A lot of interesting discussions to have. For me, let's start by asking, does Ed Smith have a clue? Picked the wrong side here, and has created more questions than he has answered. The pitch wasn't bad - but green early doors, but today was down to overhead conditions - I reckon Beefy could have come out of retirement and been unplayable today.
So, let's start with the positive. We have a much stronger and more varied bowling attack than we had 18 months back - in addition to the four right arm steamers Anderson, Broad, Woakes and Stokes, we now have a decent left armer in Curran, genuine quicks in Archer, Wood, Stone (who was quietly impressive) and Jamie O and young up and comers in Coad, Brookes, Mahmood, Fisher and Porter.
Shame we don't need 8 or 9 bowlers really because the negative is the batting. Burns is woefully out of touch, Roy might be a test 5 but isn't an opener, Denly is not test class, Root is world class (in the ranks) and Bairstow, Buttler and Stokes all need to bat six.
Don't get me started on Foakes.
If I were in charge... Assuming Root doesn't suddenly realise that he doesn't even like skippering, he stays and stays at four. Foakes plays and, sod it, with his technique, bat's three. The rest of the top seven are Roy, Bairstow, Malan, Stokes and Buttler (if we say sod it and let the bromance open) or... actually I'm not sure from there...
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Topic: Englands Test Summer - IRE + AUS (Read 161398 times)