Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => World Cricket => England => Topic started by: Manormanic on August 20, 2012, 08:29:01 AM
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I suspect they'll pretend that nothing is wrong - the Andocracy have, after all, made great play out of unswerving loyalty in the past few years and for the most part have generated the results to justify that policy.
But yes, there needs to be a general freshening of the side before the India series and especially as they go over to New Zealand which is likely to be, in one form or another, the start of the next cycle of this England side. I think Bairstow has shown enough that he should be given a long run in the team, and I would like to see Joe Root in there because, believe me, the kid is a class above the other younsgters on the circuit (and I include Taylor in that, who may be too small and short on power to be a Test batsman). I'd also like to see a change in policy, with some consideration given to the make up of their bowling attack because I am in no way convinced that four bowlers is the way going forward.
Rather than saying "the team should be X", here is the seventeen I'd like to see selected as a generic, all conditions squad for the next twelve months:
Batsmen: Alistair Cook, Joe Root, Ian Bell, Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Jonny Bairstow
Wicketkeepers: Matt Prior with Bairstow as reserve.
Spinners: Graeme Swann, Simon Kerrigan, Adil Rashid
Seamers: Tim Bresnan, Steven Finn, Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Onions, and either Stuart Broad or Tymal Mills
All Rounders: Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes.
Strauss probably won't like beiong retired, but I get the feeling that he is at the end of his run as an international cricketer - if England are committed to getting back to number one in the world, they need to show some ruthlessness, and this is the way to go about it!
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I think Meaker should probably be there ahead of Mills though...
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I think Meaker should probably be there ahead of Mills though...
really? he just seems a bit innocuous to me, kind of similar to Chris Silverwood as a bowler who hit great numbers on a speed gun but was not really much more than gun barrell straight at the top level, whereas Mills, whilst obviously needing time to develop, seems to get some action on the ball and has the massive advantage of being a left armer.
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Gosh - there's an awful lot of knee-jerk going on!
Trott is not a bad player overnight, neither is Broad. There is life after KP and he doesn't have the divine right to be in the side and shoot his mouth off to whoever - any player would have been dropped.
England have simply come up against a better side, and we should just deal with it.
Work with your best 16 players (this 11 plus another spinner, another keeper and another batsman + 2 seamers).
We are not a bad side, we've simply been outplayed - see how those you've mentioned go against a weaker side before casting them out!
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really? he just seems a bit innocuous to me, kind of similar to Chris Silverwood as a bowler who hit great numbers on a speed gun but was not really much more than gun barrell straight at the top level, whereas Mills, whilst obviously needing time to develop, seems to get some action on the ball and has the massive advantage of being a left armer.
The few times I've seen meaker at county level this season he seems to have been getting prodigious swing. He also offers something different to Finn/Broad/Anderson as he is shorter than all of them and skids the ball on at pace.
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Rashid is nowhere near test class. He would get torn apart against a good batting line up. It would be the finish of Joe Root if he is let near the test team inside the next 18 months. He will be a great player in the future.
The talk of Trott playing badly is pure rubbish. He has had a quiet series but he has not had a bad one. He is still at the crease on day 5 of this test so he could go on to score big runs today for all we know.
Stuart broad is a world class seamer still who just like Trott has had a quiet series.
KP needs to get his attitude sorted and I honestly think the English team is better without him
I would like to see Woakes appear in the team shortly aswell as I have always rated him very highly
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Piffle! Why on earth would it be the finish of Joe Root? The kid is class, and needs to step up sooner rather than later.
As for Broad, I am one of many who have been saying the same thing for years - he appears to have a divine right to be selected when his performances rarely warrant it. Moreover, he never seems to be willing to go the proverbial extra mile - he does not seem to apply himself to his batting, despite having the talent to be a workable number eight, and his pace has dropped consistently since he came into the international game...
None of this is knee jerk, its merely a case of picking the right time for an evolution in the side; unless we are convinced that Strauss is the man to take the side into two Ashes series and that he will be worth his place as a batsman in both, they really need to consider his place now.
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Ok - I have done a bit of editing to split the knee jerks around!
the key for me is that we are going to India next, not New Zealand.
What I would do is the following.
Cook and Trott to open (and tell both to get some runs)
Bell (should have been at 3 for ages)
KP (sort it out, ditch your advisors, eat humble pie etc, etc)
Bairstow (earned the slot0
Strauss (hide him at 6 for a while to manage the transition - opening and captaining is too much for him, he shouldn't be afraid to bat lower down)
Prior (keep doing it)
Swann (get fit i.e. sort out the elbow)
Board (you aren't as good as you think you are, recogise that and you will be a decent player)
Anderson (get fit - sort out the ankle)
Finn (keep doing it and keep working at your bowling action)
yes this is rearranging the deck chairs, but that is the best we can do at the moment.
