I'm always a bit surprised reading these posts that England supporters (and I am one) are so shocked that we struggled in the last test. In truth we have been struggling for a while now. We have a world class opening batsman in Cook, we have a world class number 4 in Root, we have a world class number 6 in Stokes, we have two good all rounders in Bairstow/Ali and we have two world class opening bowlers in 'home' matches in Broad and Anderson. The problem areas are pretty obvious:
1. No successful partner for Cook.
2. We need a number 3.
3. We need a number 5.
4. We need a third seamer.
5. We need to find a top spinner or we just have Ali + Root or Westely or Patel or a batsman who bowls spin.
Do we really need to play 2 spinners in England? How many times have 2 spinners (who were English) ripped through the opposition here? Swann was an absolute 'worldy' and a one off for us. If we can't find two top class spinners then for the love of God don't try!!! Play another batsman or play a good seamer (we are in England after all).
I'm also a bit surprised that nobody is suggesting playing a wicket keeper batsman like Foakes and batting Bairstow bat at 5?
Just thinking outside the box here and this is controversial but part of me thinks that we would be better identifying 30 English qualified cricketers and in some way rotating them around the formats. Does Root really need to play T20's for England, can Ben Stokes and Mo Ali play all formats all the time? Lets identify the best 30 cricketers across all formats for the next 5 years and give them some exposure to international cricket. Reality check - we have never won a major 50 over competition, we have never dominated test cricket since the 1950's, we have won 1 T20 world cup and never won the Champions trophy. We are not a highly successful cricketing nation. Something has to change. We have improved in white ball cricket but I've not see a major improvement in tests. If there was a test world championship does anyone think we would really win?
We have too many professional cricketers and too many non-English qualified players playing. We have too many first class cricket grounds and this isn't sustainable financial in the longer term. Nobody watches domestic county championship cricket, it's not televised often and doesn't excite the public. There is too much meaningless cricket. Sometimes less is more. Why do there need to be 18 first class counties? Why can't we have 8 or 10? I want to see Broad Vs Cook and Wood Vs Root not Wayne Madsen Vs Joe Leach (no disrespect to those). One overseas only in 4 day cricket and 2 overseas in one day cricket.
Let's be honest with our team and face the fact - we are not that great, are we?
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Topic: Eng vs SA test series (Read 93556 times)