Fifth Test: India v England, 16-20 Dec (Chennai)

[Arthur Crabtree]

England don't seem to be improving on saving games with the bat. The attacking way has failed too often for them to keep trying that method.

Not a defeat on the scale of the Ashes 5-0 or UAE whitewash, but a great gulf in class. Well done to India. Could well win in England next time.

Agenda:
Review the spinner policy
Change the captain
Try and get Wood fit
Find a middle order bat

[budgetmeansbudget]

Erm so what happened?

Didn't bother to watch because it looked a nailed-on draw for a village side. Saw it was four down and thought no chance.

Aidan will be fuming.

haven't seen him post for a few days, maybe he pre-emptively destroyed his router with an axe just in case

It's been a while.

He hasn't been posting as much in recent months.

I think he went missing before for a few weeks. Decorating the house may have been the reason if I remember rightly.

[Dr Cricket]

should remember it is Christmas and people do have lives he would probably start posting when Durham play cricket again or if England start being crap again, sod that we won't see him till may.
England don't exactly play much cricket till next summer and Durham don't play much cricket in the winter.

[Dr Cricket]

Series Stats

Most Runs
Kohli 655 runs average 109.16
Root 491 runs average 49.10
Pujara 401 runs 50.12
Ali 381 runs 42.33
Cook 369 runs 36.90
Vijay 357 runs 44.62
Bairstow 352 runs 44.00
Stokes 345 runs 38.33
Nair 320 runs 160
Ashwin 306 43.71

If anything Ali stat mirrors how england played stats look good but he wasn't even close to being good enough in this series with the bat.
if anything Ali mirrors England very nicely always does enough to be picked in the team but not enough to actually win games or secure his spot in the team.

Most wickets England just look away
Ashwin 28 wickets at 30.25 at strike rate 65.8
Jadeja 26 wickets at 25.84 at strike rate 66.9
Rashid 23 wickets at 37.43 at strike rate 60.6
Shami 10 wickets at 25.00 at strike rate 61.8
Ali 10 wickets at 64.90 at strike rate 112.9
J Yadav 9 wickets 29.55 at strike rate 54.3
Broad 8 wickets 31.00 at strike rate 66.7
Stokes 8 wickets 44.62 at strike rate 79.7
Yadav 8 wickets 58 at strike rate 107.8

[braveneutral]

Looking at some of the Indian averages you wouldn't think that some of the wickets were as easy to come by as they at times were.

[Dilbert]

Ashwin's numbers look "bad" because of Chennai, else he has bowled pretty well.

[budgetmeansbudget]

should remember it is Christmas and people do have lives he would probably start posting when Durham play cricket again or if England start being crap again, sod that we won't see him till may.
England don't exactly play much cricket till next summer and Durham don't play much cricket in the winter.

But we're talking about Aidan here, 45k plus posts. Leader of the pack!

[Dr Cricket]

lol just to answer Hope question.
The star logo is india sponsor.
basically Murdoch sponsor india cricket team.
Star is the indian version of Fox/Sky.

Star been sponsoring Indian cricket since Sahara pulled out.

[Making_Splinters]

Shame about the collapse today, I'd have happily settled for a 3 - 0 result as a much better than expected return. If anything it serves as a fitting end to a series where England have been in much better positions than expected only to throw it away.

Still, all said and done, I think England have done pretty well this tour, a few catches clung on to and we'd have won some key moments and maybe even a match. I was nihilistic about our chances in this series, and despite the scoreline I don't think we've been embarrassed at any stage. No one expected England to get much from this tour, and we got two top order prospects, a vastly more mature Ali and Stokes, and Buttler playing a decent hand on occasion. If anything I'd say the loss to Bangladesh was far worse than anything we've had in India, maybe it's because we got into those situations where more seemed possible that the negativity has sprung up.

I hope Cook stays on as skipper - I never thought I'd type that - because right now England need the solid hand at the tiller to whether the pointless negativity about this series result.

While no where near as bad as 1999, this could be the series we look back on in a few years and see where England started to make the big improvements towards being a top test side.

Now, if only we could find a decent spinner, but that's very much a domestic problem first and foremost. There were probably only 4 spinners who took more than 30 wickets last season in the LVCC, heck the ebst spinner in Division 2 was a batsman who bowls spin part time. Something needs to be done about that before we can hope to see the next Swann or even Monty coming into the side.

[m@tt]

My pre-series prediction was a 4-1 win for India, with England doing enough in one game to win. As it was, they almost did that in the first Test. After that, it was quite desperate. Some promise shown from a number of players, but overall we've been far short of the standard India have set.

On the captaincy, it feels like Cook is just waiting for it to end. It may have been an honest answer, but like Bell last year, saying you're thinking about it means it's on your mind and suggests you're not completely focused. I think we need to stop worrying about what it could do to Root and instead think about the positives it would bring. Other batsman have stepped up a level with the captaincy - we've seen it recently with Smith and Du Plessis, who we'll face in the next 12 months. Maybe it won't work, but I'd rather us give Root a go.