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would you really go to India with only four bowlers and only a single spinner though?
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good question - the answer is I am not sure - do you pick Monty and Chris Woakes/Bresnan? and leave out two of Anderson, Finn, Board, Strauss or Bairstow
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Do we think England have lost because they aren't good enough, or have they just not performed, or are SA just THAT good!?
Can Strauss take the team any further? Can't see us going to India and winning.
Not sure what changes if any should be made???
Having struggled to bowl SA out in this series I think a 5 man attack would have been a good shout, but England not prepared to give it a go
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Personally, I would go with a five man attack - Prior is good enough to bat at six, Bresnan at seven and Swann at eight; that would leave an admittedly rabbitlike selection of Anderson, Finn and, for me, Kerrigan at the bottom of the pile but should still have enough potency (as a side order, the more I think about it, the more I'd be inclined to rest Anderson in India. He is not going to get that much from the pitches, the ball rarely swings past the tenth over and he has been going full on for a long time.
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Do we think England have lost because they aren't good enough, or have they just not performed, or are SA just THAT good!?
Can Strauss take the team any further? Can't see us going to India and winning.
SA are, for me, marginally the better side of the two - a side at the apex of their development rather than one just past it. There has never been a lot in it but, for the first time since the 2006/7 Ashes, England lost the big moments, and that has been the difference.
My own view is stated above - Strauss has probably taken the side as far as he can. He remains an excellent leader but I really doubt that he will make hundreds against the top test sides again and that, aside with the unlikeliness of him playing in the same side as KP in the future, means he should perhaps be put out to grass.
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I don't think this group have become "bad" over night, yes 2012 has been bad for the batsmen as they all appear to have had a poor run and sadly only KP is averaging over 40 in 2012.
The SA side are a very very good unit and England aren't that far behind, this Test Match is very close but I think England will do their usual and make an absolute hash of things today and make the gap appear larger than it is.
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as I've already mentioned elswewhere, it comes ddown to key moments - the fresher team has seized the majority of those big passages of play and will therefore, barring miracles, take the series.
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Everyone is crucifying the bowlers. I think the bowlers have performed well. The batsmen haven't scored enough runs simple as that
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Everyone is crucifying the bowlers. I think the bowlers have performed well. The batsmen haven't scored enough runs simple as that
I totally agree.
Elequently put here by Scyld Berry in the Telegraph (p.s. decline and fall is a reference to a book by Evelyn Waugh - worth a read if you don't know it)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9486591/England-v-South-Africa-Decline-and-fall-of-batsmen-behind-fall-from-summit-of-Test-cricket.html
England v South Africa: Decline and fall of batsmen behind fall from summit of Test cricket
Assuming that England do not score 330 runs on the final day, against the world’s best pace attack, their demotion from No 1 in the world Test rankings will have to be attributed primarily to their batsmen.
Every one of England’s batsmen has averaged less in this calendar year than in their overall Test careers. Since England went to No 1 last autumn their bowlers, Broadly and Andersonly speaking, have maintained their standard; their batsmen have under-performed.
The decline began in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, when Pakistan’s bowlers entangled England’s batsmen in the webs they spun, and none has emerged from that slump for long, except the absentee Kevin Pietersen. What Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman began, South Africa’s pace bowlers have maintained with their speed, bounce, lateral movement and horribly astute game plans.
The batsmen in this England side have scored four Test centuries, in addition to the two by Pietersen, starting in January. Even if Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell score brilliant hundreds today, this productivity is not sufficient. As it stands, England have scored six Test hundreds in their 11 Tests this year, against the 12 scored against them.
Andrew Strauss’s average has been 33 this year, compared to his overall 43. He made two hundreds against the West Indies, but their opening bowlers did not go around the wicket as Morne Morkel has done and bowl full-length balls amid the short stuff. Nobody had, in his England career, until this series.
Alastair Cook’s technique has been similarly dissected. He has been dragged half-forward and trapped by the fullish ball swinging back in. His Test average is still a proud 47, but this year it is down to 36.
To start them off on the highest successful run-chase in their history, England needed one of their top-order left-handers, Strauss or Cook, to do a Mark Butcher. None of the players who knocked off 332 against Australia in 1928-29, England’s highest run-chase to date, is alive to tell the tale; but Mark Butcher, who scored 173 out of the 315 to beat Australia at Headingley in 2001, has been watching this match.
Butcher batted with sublime fluency after Adam Gilchrist, Australia’s vice-captain, had felt obliged to set England a last-day target after rain. The vocabulary of Australia’s official captain Steve Waugh, injured for that game, did not contain the phrase ‘sporting declaration’.
