4th Test England v Pakistan, The Oval, Aug 11-15

[Dr Cricket]

Surprised that Pak has drawn this series. Has Pak improved or England gone bad

both, pakistan have been very good in certain areas and average at other, which probably says something to how bad england were at times.

Pakistan batting average overall and basically score runs on will power rather than skill and their bowling been ok nothing world class or bad about it.
didn't really bowl many spell of high quality or look like scoring runs against them will be impossible but at the same time they had enough good ball to take 20 wickets.

England batting was better but they lacked consistency only really 4 men scored run Root, Cook, Ali and bairstow with some contribution from woakes.
they essentially threw away leads in 3 first innings total because 1-4-5 were awful 3 wickets for about 60 right there.

Bowling was inconsistent Woakes was really good but Anderson and broad had poor series for their standards both struggled to take wickets consistently enough which meant more was needed from Ali and Finn which they didn't really provide to win the series.

it says something when pakistan took the lead 3 times out of 4 when they didn't even bat well in the series, the pakistani batting line up shouldn't be outbatting england in a series and they shouldn't be 2-2 in the series when younis khan is the top run scorer in this series and really none of the batsman were big run scorers in the series either, believe england scored more 50s than pakistan.

[Dr Cricket]

No Anderson which is odd and Broad is included how did you pick the team Arthur.

Not much in the bowling. Broad took some good catches and didn't get a bowling ban.

Contemplated leaving YK out and playing Mo, but had to get round Moeen struggling at the discipline for which he was primarily picked. Against that, YK dropped a hatful of chances, but ultimately was Pakistan's top scorer by a long way.

ah ok
just thought your team looked odd and was based on batting position on this game lol which is why I was wandering on some of the selections.

[Dr Cricket]

Journo watch and at the moment newman choosing not to critzise England and praise Pakistan.
berry choosing to attack the team and saying that stokes is so crucial to the side and without him england feeble, but yet again berry being weird on the pitches and really if he linking oval to asian condition then it really isn't surprising england got a poor record in london now.
berry being weird and hypocritical about pitch since england basically playing on the same pitch that he said 2-3 month ago would make england a better all round team and that they should produce 4 green decks.

[Dr Cricket]

Butcher talking a lot of sense in the verdict.

[Durhamfootman]

London grounds continue to let England down........ still, plenty of money will have been made, so everythings good......... presumably

[The Professor]

Was there today. Was very impressed with the Pakistan support.

[Dr Cricket]

Was there today. Was very impressed with the Pakistan support.

when I been to the cricket this summer they been impressive as well, so loud for not that many people although today oval looked quite packed with pakistani supporters.

[Dr Cricket]

wow didn't realise broad only took 13 wickets and Anderson 9 wicket there is a pretty good reason why england drew 2-2 as well.
might actually be a first series in england after a long time those two didn't take more than 15 wickets in a series.
at least combined they would take 30 wickets even in the short 2 or 3 test series.

at the stats looks like england dominated the run scoring although in reality pakistan batsman scored the crucial runs more and in the wickets pakistan mostly dominated with Sohail khan, Yasir Shah and Mohammad amir in the top 5 with only Woakes and broad in it.

[backfootpunch]

wow didn't realise broad only took 13 wickets and Anderson 9 wicket there is a pretty good reason why england drew 2-2 as well.
might actually be a first series in england after a long time those two didn't take more than 15 wickets in a series.
at least combined they would take 30 wickets even in the short 2 or 3 test series.

at the stats looks like england dominated the run scoring although in reality pakistan batsman scored the crucial runs more and in the wickets pakistan mostly dominated with Sohail khan, Yasir Shah and Mohammad amir in the top 5 with only Woakes and broad in it.

Woakes did take an enormous amount of wickets

Which drastically limits the amounts other bowlers can take

And we do play 5 bowlers

We lost because 3 of our top 5 are useless, the seamers were excellent on some flat wickets

[Dr Cricket]

TBH it 4.5 bowlers ali doesn't bowl much although he did take 11 wicket so the big 2 got less opportunities to take wickets but even then no real killer spell from Anderson or broad in this series which doesn't happen too often in england or anywhere in the world.

TBH england did bowl well but at the same time they could have done so much better, pakistan batting isn't that strong if they bowled like this against stronger batting line up they could get destroyed and actually lose the series.

in general both the batting and bowling was poor.
in batting 3 of the top 5 were poor but Cook,Root and the lower order scored enough runs to actually win test matches.
bowling was good at times but ok and poor in other times probably didn't help england dropped on average 2 chances an innings so they had to take 25-27 wickets a game to win test matches.
Fielding was awful.

pakistan shouldn't have won 2 test matches in england and compete in another.
not many positives in this series.

while watching the series I felt Anderson and broad were less threatening which is so weird to watch since in general they been the two most threatening bowlers in world cricket in all conditions.

[Dr Cricket]

See bumble being an embarrassment again on twitter.
in the past 2-3 yrs Bumble been quite embarrassing on twitter and is basically a very old clueless man been effecting his commentary work as well.

not really sure why he doesn't like subcontinent cricket either since before he wasn't too fussed about pitches, conditions, doctoring and so Australia, NZ, SA,Eng biased on the tv or twitter.

End of the day hard to take anyone views on pitches seriously when they don't watch or play or even work in the subcontinent seriously and really is a joke when people question subcontinental batting stats and now are worried they batting stats are going to be crap because subcontinental pitches have too much help for the bowlers lol.

only people that don't watch or play cricket in the subcontinent would want the old pitches.

[Aidan11]

Didn't see yesterday's play but no surprise we lost. Just good to make Pakistan bat again.


Honours even and a good test series.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Was Broad's sledge by tweet, and subsequent fine a sign of things to come. Sort of a very slow motion misdemeanour.

[Dr Cricket]

seems like the players are trying to big up the 2-2 draw against pakistan.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricke ... ctful.html

[Gingerfinch]

seems like the players are trying to big up the 2-2 draw against pakistan.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricke ... ctful.html

Is that bigging it up?