I have run out of patience with Ed Smith. He needs to go, and be replaced by someone who actually watches county cricket, and doesn’t think he’s intellectually superior to everybody around him and therefore thinks every squad selection is a mark of his genius. On the downside, that likely means we’d hear his smug tones back on TMS, and probably James ‘Cliché’ Taylor too.
Have to agree with this. England's selection was briefly spot on during the Flower era, not just because of the consistency that achievement allowed but because left field choices (Tremlett in Australia when he had hardly played the season before) made mostly perfect sense.
The last four year cycle has been awful. Yes, the one day side has done incredibly well - but you would say that that has an element of "inspite of" rather than "because of" when it comes down to the powers that be - after all, England started with the bounty of six huge hitters (Hales, Roy, Buttler, Morgan, Stokes, Ali) and added another in Bairstow which, when allied to the fact that all of their bowlers can bat, made them as near sure things as you can get int eh format.
In the longer form, what have we managed? Over four years, we have probably only got two players who have really improved - Stokes and Woakes - whilst key players have gotten old (Anderson, Broad, arguably Woakes) or dropped off (Root) and those coming into the team have three game honeymoon's then tail off remarkably. For this tour, a squad of 15 contained two players they clearly had no intention of selecting, but they didn't bother to bring a second experienced keeper so they've ended up with a young lad who, whilst he seemed to do okay yesterday, is not a regular and who, as a batsman, has shown nerves in adjusting to the Test game and ought to have been left to it. They have a strike bowler who is bowled into the ground, a workhorse given little work, a captain whose batting is being adversely affected, a keeper who wouldn't look great in club cricket and a ginger allrounder who looks like the side is getting really heavy....
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Topic: England tour of New Zealand 2019/20 (Read 66457 times)