The trajectory of Jonathan Trott’s career graph has inevitably gone downwards after he started with England’s highest-ever batting average.
The centuries have dried up. He might make another today, but if he does it is more likely to be a match-saver than a match-winner: scoring six runs off 39 balls in the intensity of last evening was Herculean in itself, and South Africa will have a second new ball at their disposal soon after tea.
If England’s third-wicket pair do put a partnership together, the South Africans can always dry up the runs as they are the past masters of attritional bowling. Even when Morkel and Dale Steyn are resting, the tourists will have Vernon Philander reverse-swinging the old ball, or Jacques Kallis bowling outside off stump, or Imran Tahir bowling round the wicket from the Nursery End into the rough.
When chasing down 332 to defeat Australia at Melbourne, England had time on their side. They scored at the leisurely pace of 2.07 runs an over, and got home on the seventh day of a timeless Test. Today they have to score at 3.6 per over.
Bell knows that he owes England today because he has under-performed more than any of their regular batsmen this year, averaging 33 against his normal 47.
He has rather ‘lost’ his off stump since being bowled while leaving a ball from Kallis at the Oval; and it was his two drops against the West Indies at Edgbaston that started England’s run of fallible fielding.
Being in their early twenties, James Taylor and Jonny Bairstow know plenty about run-a-ball run-chases. But today’s bowling will be quicker than anything they have faced in domestic cricket, the fielders will be sharper and none of them will have to field inside semi-circles. Taylor, Bairstow and Matt Prior will chase so long as they are in, but it is not only history that is stacked against them.
So it goes on, downwards. The batting outputs of Prior, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, and James Anderson are all down this year. Tim Bresnan has tailed off most of all, his batting average down 16 points, his bowling average up 16 points.
To set against Bairstow and Steven Finn, the only players in this England side to have grown in this series, South Africa have had plenty kicking on: Alviro Petersen, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers as a keeper/batsman, J P Duminy, Philander and, above all, Morkel. When taking over as the No1 Test side on Monday, South Africa are entitled to feel they have the growth potential to remain there longer than England.
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Everyone is crucifying the bowlers. I think the bowlers have performed well. The batsmen haven't scored enough runs simple as that
I agree that the batters haven't really performed against SA but i don't think the bowlers have been attacking enough, by attacking i mean bowling with venom.
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On a positive note - in hugely difficult circumstances for one reason or another Bairstow has been very impressive. Hope he gets a good run at it now.
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On a positive note - in hugely difficult circumstances for one reason or another Bairstow has been very impressive. Hope he gets a good run at it now.
Anyone can be impressive for 1 innings... Consistency is the key here
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I agree that the batters haven't really performed against SA but i don't think the bowlers have been attacking enough, by attacking i mean bowling with venom.
I think your Captain hasn't been attacking enough... Or scored enough runs .... I think Strauss's days are numbered.
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Im not just talking about the runs though - would have been very easy to bottle it given the short ball issues, given the replacing Pietersen comparisons, given the fact you're facing the best attack in the world and playing for your place, given the dressing room unrest.
I actually disagree that anyone could have done it, as I think all that takes some doing.
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Anyone can be impressive for 1 innings... Consistency is the key here
well, he's being impressive for a second innings right now...
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well, he's being impressive for a second innings right now...
Yes he is... So far so good
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Not bad for a kid!
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Piffle! Why on earth would it be the finish of Joe Root? The kid is class, and needs to step up sooner rather than later.
As for Broad, I am one of many who have been saying the same thing for years - he appears to have a divine right to be selected when his performances rarely warrant it. Moreover, he never seems to be willing to go the proverbial extra mile - he does not seem to apply himself to his batting, despite having the talent to be a workable number eight, and his pace has dropped consistently since he came into the international game...
None of this is knee jerk, its merely a case of picking the right time for an evolution in the side; unless we are convinced that Strauss is the man to take the side into two Ashes series and that he will be worth his place as a batsman in both, they really need to consider his place now.
agreed regarding Broad, he can do no wrong in the eyes of the selectors or so it would seem. batting never lived up to its hype and his fielding is very average, coincide this with his bowling and lack of pace these days i cant see why he is picked. Onions has taken bags of wickets this season what more must he do?
regarding Root, hes had an impressive season so far and performed for the Lions, i wouldnt rush him in though as we are currently easing Bairstow and Taylor in, another new batsmen may just be too much change all at once
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I'd take Root ahead of Taylor to be honest, just not convinced that Taylor is going to make it at the highest level.
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suppose he needs to be given a chance whilst he's currently in the side, we cant really comment too much after only 2 tests
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I would like to see Joe Root in there because, believe me, the kid is a class above the other younsgters on the circuit (and I include Taylor in that, who may be too small and short on power to be a Test batsman).
don't agree with this, test batsmen do NOT need power.
