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Reports that Stokes will bat at three!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1860 ... sl-2018-19

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Reports that Stokes will bat at three!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1860 ... sl-2018-19

But later in the article has Butler batting at 3.

Mail
Joe Root has urged his team to keep attacking Sri Lanka's bowlers as England go in search of their first Test series win here for 17 years.

His batsmen came in for criticism at Galle last week after they reached lunch on the first day five wickets down. But England have maintained that the rate at which they scored their runs in that first session – 113 at 3.9 an over – put the Sri Lankans under pressure and made life easier for their lower-middle order.
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I worry that Burns will not be able to play his natural game with those instructions. Root will find it hard to get to 50, never mind 100 and Stokes at 3 will be very confused. He recently has played cautiously - 62 (275), 30 (157), 23 (102). Hopefully that isn't going to change.

Root says it was made easier for the middle order - rubbish, they had to repair the damage of 103/5 by sensible batting.

westoelad wrote:

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Reports that Stokes will bat at three!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1860 ... sl-2018-19

But later in the article has Butler batting at 3.

Probably forgot to change it. Other sites are reporting that Stokes is at three.

Slipstream wrote:Mail
Joe Root has urged his team to keep attacking Sri Lanka's bowlers as England go in search of their first Test series win here for 17 years.

His batsmen came in for criticism at Galle last week after they reached lunch on the first day five wickets down. But England have maintained that the rate at which they scored their runs in that first session – 113 at 3.9 an over – put the Sri Lankans under pressure and made life easier for their lower-middle order.

Got to be nonsense, hasn't it?

Arthur Crabtree wrote:

westoelad wrote:

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Reports that Stokes will bat at three!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1860 ... sl-2018-19

But later in the article has Butler batting at 3.

Probably forgot to change it. Other sites are reporting that Stokes is at three.

Interestingly though both Athers and Newman state that Butler was down to bat at 3 in Galle has England batted 2nd.

westoelad wrote:

Arthur Crabtree wrote:

westoelad wrote:

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Reports that Stokes will bat at three!

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/1860 ... sl-2018-19

But later in the article has Butler batting at 3.

Probably forgot to change it. Other sites are reporting that Stokes is at three.

Interestingly though both Athers and Newman state that Butler was down to bat at 3 in Galle has England batted 2nd.

If one of them is going to bat at 3 the logical decision would seem to be to go with the specialist batsman not the all rounder but all signs are it'll be Stokes even though it would have been Buttler in the first test had the toss been lost.
No doubt there's some logic behind the decision!

Arthur Crabtree wrote:

Slipstream wrote:Mail
Joe Root has urged his team to keep attacking Sri Lanka's bowlers as England go in search of their first Test series win here for 17 years.

His batsmen came in for criticism at Galle last week after they reached lunch on the first day five wickets down. But England have maintained that the rate at which they scored their runs in that first session – 113 at 3.9 an over – put the Sri Lankans under pressure and made life easier for their lower-middle order.

Got to be nonsense, hasn't it?

can't be nonsense..... it's far too smelly to just be nonsense

captaincolly wrote: No doubt there's some logic behind the decision!

I am sure its nothing to do with the selector having far more stake in one players fortunes, than the other.

I wonder if the transformation of Bairstow is a sign of the times.

Take one 5 test run away, one vs very weak bowling attacks on foreign decks that didnt help them, and the transformation in his test game is mostly unnoticeable. He's been pretty average for virtually all his career.

bigfluffylemon wrote: Number 3 has been tricky for England for a while now. Apart from when Trott was in possession (and it's no coincidence we won a lot of games when we had a solid 3 coming in behind two reliable openers) we haven't had a natural 3 for ages. We've either been playing openers there (Vaughan, for example), or players who had the same sort of issues as the current lot (great at 5/6, shite at first drop). Ian Bell, for example. Or just rubbish players (anyone remember when it was Ravi Bopara at 3 at the start of the summer that Trott concluded at 3?)

One drops and openers have other uses than to just score runs, if anything the aforementioned point about how much better England's team gets as they get further away from a new ball is solid proof of this. If you look at the last 5 to 6 years, what are the most impressive wins we have had? For my money, India and South Africa away series...... what is the constant? Nick Compton. Was Nick a great run scorer? No. But playing 1-3, what did he do? Block balls.... lots of them. His SR is not that far from 1 in 3, so even though he averaged just under 30, he's taking 10-15 overs of the game. Thats your Kookaburra stopped moving. The ability to do that, more often than not, can add 10 runs to the average of the next two guys behind you.

Take that South Africa series.....

Test 1..... Compton bats out 350 balls in the test, Root and Taylor score over 200 runs between them.
Test 2... Compton and Hales bat 40 overs together not scoring that many..... England score another 500 runs and break an all time partnership record.
Test 3... Compton bats for 25 overs, Root makes a 100 after him. Compton gets a duck, Root makes 4 (innings ends a few balls after this).
Test 4... Compton bats out 20 overs.... his wicket is followed by a 100 partnership, the next two batters out get over 75. Compton fails in the second dig, England get bowled out for 101


Noticing a theme?

You can go on...

He batted 32 overs to see off the new ball at Mumbai in 2012, KP behind made 186.
He batted with Cook unbroken for 53 overs in Calcutta..... England dominated the game and won it mostly in the first innings.

At the end he came away with a pretty terrible series average, but that ability to see off the new ball is worth its weight in gold. England dont need a 1-3 that scores massive hundreds, just one that can get others in the g and batting at times they can show their best.

I think Ballance record as one drop vs India was good, and slow too...took overs out. Dominated that series.

Westley was similar to Compton, although not as good. Beat South Africa.... interestingly, lost to the Windies in that test match.... one of the few Westley didnt make a start in.

sussexpob wrote:[ what is the constant? Nick Compton. Was Nick a great run scorer? No. But playing 1-3, what did he do? Block balls.... lots of them. His SR is not that far from 1 in 3, so even though he averaged just under 30, he's taking 10-15 overs of the game. Thats your Kookaburra stopped moving. The ability to do that, more often than not, can add 10 runs to the average of the next two guys behind you.

quite right. Amazing how the people in charge don't seem to understand what to most of us is 'the bleeding obvious'

not Compton, per se, although he was unfairly treated imo, but any batsman with that mindset

Compo was treated pretty badly first time around, and was encouraged to play when injured (he says). But he didn't really merit staying in the second time.

Agree with much of the above.

England have struggled to find someone to fill that number 3 specialist spot for a long time though. This century, we are pretty low down the aggregate for number 3 batting averages (and the number of 100s/50s is a little misleading, as we've played more matches than the other teams - the ratio of 100s to games is also one of the worst)
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine ... pe=batting

However, it can be reasonably said that England is one of the hardest places in the world to be a number 3, and that England are massively disadvantaged on this measure by playing most of the games in England. If you look at the numbers, most countries do substantially worse batting at 3 in England than their overall average - but England themselves do better, as do South Africa (Hashim Amla's immense record playing no small part there)
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine ... pe=batting

Batting at 3 in Asia appears to be much easier than doing so in England or in South Africa (no surprise).

Ballance has a surprisingly strong record at 3. I still can't quite work out what happened with him. Given he's been scoring bucketloads of runs in the CC in 2017 and 2018, one can't help but think that England should have managed him better as well. In retrospect, dropping him after the second test of the 2015 Ashes looks like a very harsh decision (he'd had four bad tests in a row, admittedly, but it was only five tests back that he'd scored a ton, and he got a 50 in the first Ashes test). He has then been chopped and changed out of the side, and asked to bat at the top of the order in England, against the likes of Pakistan and South Africa, where most top order players struggle.