There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby sussexpob » Tue Apr 03, 2018 9:40 pm

So the Lions matter now? Didnt Livingstone score 120 odd in a Lions game vs South Africa in summer?

Didnt Livingstone score 90 odd in the tour game before this series? A feat that got him dropped for the second game......


England have ignored Lions performances for an age, Vince had a disaster trip to UAE as well as Ball, and both got the test go ahead the following summer despite being the worst two players. Make it irrelevant, then complain people arent taking it seriously enough?

Knowing Flower, the players had stayed up till 5am in the morning revising for his test on particle physics, and were too tired to bat.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby sussexpob » Tue Apr 03, 2018 9:45 pm

It is strange though. I wonder how many International teams would turn round and say "the pot is empty", when the champions of their domestic league had a 20 year old averaging comfortably over 40, having played 3 full seasons of test cricket.

Could you imagine Englands football manager coming out and saying "nah, got no strikers" while a 20 year old was banging his way to a 3rd consecutive 20 goal premier league season?
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby Durhamfootman » Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:03 pm

I firmly believe that his comment about nobody at home putting their hand up has Flower written all over it
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:10 pm

Whoever comes in will have the advantage of a home summer rather than a rather tough tour of Australia and NZ. But then Vince/Stoneman/Malan started at home and most of the rest were experienced players.

At the moment only A&B feel certs among the bowlers. I'd guess TRJ will play if fit having avoided the fate of playing in two away losing series. It would be crazy to block off Leach. Though England's lower middle order batting would be scattered with these four.

I suppose Livingstone has to be next in line for a batting slot. Malan the most deserving of the new trio. Stokes, Root and Bairstow are inked in. Cook will play if he doesn't retire.

Query/Cook/Root/Malan/Livingstone/Stokes/Bairstow/Broad/R-Jones/Leach/Anderson.

Got a feeling Vince will start though!
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:11 pm

Durhamfootman wrote:I firmly believe that his comment about nobody at home putting their hand up has Flower written all over it


No wonder Gilo didn't fancy re-entering the bubble!
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby m@tt » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:01 pm

Arthur Crabtree wrote:
Durhamfootman wrote:I firmly believe that his comment about nobody at home putting their hand up has Flower written all over it


No wonder Gilo didn't fancy re-entering the bubble!

Nah, it more that he just didn't have the time to be both a selector and the King of Spain. Just wasn't workable.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby ianp1970 » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:14 pm

With Ali and Woakes having both been dropped, only 3 ODI players remain in the test team - Root, Stokes & Bairstow. Combined with the relatively relaxed winter 2018/19 schedule, there shouldn't be many complaints of burnout or fatigue come CWC 2019!
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby m@tt » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:18 pm

sussexpob wrote:So the Lions matter now? Didnt Livingstone score 120 odd in a Lions game vs South Africa in summer?

Didnt Livingstone score 90 odd in the tour game before this series? A feat that got him dropped for the second game......

England have ignored Lions performances for an age, Vince had a disaster trip to UAE as well as Ball, and both got the test go ahead the following summer despite being the worst two players. Make it irrelevant, then complain people arent taking it seriously enough?

Knowing Flower, the players had stayed up till 5am in the morning revising for his test on particle physics, and were too tired to bat.


Livingstone got an international debut, albeit in a T20, following that 120 against South Africa, and made the New Zealand tour. He may not have played (and I do think he should have played over Vince), despite the warm-up score, but it's hardly like they've been ignoring him.

The Lions has always mattered. Pretty much every new cap has progressed through the Lions to the senior team. And many of them have been watched from age group cricket onwards. It's more an argument over what is prioritised once you're in the Lions set up.

It's not just a case of score a century and you get a promotion. There's supposedly long-term thinking behind it all. And they look at other stuff, temperament and toughness and all of that - which from another perspective is 'if your face fits...' and each person will have their own opinion on where it goes on the BS scale.

You could apply 'face-fitting' to Dawson's selection last winter. Vince is one where he was earmarked for selection long ago, pre-Flower. It seems the right time to give him a go - in 2016 anyway, it was nonsense to recall him for the Ashes, though he did also seem to pass the Flower Test which doesn't seem to be the best acid test out there. Ball was picked following good performances for Notts.