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He is nowhere near the class of Taylor! Who incidentally, I don't rate that highly anyway!
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taylor has the potential to be a very good test cricketer imo.
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I'm not so sure! However, I'm completely happy to be wrong, and will not argue lol. I think he's worthy of his spot, just a little bit bitter about Hildreth not getting his chance when he was clearly the 'next cab off the rank' (although that was a while ago and he wouldn't be worthy at the mo).
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I'm not so sure! However, I'm completely happy to be wrong, and will not argue lol. I think he's worthy of his spot, just a little bit bitter about Hildreth not getting his chance when he was clearly the 'next cab off the rank' (although that was a while ago and he wouldn't be worthy at the mo).
not sure Hildreth ever really proved he was the man. Too many runs on shirt fronts...
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You forget the series that he captained the lions team and scored 3(?) hundreds against India A and West Indies A I think. He was definitely the best player not playing for England at that point!
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really? he just seems a bit innocuous to me, kind of similar to Chris Silverwood as a bowler who hit great numbers on a speed gun but was not really much more than gun barrell straight at the top level, whereas Mills, whilst obviously needing time to develop, seems to get some action on the ball and has the massive advantage of being a left armer.
Mills has taken ridiculous wickets in 2 counties cricket the past few weeks
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Do we think England have lost because they aren't good enough, or have they just not performed, or are SA just THAT good!?
Can Strauss take the team any further? Can't see us going to India and winning.
Not sure what changes if any should be made???
Having struggled to bowl SA out in this series I think a 5 man attack would have been a good shout, but England not prepared to give it a go
No we struggled because where not as good as we and them think they are.
We still have our yardstick at the Aussie and there to be honest a poor unit indeed and we thought we beat them we beat anybody..
Truth is Proteas wanted it more and man for one just about edged it and the KP and Broad incident did not help matter.
We still are a very capable team without a doubt and anybody think Trott is finished get real (found out rubbish he was found out by the Aussie but nobody fights harder for England)
We have world class players in Cook,Trott,KP,Prior, we just need more consistency from a few of the bowlers and Batsman to be honest we will be fine.
Bairstow has earned his spot for sure looked a very good player even if he is from t'er side ov hills..
Strauss has been the leader of some good cricket sides from our country maybe it is time for him, maybe not but i do not see a major re-bulding need doing we got beat by the best side in the world simple as that
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Think I found the answer whilst playing a bit of international cricket tonight
Our secret bowlers sorry pic was taken in dark
(http://i1050.photobucket.com/albums/s415/shaqharris16/6C2C7456-AC20-42EF-98E0-29CCE7E77858-10388-00000A7099AECDB2.jpg)
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lol!
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So this is definitely now relevant.
For me (after clear the air talks with all the players and KP in 1 room together)
Cook
Trott
Bell
KP
Taylor
Bairstow
Prior
Broad
Swann
Anderson
Finn
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KP will not play for England again! I will bet my mortgage on it!
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I also think it's unlikely, if he is going to then clear the air talks need to be held with cook.
A window of opportunity has opened for him, how much he wants it/can he surpress his ego will decide if he plays again
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Without Strauss and KP now, major problems in the middle order. Trott and Cook opening, Bell at 3, Prior at 7, Bowlers all the same, but the middle order is the sticky issue.
Only a month ago Bairstow was not good enough, Taylor has played 1 test,Morgan is out of favour and Bopara's head is in the clouds. Who else has test experience in there? No one. I believe JT can bat at 5 and Bairstow at 6, they should atleast be given ago, but that is probably the most inexperience middle order in world cricket, however, you only gain experience by playing.
The problem is a Test class no4, none of the players in county cricket, Root and Compton are the only two anywhere near the standard, but I'd say since he's been through the system Root would be prefferred and may open.
Baptism of fire in India for whoever comes in
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Robert key as a stop gap if we're looking for a opener or deny
Root will get his chance but on Bunsen burners in India is not the time
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Oh and the better option maybe Alex hales or Sam northeast.
Guess either Compton or root then
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What about Ben Stokes? Have him at 6, and then you have the flexibility of picking 2 frontline spinners and 2 frontline seamers...
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What about Ben Stokes? Have him at 6, and then you have the flexibility of picking 2 frontline spinners and 2 frontline seamers...
Or Chris Woakes bat Prior 6 and Woakes 7?
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I would actually put root in for for India series, he looks very capable of playing spin and has been with the performance squad over in the sub-continent training hard to fight spin etc..
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I'm guessing that Trott will be in there as a makeshift for the India series, either in a Cook, Trott, Bell, Pietersen, Bairstow, Prior, Patel line up or alongside young Taylor.
By the NZ series, I'd like to see Root opening with Cook though.