Arthur Crabtree wrote:Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (captain), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith (wicketkeeper), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue.
This team scares the life out of me from a bowling perspective. Not picking a viable 5th bowling option nor any front line spinner is a risk when you have a world class bowling attack, but when you have one seamer who is utterly cooked after a big workload all summer, one coming back directly from a few months injury, one who has basically retired and hasn't bowled anywhere near 25 overs in the current decade, and one who is two career saving surgeries away from retirement and had to have 2 matches off after a long spell at Birmingham.... its verging on suicidal.
What happens in the scenario where India get to 50-60 overs with only a couple of wickets lost? All your pace options are 15 overs in, confronting the idea of a 3rd spell, paces are down, everything threatens to slide out of control..... where is the ball going? Is the plan at that stage to hand the ball to a guy with a FC average of 70, in a series vs the best players of spin in the world who made superior spinners look terrible? Dawson had to bowl nearly 50 overs last innings, if that is required again then Root and Bethell become your fundamental bowling attack.... this is absolute madness.
Even assuming the pace bowlers keep going, these are selections on pace. The bowlers are supposed to be shock bowlers banging it in at high speeds.... you really think Overton 25 overs into a test match, having not bowled that many overs for years, is bowling top pace? When Tongue was required to pick up the slack in Birmingham and bowled 12 overs off the bounce, his pace dropped to medium, he got splattered.... 0/80 odd. Its where the Key thinking just doesn't add up. India have the most 350 run scores in test history in this series, we can assume at some point in this match if its another flat deck, that each of England's paceman have to bowl 20-25 maybe even 30 overs. None of these shock bowlers tend to bowl that much, and when they do the pace by over 15 will be well down.
If India get 50 overs into the test with only 1 or 2 wickets down, its likely to get ugly. Tired paceman at half pace, supplemented by county part-timer spin. It wouldn't surprise me if India ended up with 600 on the board. This attack basically needs to rock India quickly. If they don't rip out the top order with the new ball and get down the tail quick, then they have problems without the 5th bowler.
I can only assume the pitch at the Oval is going to do something, and they know it, because its the only thing that makes the team make sense.
Although I am pretty sure Surrey scored 800/7 or something the other week on the test match strip, so I doubt it.
