwe were a real handful. They didn't have a wealth of supreme talent to call on. Instead they focused on the basics: fitness, fielding, support the out and out stars like Heath Streak and Andy Flower as much as possible.
"Inevitably, any good player will go and play for a first division club, because they know they won't get picked in the second division, and that then creates a further imbalance."
And frequently those players find that moving to a new place does nothing for their career. Ask Joe Clarke and Ben Duckett how their moves to Notts have gone (yes, JC has a ton today but he's been shite the rest of the year). Sam Northeast shifted to Hampshire, has scored runs, and still is mentioned only in dispatches when England have been falling apart. So why is Divsion 1 considered a better standard? I'm looking at Surrey versus Essex today. Surrey have faced Jamie Porter (England Lions), two county grade seamers in Sam Cook and Beard, and a Kolpak spinner in Harmer.
Middlesex in Div 2 lined up with Ethan Bamber (England U-19), Toby Roland-Jones (Test player), James Harris (very decent seamer), Miguel Cummins of the West Indies, and a young spinner in Nathan Sowter.
"I've always been against two divisions in the Championship; it's always been wrong."
WTF? The strength of two division Championship cricket was why we won in 2005. Aggers can waffle all he likes about how this summer has been wonderful. Fact is, we couldn't beat the weakest Australian batting line up for decades because ours was even more shit. Two division cricket isn't responsible for making a technique-deficient guy like Jason Roy get thrown in to open in Tests. Two division cricket isn't responsible for the standard of wicketkeeping being so low that people are shitting themselves about Bairstow's stumping (Jack Russell stumping Dean Jones off Gladstone Small, it is not).
"It means that when there are good overseas players signed - for example, when Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne came to play for Worcestershire and Hampshire - only half our players play against them."
Well, yes. In 2000 Warne was in Div 1 at Hampshire and got relegated. McGrath was at Worcestershire and they finished mid table. But what does Agnew mean by 'our players'? He can't mean current Test players as they play close to bugger all Championship cricket. The Kolpakers are reduced in numbers. What he must mean are 'county players who aren't good enough for England in his eyes'. Bollocks to that. It smacks of Gentlemen versus Players bullshittery.
'tis interesting to note that Div 2 ended like this in 2000. Some players in those Div 2 sides: Simon Jones for Glamorgan, Andrew Strauss for Middlesex, Ian Bell and Ashley Giles for Warwickshire, Kevin Pietersen for Notts among others. Some of the overseas pros were top notch: Bevan for Sussex, Langer for Middlesex, Hayden at Northants, Elliot at Glamorgan... there were also young players around. Graeme Swann for Northants, Panesar, Marr Prior with Sussex, Jon Trott with Warwickshire... might it be that Division 2 was a decent foundation for some good players?
If Division 2 were so crap in 2005 and we'd only picked Div 1 players, then these are the Ashes winning squad members who were at Div 1 sides that year. Blimey, a few useful names missing there...
When the County Championship has been so enjoyable this year, Aggers bitching at it feels totally unfair. It isn't great preparation for Test cricket: how could it be when it's played at either end of the season with a few bits in the middle and then thrown into the bin for six weeks or so whilst they play hit and giggle cricket? The County Championship has not failed England: the ECB has failed the County Championship and Aggers sounds like he's being very friendly to the ECB in that article.
Aside from the points you raised, the cricket summer scheduled is already insanely packed and will be even worse next year with The Fucking 100, how the fuck does the genius Agnew think they can get even more red ball games in.
I find it difficult to take a lot of pundits of English cricket seriously, Agnew's another name added to the list.
Maybe one day we'll have something like darts with the PDC for those who want the glitz and shite and the BDO for those who want to enjoy the game for what it is without flames and fireworks and people dancing on the outfield.
We had this at Somerset with Kieswetter and Buttler. The former had the gloves, the latter wanted them and got pissed off that he didn't get them so off to Lancashire he went. It was obvious to everyone at Taunton how much ability Buttler had at his disposal. As a pure out and out batsman, he's as good as anyone out there but his technique's never been developed enough for the long format and it's possible at 29 that it never will. A guy who could have devastated people in all forms of the game has instead been keeper, dropped, up and down, in and out. Wasted.
So to has Bairstow. He has a lot of backers in the media and peopel talk of him being such a standout batsman. A standout batsman doesn't average 35 at Test level and bat well in ODI cricket at home. If he is the gun middle order player that Ronay says he is, I can't see why he's batting at 5 beneath Stokes in Ronay's line up. It's still not a line up to frighten people given recent form: Root at 3, Stokes, YJB, Pope, Buttler. The first name is batting well beneath his ability since becoming captain and everyone else there averages less than 36. The plan has been for one or two of the explosive players to pull England out of the shit but at some point you need an accumulator. It's mad to think that it's been nearly four years since Ian Bell last played a Test when we've had such a dearth of quality in the middle (also noteworthy that Moeen was opening in Bell's last Test. the merry go round has been going a long time).
