First Test: England v Pakistan, Lord's.

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Re: First Test: England v Pakistan, Lord's.

Postby m@tt » Tue May 29, 2018 11:00 pm

ianp1970 wrote:
m@tt wrote:Not good. Not good at all.

Buttler - poor first innings but second innings was encouraging. Still, need centuries not occasional fifties.


Doubt we'll see many centuries at 7! Certainly no more than Bairstow could produce from there...

The old middle order seemed ok - to a certain extent! - with the top order not performing. The selector(s) answer appears to be: move the batting middle order up one (well Bairstow up 2, with Stokes staying put) and replace the bowling middle order with a non-keeping WK and a debutant bowler - albeit one who batted well in the second innings.

Root and Malan (still unproven - but we have bigger fires to deal with first!) both seem a place too high, Bairstow possibly two - if Stokes is cemented at 6 - and we don't have a competent opening pair! How about trying a third opener (Gubbins?) at 3 instead...

Oh for days of Strauss, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Bell :bow:

As an aside Matt, can your search engine calculate a percentage of total centuries scored by those from a no. 7?Even better if it can omit a non-WK/AR...


I do agree regarding Buttler and centuries - I posted the following on the G the other week:

I was thinking about this earlier. He will be batting at #7 which isn't really the position of a specialist batsman.

Bairstow has so far made 3 centuries from 35 innings at #7 (average 42, 38 runs per started innings).

Prior made 4 centuries from 82 innings at #7 (average 41, 34 runs per started innings).

It would be a little unrealistic to expect Buttler, or anyone for that matter, to be making frequent centuries from a position that will often see him batting with the tail, even if (unlike JB/MP) he doesn't have the additional responsibility of keeping wicket.

That said, centuries would definitely help!


So it will be tough for him. But as a specialist batsman rather than a keeper, a bit more will/should be expected of him.

Stats... of keepers batting at #7 to have scored 1000+ runs over past decade (so doesn't cover all of Prior and Dhoni's careers):

Q de Kock - 2.8 innings per 50+ and 8.3 innings per 100+
MJ Prior - 3.3 innings per 50+ and 23 innings per 100+
JM Bairstow - 3.9 innings per 50+ and 10.3 innings per 100+
Sarfraz Ahmed - 4.1 innings per 50+ and 17.7 innings per 100+
MS Dhoni - 4.2 innings per 50+ and 35.5 innings per 100+
BJ Haddin - 4.2 innings per 50+ and 23 innings per 100+
BJ Watling - 5.5 innings per 50+ and 13.8 innings per 100+
D Ramdin - 6.6 innings per 50+ and 19.7 innings per 100+
HAPW Jayawardene - 10.5 innings per 50+ and 21 innings per 100+

Buttler's 50-rate is middling at 4.5, obviously he doesn't have a 100-rate.

And agree that Root and Malan are a spot too high. If Malan fails in the second Test then we should consider bringing in an additional opener (Gubbins or Burns probably) and playing him at #3, because I don't see any specialist #3 options. That said, I'd like to see Clarke or Livingstone (depending on form) but that would involve Buttler dropping out.
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Re: First Test: England v Pakistan, Lord's.

Postby m@tt » Tue May 29, 2018 11:06 pm

bigfluffylemon wrote:I see Vaughan's advocating for dropping Broad and keeping Wood. WTF? Not only does that make no sense in terms of their overall ability, it was the batting that let England down, yet again. For all the travails England have been having, it's been largely down to the batting being hopeless.


I think there's a case for dropping Broad, though he did show a lot of improvement in NZ and we know his value when on-song, whereas I'm not sure how good Wood can be in Tests. But as you say, batting is the greater concern so odd that Vaughan has focused on this.

Also on the Beeb, Simon Hughes has taken a look at the batting. It's also a little odd in that a lot of the conclusions are "Cook is doing it right", yet Cook's been much less reliable than Root, Bairstow and Stokes of late. And he also concluded that Cook is our best batsman because he's not on social media... has he seen Kohli's Instagram account?!
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Re: First Test: England v Pakistan, Lord's.

Postby sussexpob » Wed May 30, 2018 9:14 am

While I dont think its time to sack off Broad now, I think its a healthy discussion to make for the near future. Broad I believe lies somewhere around 5-7th on the list of all time International delivers bowled by pacemen, and those above him retired significantly older than him (10 years in the most extreme case). If he was to play on and retire around 35-36 at a normal age, should have by then have broken the record.

So I do think when we look at him and there are signs of dropping performance, or dropping pace, which has been a problem for Broad even in his late 20s, we do have to take that in context not of his age and normal objective expectations at to dips in performance, but add that subjectivity into the equation. Broad is probably at the physical level most people 35-36 find themselves in, unable to sustain pace or really bowl flat out for long periods of time.

I think therefore that you have to be a bit brutal in assessing his use moving forward. If he was to show another year of dipping pace and performance, its probably likely that such occurrence is more indicative of a gradual and very permanent decline then something temporary.

Like all ageing sportsmen who lose power, speed and a bit of endurance, the question is can that player adapt their game to their new physical limits; I think personally Broad has already done that, and has done for a while, and the answer in his case is that Broad will do well when the ball does something out of hand or off the pitch, but I dont think he has shown he can be consistently useful when it doesnt. Even over his career, away from home, he averages 33 on pitches that arent familiar. And on flat decks, I think we will see him become gradually more blunt.

So, I do get it. I think he doesnt lay down a serious marker this summer, we do have to think about his future as a serious question
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Re: First Test: England v Pakistan, Lord's.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Wed May 30, 2018 11:40 am

Broad is like Cook in that there a buffer between him and the axe, a colleague who's failing worse. Maybe it could be argued he should lose the new ball, but there is a better candidate to be left out.
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