India in England Aug-Sep 2021 (& July 2022)

[sussexpob]

Hameed for Crawley. I'd expect Crawley will be back, but he needs to work on his defensive tecnhnique....Ramprakash disagrees and the thinks he should be practicing back foot scoring strokes. Maybe a clue why Ramps never made it at this level

[Arthur Crabtree]

Picking Haseeb feels like a blindfolded throw of the dice.

Wood for Broad. Anderson plays.

Moeen for Lawrence.

Batting looks even weaker.

Ishant in for Thakur.

[Arthur Crabtree]

England won the toss and bowled. Captain always gets a pasting if it backfires.

[bigfluffylemon]

Never ever win the toss and bowl at Lord's.

[Arthur Crabtree]

I thought you looked up not down aat Lord's.

[sussexpob]

Never ever win the toss and bowl at Lord's.

Its not looking a great decision so far.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Wicket though, for Jimmy the Saint. Nice platform for the middle order.

[yuppie]

England won the toss and bowled. Captain always gets a pasting if it backfires.

Well this has aged well

[yuppie]

In fairness and English captain should loose their job if they are one main bowler down and put the opposition in to bat at Lords.....

[Durhamfootman]

asking a team to bat first and then conceding 276-3 is never a good look

perhaps Root thought they'd stop batting after the first hundred legal deliveries and go and have a cuppa

[bigfluffylemon]

Never ever win the toss and bowl at Lord's.

Its not looking a great decision so far.

It very seldom is. By the stats:
Since 2000, teams winning the toss at Lord's have chosen to bat first 19 times. Of those, they have won 10, drawn 6 and lost 3, for a W/L ratio of 3.33. England have only lost one game at Lord's in 20 years after winning the toss and batting.
Conversely, teams winning the toss at Lord's since 2000 have chosen to bowl an astonishing 23 times (not including this game), which shows how seductive the overheads can be. Despite that, they have won 7, lost 10 and drawn 7, for a W/L ratio of 0.7. To be fair to England, they are the team that has had the most success doing this (never ever ever choose to bowl here if you win the toss as a tourist), but three of England's five wins when choosing to bowl here came before 2012 against very weak West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe teams - teams that were so weak in those tours that England would have beaten them easily regardless of the toss (two innings wins and one by 5 wickets).

To be somewhat fair to England, last time India toured, England won the toss and bowled at Lord's and beat them by an innings, as the overheads were brutal on day 2 (after no play on day 1) then it became very nice for batting on day 3. But this is the only occasion since 2012 that a team has won choosing to bowl first at Lord's. And this time around the forecast is set pretty fair. Cloud at Lord's suckers teams into bowling far more than often than they should given its history.

One factor seems to be that even if you do get the opposition for a sub-par score in the first innings (which does happen fairly often), the second and third innings are typically easiest to bat on, while the pitch tends to be pretty challenging to bat on in the 4th innings (no team has successfully chased more than 200 to win here since 2004). So even if you do get the opposition for a poor score in the 1st innings, you still have the huge disadvantage of batting last.

Looks as if we'll be adding another to the 'bowl first and lose at Lord's' stat entry...

[alfie]

I am generally an advocate of win the toss and bat - or think about it and then bat , etc. However on this occasion both teams were keen to bowl first so its probably one of those days where the skipper who loses the toss can count himself lucky.
Of course for all we know England might have lost four before lunch and been dismissed for 200 so too late to worry about it now.

Conditions looked pretty good for bowling early on ; but the ball didn't really do a great deal even at the start - hence why England were so persistent in trying to persuade the umpires to get it changed. Think they might have made the Indian openers play a little more in the initial period but in truth Rohit and Rahul just played really well : got forward on the slow pitch to cover movement , left well outside off and simply picked up any easy runs to leg when the bowlers got too straight...classic openers batting plan. And of course they both blossomed as conditions got easier. Hats off to the two of them.

Contrast to the two R's , Pujara looked all at sea , and Kohli wasn't his usual commanding self. Which points up how well the openers played. Anderson mostly steady as ever and one incisive spell , Robinson mixed but very good late with the second new ball ; Wood a bit expensive though he bowled with a lot of pace and was arguably a bit unlucky a couple of times. But Curran really didn't have a good day : some good deliveries which beat the bat but far too much dross. Slow pitch + not much late swing = trouble for Sam's style. And Moeen , while tidy enough , was never going to be a factor on day one. Leach wouldn't have been ,either.

Getting Kohli near the death at least means a couple of early strikes on Friday could see this innings kept under some control. But if they don't get early wickets while the ball is new I fear for the fielding team when Pant and Jadeja do get to the crease ...

Important morning coming up.

[sussexpob]

England into India early. Rahul goes and so does Rahane for nothing on the board.

[mikesiva]

When I look at this packed crowd, no social distancing and no face coverings, a shiver runs down my spine.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Problem for England is they have so little hope of responding to runs on the board. Is this XI capable of 400 against an ok attack?