At the end or in the middle of the series the fans always seem to pick out a few players to vent their frustrations with and YJB seems to be the brunt of this year's frustrations. Personally, I think the bigger problem are the ones identified above, the most severe failing is ECB's management of international players, there seems to often be an absence of looking to maximise to get the very best out of the players - just look at Joe Root for example sometimes he opened, batted at 3, whilst he gets the most runs at 4.
Also, IMO the player the test team has missed the most is Jon Trott. Since he left the team the top order felt apart, middle order as well.
The ECB shouldn't be asking who the next Jon Trott is but why English red ball cricket isn't producing players of such a nature.
Test cricket is about consistency over long periods of time. Adil Rashid looks decent at ODI level because batsmen are attacking him. He fails at Test level because the batsmen can wait for the long hop and dispatch him. Learning how to bowl over a long period is as essential for a bowler as learning how to bat for a long time is for a batsman. I was really lucky when I was 16 as my county side was in a festival where games were 60 overs with no bowling restrictions. Over that week I bowled 0 overs on Monday and then 24, 27, and nearly 20 overs across Tuesday to Thursday. For a 16 year old leggie in 34 degree heat, it was hard work and I was shagged for Friday's final and bowled utter gash for 20 overs (Chris Read whacked us all for a ton) but it taught me so much about sticking to a game plan and how to change things. I can honestly say I learnt more in that cricket week bowling those long spells than I did in all the 50 over stuff we'd played before and after. I wonder how many teenage spinners today would bowl a 27 over spell outside of 2nd XI cricket in this country.
Today's wannabe England Test players get to playan erratic schedule of first-class matches and today's current Test players are playing fewer and fewer first-class matches with the drop in tour games before an international series starts and with central contracts restricting their county appearances. It's not hard to see why we've been so bad at producing Test-standard players over the last few years:
YJB: His keeping has not been great this series and the batting has collapsed. Gets bowled far too much for a player of his ability. I'd drop him for the entire Test winter. He likes a challenge so set him the goal of playing Championship cricket early season next year, accept that he won't be keeping in Tests, and to get in that side by sheer weight of ODI and Championship runs combined.
Totally forgot to mention this marvel from Yorkshire's second finest:
"Anderson, 38, and Broad, 33, are England's leading Test wicket-takers with 575 and 467 respectively. But Vaughan says England have to be "realistic" about the pair's prospects of reaching the next Ashes in 2021-22."
"I don't think it is right both of them play now," Vaughan said."
Jesus! We get one genuinely fast guy on the scene and suddenly the old boys have to be split up. Does Vaughan have some secret stash of opening bowlers hidden away like me hiding fags from my parents as a teenager? Outside of Jimmy, Stuey, and Jofey, we have the following options:
Woakes - crap away from home
Wood - injured
Stone - injured
Finn - not coming back
Curran - currently has 19 wickets in 7 Tests at home at the lovely average of 20.94. Averages 105 in four Tests away from home.
Toby Roland-Jones - untried away from home
Craig Overton - third seamer at absolute best. Not an opening bowler.
Lewis Gregory - made some squads, bowled well for Somerset, might be useful in NZ but perhaps less so in South Africa (although Vernon Philander's continued existence shows nippy swing and seam has a place there)
Jamie Overton - maybe South Africa. Wouldn't use him in NZ.
Jamie Porter - not a Test opening bowler
It's like he's forgotten how quickly teams can fall apart after being successful. Of his 2005 Ashes squad, consider the state of them by the 2006-7 Ashes: Vaughan's knee had gone, Trescothick was flying home with his sad stress illness, Simon Jones hadn't played since Trent Bridge 2005, Ashley Giles packed up mid-tour and retired from all cricket by the end of 2007, Geraint Jones was dropped and never returned mid-series, Harmison was homesick and spraying it, and we were so desperate for quicks that we threw Saj Mahmood and a remodelled action/buggered up Jimmy at the Aussies.
We have three very good seamers who all crucially bowl a bit differently from one another. We shouldn't be splitting them up, we should be using them to our best advantage.
If England do not play their best team then it could be an embarrassment over the coming winter.
The 2 test series against NZ might be the one to really show the flaws of the team, right now NZ have a very decent bowling attack and over the last 18 months, there are 4 batsmen with averages of over 65 one of them's Steve Smith, the other 3 are Kiwis.
So unless the Kiwi team is taken seriously and unless the best English team is played which right now would include Broad, and Anderson if he is match fit, then there's a real chance they could lose the series against NZ.
Totally agree. It's idiotic to think about the next Ashes series already. Comments like this devalue the NZ tour in the winter yet some of the same commentators are happy to laud a fine English performance against the same opponents (Stokes last time they were here anyone?). New Zealand are a good side with a batting line up ahead of us, a better wicketkeeper, and some very useful seam bowlers indeed. Bit up and down in the spin department but hey ho.
A defeat to NZ over the winter would certainly put the pressure on the Root captaincy.