Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

Stokes has done well with the bat in recent times, is a very good fielder and a useful bowler. I don't think he has to bowl out his overs though. If he's doing well with the ball, leave him on. If not, look to the main bowlers. And one of the pace bowlers should be replaced by a spinner. If they are planning a tour of Asia, they need spin options. If the don't have confidence in Rashid, there should be another option in the squad.

There are spinners around that never really had a chance, but were then passed over. What happened to Stephen Parry for instance?

It's been encouraging that England have batted so well, but otherwise they've just repeated old mistakes. Five seamers (we have to include Stokes as a main bowler as he bowled so many overs and they stuck with him when the batters were on top) just beggars belief. It was like Flower's Indian WC campaign all over again.

Gingerfinch wrote:I can't see how losing 7 games out of 8 can be deemed successful, splinters?

For the one day side, they've just scored above 350 twice against India in India, that's an achievement. Above that, all members of the upper order have chipped in and we've seen some of the bench strength play well. Let's face it that's a good situation to be in regardless of the results with a home Champion's Trophy coming up.

In terms of the Test side we've seen two potential top order batsmen lay down a marker, we've struggled to deal with that for a long time, and I actually feel that Rashid did very well in the Test series.

If you're realistic about what the expectations were before this tour, there have been some very valuable finds and we haven't embarassed ourselves.

Making_Splinters wrote:If you're realistic about what the expectations were before this tour, there have been some very valuable finds and we haven't embarassed ourselves.

We're the only team in the history of Test cricket to lose successive matches by an innings after scoring 400+ in the first innings. That's pretty embarrassing.

Although double edged. A lot of sides have lost by an innings without having batted reasonable well in one of the innings. A bit paradoxical.

I get the impression the media think there's no reverse swing because there are two balls. But that's not true, a couple of years ago teams were getting both balls to reverse (and even got some in T20). But now it seems they don't. I wonder if that is because teams are not allowed the freedom to illegally prep the ball now?

I nave no problem with Rashid playing ODI cricket when the conditions are favourable but on postage stamp grounds it leaves him very little room for the occasional poor delivery and saying how well he did in the tests, a game where there are no fielding restrictions and the boundary ropes are not brought in, is not relevant to his ODI value.
As for Stokes I don't believe he's reliable enough to bat at 5 or even 6, the excellent innings that so many only remember are so rare that they give him a 28 batting average which is hardly worthy of the star status he's given.

Except Stokes has really turned his ODI batting around. His record over the past year is excellent. The problems he had early in his career aren't that relevant.

The top six is pretty good, give or take Morgan's longer term form.

I think the positives in the ODI displays are pretty hard to rebut. Less so in the Tests where neither batting nor bowling was strong and the games were one sided.

made a comment last week i think that our approach to ODIs atm is almost like that of the great brazil football sides, that no matter how many the opposition score we'll back ourselves to score one more

the flaw in that approach is that the brazil football sides weren't giving the opposition open goals just to make their own task harder

Is no-one going to comment on Root? How can you justify someone (again) facing over 1/6 of the innings and scoring at under a run a ball when the rate was 8 when he entered the crease? It's embarrassing that he bats for his average and I guarantee that at the end of the tour his performance will be viewed as a positive.

i have no problem whatsoever with root's innings today

he scored 54 from 55 balls, so yes he was under a run a ball but one shot could have changed that

morgan for the majority of his innings was basically scoring at the same rate root did, it was the second half of his innings that he ramped up the scoring, something we wont know if root would have done

at the time root got out we were still ahead of where india were at the same point of their innings i believe so he had hardly put us in a position where we couldn't win the game

imo we need someone like root in the top 6 when you have all those strokeplayers around him

Root just needs to convert his starts. His consistency is astonishing, up to a point- getting to 50-100. And his scoring rate is impressive. He's a proper new style ODI batter, he's not just someone who bulks the innings out.

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Root just needs to convert his starts. His consistency is astonishing, up to a point- getting to 50-100. And his scoring rate is impressive. He's a proper new style ODI batter, he's not just someone who bulks the innings out.

yeah thats the worry about root, both in tests and ODIs, for some reason he doesn't convert enough of his starts into the big scores that win matches

Since the last WC he averages 57 (!) at a SR of 93. That's astonishing.

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Since the last WC he averages 57 (!) at a SR of 93. That's astonishing.

it is and when we have guys like buttler, stokes, moeen and roy in the top 7 then root's job is to set a platform, something he does consistently, even tho statistically he ranks close to smith and kohli he doesn't dominate games like they do