3rd Test: India v England at Mohali on Nov 26-30

[KipperJohn]

England's batting generally has been brittle for as long as I can care to remember.

Without looking at any stats they had a relatively short but consistent period with a top 6 of Cook, Strauss, Trott. KP, Collingwood and Bell. Apart from Root and now perhaps Bairstow, I haven't seen any one in the same league as them when they were at their best. Of course that was never going to last and broke up through acrimony, illness and loss of form.

Factor in the inability to replace Swann to any great degree, the reliance on the performances of Broad and Anderson has been immense.

On paper, the structures with the Lions and performances squads should be paying dividends by now - especially in the batting department.

[Arthur Crabtree]

The process whereby the Lions tested players through fc matches for the Test team mostly ended a few years ago, and its last graduates were Woakes and Taylor, who met a lot of resistance in making progress from that tier. The performance squads don't seem to have worked as well. The A team has though played a fair amount of One Day cricket. And there seems to be more success there bringing players in.

But if the backroom staff are just netting with county stalwarts like Dawson and Vince and passing them on to the national teams, I wonder how well that is working. There was a fair amount of press a couple of years back that the ECB wanted to promote players through Flower's tutelage, rather than the old Lions path where at least you would get some objective evidence of a player's worth through their runs and wickets. I don't have a lot of confidence in the way it is done now. I'd like say, Ansari and Leach playing fc matches in a number of countries so you can have a better idea how/if they will adapt before they even win a cap.

[Slipstream]

I think when a captain has 6 bowlers he gets confused over who to bowl. Stokes and Rashid got the most overs and longer spells so more chances of taking wickets. I can't believe how Ali got so few overs. I even thought he might have been injured. He has a good record against India....26 at 27.76. Had done well against Bangladesh 11 at 22.90 compared to Rashid's 7. Even Batty got more overs than Ali. 16 overs to Ali's 13. Spinners like long spells and 2 overs before lunch and 2 after for Ali is pointless. Rashid went 16 overs from one wicket to the next.

[hopeforthebest]

England decided that the Aussie central contract system was an ideal model but we now see in Australia that it's failing to identify or create new talent as England. The ECB has become a Monolith that feeds off the counties rather simply an association representing counties. It's time to restore the county structure where they seek and develop talent and control the players contracts. Get rid of the division system and revert to all counties playing each other once a year 17 games to remove the desire of players to move counties for greater access to international selection. Time to stop the ECB tail wagging the County dog.

[sussexpob]

I think people are reading far too much into this. England don't bat against spin very well, we've known that for a long time.

as usual the simplest explanation tends to be the most accurate

Cook has arguably one of the best records in Asia of any player to have played a significant amount in the subcontinent. He's scored 5 hundreds in 11 tests in India, and averages more in India than Tendulkar. Root/Stokes/Bairstow all average 50 or more in India. Hameed is a 19 year old that has played well.

This seems like a bit of a tired cliche to me. England's core batting have all played well in these conditions in the past.

Going back further, KP (average 43), Trott (42), Strauss (54), Collingwood (57) have all performed very well in India.

There is not really any stats to back up this point. English batsman have done well in the last 10 years

[Dr Cricket]

Yeah Sussex you are spot on, also you should see how the opposition rate you, it says something that Kohli and indian media rates england as someone challenging india here.

[sussexpob]

Someone else, may have been on here, made teh point that Englands failures in India are generally caused by bowling badly. One glaring example that springs to mind was the 2008 series, when England lost 1-0 I believe, but the test they lost they conceeded 400 runs in the 4th innings, and if memory serves, didnt even come close to bowling out India. They scored something like 400-3 or 400-4 on a spinning track on day 5!!

[sussexpob]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/indveng/eng ... 61050.html

387-4.... even Yuvrag nearly made an unbeaten hundred. Some poor bowling performance that must have been

[Dr Cricket]

lol Dawson get called up do England want to win a test match here.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Dawson seems an unnecessary and slightly dispiriting call up. Ansari is out the tour.

Jennings is selected too. Hard to know if he will be picked ahead of Duckett.

[Dr Cricket]

Don't mind Jennings selection but will be tough on him to face ashwin with no proper cricket or serious preparation.
Dawson selection is joke if ansari and batty a waste of time then so will Dawson.
If they don't trust leach pick another batsman considering the option now is to play 5 bowlers with an extra batsman picked.

[Aidan11]

I think Jennings will just be cover and Duckett will come back in to open.

[sussexpob]

I have to assume that Leach was seen slipping out of Trevor Bayliss' daughters hotel room recently?

[Gingerfinch]

I doubt we'll see Dawsin or Jennings, unless we have more injuries. If we do then the selectors are saying, we messed up.

[Dr Cricket]

if england don't need Dawson or Jenning although they would need jennings to open the innings unless they have Duckett/Balance or both back in the team why pick both in the first place only got 2 test matches left.
Dawson a bit odd unless they think Mumbai/Chennai will be rank turners but if they are Rank turner wouldn't they just pick a better spinner, if the pitches are flat dawson won't even play.