So there's definitely this big pathway in place. The flip side of it, though, is perhaps it makes things too easy for players. You're 21, playing Championship cricket and already you're in the de facto England 2nd XI. And we're seeing a bunch of players come through who are decent enough but not quite good enough. It might just be bad luck, or they might be connected.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby sussexpob » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:56 pm

m@tt wrote:Livingstone got an international debut, albeit in a T20, following that 120 against South Africa, and made the New Zealand tour. He may not have played (and I do think he should have played over Vince), despite the warm-up score, but it's hardly like they've been ignoring him


Livingstone went to SL with the Lions last year..... he scored something like 60, 100 and another unbeaten 100 in two games. He came back and hit a 130 odd in the first Lions opportunity he had in the summer of 2017. He didnt feature in the 4 day game, and was instead put into the T20 team to fail, because he isnt a T20 cricketer. He didnt excel in the two games in the WI, but came back and hit 90 for England in the warm up game.

How the national team coach can say there is no one there? 3 hundreds in as many matches and is overlooked. Comes back to form.... and they pick a guy who averages 22 in a lot of games over him.

If the Lions means something, then the coach wouldnt be saying that, and Livingstone would be a test cap.

Foakes averaged 70 this year for the Lions too.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby sussexpob » Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:51 pm

m@tt wrote: The Lions has always mattered. Pretty much every new cap has progressed through the Lions to the senior team. And many of them have been watched from age group cricket onwards. It's more an argument over what is prioritised once you're in the Lions set up. It's not just a case of score a century and you get a promotion. There's supposedly long-term thinking behind it all. And they look at other stuff, temperament and toughness and all of that - which from another perspective is 'if your face fits...' and each person will have their own opinion on where it goes on the BS scale......So there's definitely this big pathway in place


To me, it would occur that your post above highlights the Orwellian nature of Flower and the ECB's state "doublethink" towards player pathway nonsense. We are both to place faith in two very distinct and contrasting ideas; the first is that success has been mapped out to the nth degree with the successful blueprint being the be all and end all that governs player progression. The second is that in parallel, there is also a huge subjective judgement taking place on a case by case basis. If the pathway system in place has any validity, then why is subjectivity coming into the system? Such a move would highlight the inconvenient truth that the pathway is not the scientific process it is argued to be, the mechanics in play with the system actually highlight its own weakness.

In the end, it seems that the ECB's player pathway model is simply a paper trial for a system that is designed only for the self-preservation of those who created it. In that way, its unshakably infallible; a player fails inside the system, and the player is questioned as not being able to pass through the systems goals. A player fails on subjective judgement, and it affirms the pathway system, as they didnt pass through it and therefore were never really prepared in the best way. I have to admit, its a work of genius in how little individual accountability it places on those who administer it.

The key is, the apparent pseudo-complexity of the system and the scientific concepts that make it create enough of a smokescreen to suck people into believing it; dare I say Matt, that your post above highlights it. The plan is so detailed and complex we cant understand it, but I think a better conclusion is there is actually no plan whatsoever. The vagueness of the strategy is covered by its very nature.

While most of England's caps end in the Lions, Lions performance clearly doesnt have a basis on elevation. There is no clear criteria of what is expected from the Lions players. Some display form and never get elevated, some abjectly fail and are in next available test. At current the Lions has several test "failures" in it, like Jennings who seems to be the ever present at the moment. If he was considered good enough for extra attention, why was he dropped after 3 tests with a 100 to his name, while a plus 30 year old replaced him and has got 3 times the tests with a similar record and no hundred away in India to fall back on?

Why is Vince able to fail in loads of tests, get capped after a hugely embarrassing series v Pakistan where he scored 26 runs in 5 innings, and get repicked last test with 8 matches since his last one without a 50. Sam Robson performed better than all our last handful of batting caps to this point, he averaged 76 in 2016 County Season and watched as England picked 4 openers above.

You could go on and on. Stokes couldnt bowl this series, do England really believe with hardly any preparation and a criminal charge above him that he was in the position to be one of our top 6 batters available? Mason Crane was a huge prospect a month ago, now he is disappearing despite the message from Flower they would stick with him only a couple of weeks ago. Players need to know what is expected of them. In fact, a lot of problems with England probably stem from the fact that the players dont know what whims their selectors and coaches have. Of course though, the inability to cope with such BS is a sign of weakness. So the players who cant perform in this insane environment are not good enough anyway.

Slowly but surely, we are fading back to the 1990s style where some players get endless opportunities to be mediocre, while we flick through and dispense with careers at the touch of a button in other cases. No scheme, no thought processes, and all the talk of longevity and grand plans, but little display of it. And what happened in the 90s was to create a toxic atmosphere, where players jettisoned from the national team after inadequate amounts of time simply drifted and became average in county cricket, lowering standards across the board.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby Durhamfootman » Wed Apr 04, 2018 8:20 pm

ianp1970 wrote:With Ali and Woakes having both been dropped, only 3 ODI players remain in the test team - Root, Stokes & Bairstow. Combined with the relatively relaxed winter 2018/19 schedule, there shouldn't be many complaints of burnout or fatigue come CWC 2019!

