There was a stat read out on Sky yesterday during the cricket about England's average first innings score over the past 10 test matches or so. I want to say the average England 1st innings over that period was 288. I doubt we will dominate many test matches with that 1st innings average. We haven't been great in test matches for quite some time now, especially with the bat. Forgetting the players that we actually have in the team there aren't that many players in County cricket knocking down the door saying 'Pick Me!, Pick Me'. Even when we were a very poor test side we had players averaging 50+ in county cricket and bowlers averaging under 25. We are an exceptional one day side but a bang average test side. Chances are we are in for a hard winter in Sri Lanka and also in West Indies. I don't know what the specific answer is, maybe there is so much focus on white ball cricket to the detriment of the first class game. The point I'm trying to make (in a very long winded way) is this is not a sudden decline in how we are batting in test matches. I do think some of our selections have been strange with players with bang average first class records getting picked (I know there are exceptions like Vaughan and Tres) to play in test matches. Let's just hope that the new selection process gets busy very quickly. But players are just one factor, the current structure of domestic cricket needs a serious review (again).
Its a systematic thing. The drop-off in quality is down to a number of causes
1) Up until about 2014, the Lions used to be a conveyor belt of good young cricketers into test cricket. Now they are poorly managed, poorly coached and have stopped producing any decent cricketers whatsoever.
2) From the mid 2000s, young players started dedicating time to learning white ball specific skills. This was time they were no longer focusing on the traditional red ball skills. We're now seeing the result of that now.
3) The domestic schedule is a joke, the CC being played almost entirely in April and September makes it completely unfit for purpose, and as a result the standard has dropped off. We need to do something about this, and fast.
4) There are simply less people playing cricket and have been for a decade. Less young players playing means less talented young players coming through. Eventually, that is going to filter through to the national team. We're now seeing the impact of removing cricket from FTA tv.
The England team were good but inconsistent from the late 90s to the late 2000s, were genuinely consistently excellent for a few years from ~2009 to 2013, but there was a culture of bullying and micromanagement in the dressing room that eventually exploded in acrimony in 2013/14. Since then, and despite having some generally weak oppositions to play, we've been absolutely dog (No Swearing Please).
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Topic: England Vs India Test Matches (Read 169934 times)