by meninblue » Sun Aug 14, 2011 6:53 am
Players like Broad and Bresnan should be put in context of team composition. Broad is the core player of the team. bresnan still has to get into the core team. rather than looking at statistics of Bresnan with bat and ball, i would think subjectively as per what the team composition needs to be.
Bresnan is a batsmen who can knock a 50+ score and thereby build a partnership of 50+, 100+ , 150 + with other batsmen around him like Prior and Broad. Likewise Broad can do that easily. That is enough for any team for someone batting at 8. As a specialist batsman, he has not shown so far that he can knock a big hundred. So he should not bat at 6. He can be promoted to 7 . I do not see an issue with him on subcontinent with his long reach of front foot, both against pacers and spinners, given his okay technique. Short pitched bowling on subcontinent wickets are not tough to negotiate, unless you have someone like Morkel who kicks off the ball from good length. However will wait and observe his batting in sub continent to see how is technique is against spin on spin friendly wickets.
As a bowler Bresnan swings it both ways and reverses the old one enough. He can control the ball well when it swings and map his line as needed. Good bouncer, but the yorker is what he needs to polish. Lands the ball on the seam quiet frequently too which makes such a difference to his bowling. He is well capable of taking five fer. On subcontinent he will have to make way for second spinner.
Broad and Bresnan are five fer bowlers and the best lower order batsman across all teams as of now. They field well. Broad took a good catch yesterday in the outfield, Bresnan was given the slip position, so apparently it seems that he has good reflexes. I would put Bresnan in context of the team composition rather than looking at his runs and bowling statistics.
My team would be: (at home) Alistair,Strauss,Trott,KP,Bell,Prior,Bresnan,Broad,Swann,James and Tremlett
(on subcontinent) Alistair,Strauss,Trott,KP,Bell,Prior,Broad,Swann,James,(specialist spinner) and Tremlett
Test FL's - 8 , ODI and Tests Combo FL's - 1, ODI World Cup - 1, ODI FL's - 7, ODI and T20i combo FL's - 1 ,
T20 Franchisee FL's - 7, T20i Cup FL's- 1, T20 FL's- 5 , 50 Overs Domestic FL's - 1, 40 Overs Domestic FL's- 1