I think Ali will be back in the test side quite quickly. He has had a fair bit of success in home conditions, so as long as he makes a decent start to the season with Worcs, and there's no reason why he shouldn't (apart from winter tiredness), he could be back at 8 at some stage, and perhaps even in time for the first test against Pakistan. Moeen at 8 solves a lot of problems for the England selectors, I think.

Of course that doesn't help England for the next winter tour, but England don't think that far ahead, as far as I can tell
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby m@tt » Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:47 pm

sussexpob wrote:
m@tt wrote:Livingstone got an international debut, albeit in a T20, following that 120 against South Africa, and made the New Zealand tour. He may not have played (and I do think he should have played over Vince), despite the warm-up score, but it's hardly like they've been ignoring him


Livingstone went to SL with the Lions last year..... he scored something like 60, 100 and another unbeaten 100 in two games. He came back and hit a 130 odd in the first Lions opportunity he had in the summer of 2017. He didnt feature in the 4 day game, and was instead put into the T20 team to fail, because he isnt a T20 cricketer. He didnt excel in the two games in the WI, but came back and hit 90 for England in the warm up game.

How the national team coach can say there is no one there? 3 hundreds in as many matches and is overlooked. Comes back to form.... and they pick a guy who averages 22 in a lot of games over him.

If the Lions means something, then the coach wouldnt be saying that, and Livingstone would be a test cap.

Foakes averaged 70 this year for the Lions too.

Livingstone's twin centuries for the Lions was the first in over a decade (KP did so in ~2004). When England selected Malan last summer, I wanted Livingstone as Malan didn't really have much behind him in the way of first-class runs. Livingstone had a very, very good case to be selected. And Vince certainly had a poor case for his Ashes selection.

I can kind of see what Bayliss means, in that in terms of recent runs there isn't anyone because it's winter (so no county cricket) and the Lions tour was unproductive. But I don't agree with how he's put it across, because there certainly are players out there who have shown over the last few years that they are the best uncapped players out there. FWIW, he did namecheck both Livingstone and Foakes as possibilities for the summer, but you'd expect that given they're in the squad already.

R.e. your longer post - not much to add to it. I do like the Lions setup in that it creates that pathway and gives opportunities to younger players. But as you suggest, it does seem like some players have to jump through fewer hoops, or more hoops, depending on what was already thought of them. I have a lot of respect for Flower and what he did with the senior team, despite how it ended, but I do also query (perhaps in softer terms than others!) whether it's the right role for him.

Let's just hope that Livingstone, Hameed, Foakes, Lawrence, Clarke et al make good runs over the next few rounds of county matches. I'd imagine that the new selector will be keen to put their own stamp on things and not just keep hoping the same guys will suddenly start performing to the required level and consistency.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby m@tt » Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:50 pm

Durhamfootman wrote:
ianp1970 wrote:With Ali and Woakes having both been dropped, only 3 ODI players remain in the test team - Root, Stokes & Bairstow. Combined with the relatively relaxed winter 2018/19 schedule, there shouldn't be many complaints of burnout or fatigue come CWC 2019!

I think Ali will be back in the test side quite quickly. He has had a fair bit of success in home conditions, so as long as he makes a decent start to the season with Worcs, and there's no reason why he shouldn't (apart from winter tiredness), he could be back at 8 at some stage, and perhaps even in time for the first test against Pakistan. Moeen at 8 solves a lot of problems for the England selectors, I think.

Of course that doesn't help England for the next winter tour, but England don't think that far ahead, as far as I can tell

If Leach becomes first choice and does well, then I'm not sure Moeen does fit in, at least at home. For the winter tours to Sri Lanka and the West Indies, he can be the second spinner batting at 7 or 8, depending on how we balance the attack.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby Making_Splinters » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:15 pm

Bayliss said the other day that Leach is the man in possession of the spinners spot. England are highly unlikely to play two spinners at home so it's pretty hard to see a way back for Ali unless he has a blistering start to the season with the bat and maybe comes in at three. That said, you'd have thought that providing Triple L continues to score runs he'd be the next man in.

In fact, it's a season to be scoring early runs as a Lancashire batsman: Hameed, Jennings, Triple L and Davies all could put their hand potentially up for selection should Stoneman or Vince not have the best of starts. In fact Hameed actually scored some runs for the first time in a while the other day, made 120 odd in the UAE against Glamorgan.
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Re: There may be troubles ahead: England selection issues.

Postby The Professor » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:27 pm

The main thing Ali has over Leach is he offers much more with the bat.
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