Despite the result, I think we know ten of our best XI: 01 Cook 02 Hameed 03 Jennings 04 Root (c) 05 Ali 06 Stokes 07 Bairstow (wk) 08 ??? 09 Woakes 10 Broad 11 Anderson

With Wood and Ball as next-in-line bowlers - Anderson may be finished after the next Ashes tour, at which point they'll get more chances and it will only be a matter of time before the Currans are getting call-ups. I think we need to look past Finn, sadly.

Who that 11th place goes to is a big question. Buttler? Rashid? Dawson? Someone new?

Understatement: spin remains a big problem. It will be interesting to see if Leach can continue his form for Somerset, or whether he'll be a one-season wonder like Riley a few years ago (in part thanks to Loughborough messing with his action). Similarly there will be more attention on Rayner.

In a few ways, England/ECB have brought this upon themselves. The county schedule. County pitches (and fines for "unfit" turners). Loughborough interference. Recent Lions tours without 4-day games. I'll also bring up the Sri Lanka series from 2 years ago - England left out Stokes, blaming lack of match practice (he had more than Broad and Prior, who did play) but the whispers were than it was punishment for punching the locker, and Ali was picked as a like-for-like, a #6 batsman who could bowl. There's a lot to like about Ali, but looking back you wonder if this was short-sighted - England could have picked and backed a specialist spinner, whoever that may have been (and I admit the options were uninspiring). Instead Ali got a century with the bat and couldn't be dropped.

[bigfluffylemon]

England don't seem to be improving on saving games with the bat. The attacking way has failed too often for them to keep trying that method.

Not a defeat on the scale of the Ashes 5-0 or UAE whitewash, but a great gulf in class. Well done to India. Could well win in England next time.

Agenda:
Review the spinner policy
Change the captain
Try and get Wood fit
Find a middle order bat

Yup. We can't keep shoehorning Moeen and Stokes into the middle order. They don't both fit.

[bigfluffylemon]

Dobell is spot on here:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/india-v-eng ... 73564.html

Relieving Cook of the captaincy might allow him to improve his batting (it might not), but it won't be an easy fix for England's woes with batting and spin bowling.

[sussexpob]

The argument about spinners and county cricket is a complete red herring. One team produced pitches that helped spinners, and what happened to their best spinner? He took the most wickets in the league, and got overlooked for the test team in place of three batsman who served up pies, a 37 year old has been who had failed already, and another guy who's probably only there as an allrounder because he bats.

England need to pluck a spinner out of thin air according to Dobell et al. I would suggest that they dont need to magic one up, they might do well to start picking the most obvious one on current evidence. Quite how a team with no established spinner can ignore a guy who smashed teams for fun at times in the domestic competition is totally beyond me. It would be like England football team playing a defender upfront in a world cup, because some 21 year old striker who just appeared from nowhere scored 30 goals the season of the tournament, but yeah, its only for one year so how can you trust that?

One season wonder? Not ready? Great arguments, but when you pick a part time spinner who takes just over a wicket a game over him, then you are hardly answering more question by doing that.

Rubbish selection again.

[Making_Splinters]

I think those crying out for Leach, should take a long hard look at what has happened to Kerrigan's career. He came to promise when we were serving up turning pitches week after week to suit him, he was thrown into international cricket on a surface that didn't help spinners, got bashed for 6 overs and was never seen again. He's still a shadow of the bowler he was before that incident.

Leach may be the answer, but he's got problems with his action that in the current game will get picked up within a series and that'll be the end for him.

Or let's not forget Somerset's last promising spinner, a young Irish lad who the media were worrying about being poached by England after good performances at the international level, last I checked he was released from his contract a season or two ago.

The problem is the pitches at county level suit medium pace bowlers, that's why we don't have many genuine quicks or spinners, also why our batsmen can not naturally play spin bowling. Those who do show promise are not nurtured, they are thrown into the deep end then the second their performances go south they are swiftly dropped. Heck even counties like Durham who don't have a spinner are far too quick to dump promising talent from their seconds.

If you look at the overseas players coming in next season, there's a lot of spinners on that list. Why? Because Counties can't be bothered with taking the time and investment of developing their own.

Hopefully England will start picking Ali in the same way he is domestically and stop using him as a spinner blocking the path for others into the side.

England were never going to match the standard of India in India with this side, I think they did pretty well,

[Making_Splinters]

England don't seem to be improving on saving games with the bat. The attacking way has failed too often for them to keep trying that method.

Not a defeat on the scale of the Ashes 5-0 or UAE whitewash, but a great gulf in class. Well done to India. Could well win in England next time.

Agenda:
Review the spinner policy
Change the captain
Try and get Wood fit
Find a middle order bat

We don't need to find a middle order bat, we've got to hope that Jennings builds on his promise.