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England Cricket 2023

Stokes should not be going to the IPL. I know he's getting a ludicrous amount of money but he was on one leg last night. If he's out for the Ashes are we going back to Root?
 
Positives of the winter:

Brook, obviously, but also Duckett. Even when he hasn't scored many, Duckett has looked good (dare I say it, he reminds me of David Warner). Not a lot wrong with the bowling unit, especially when you look at who is potentially to come in. Leach will never be a world-beater, but if he's the best there is atm, that's kind of ok.

Negatives:

I think Crawley's time should be up now. For once Gower said it well about his second-innings dismissal - he played a very good ball very badly. He's not up to it, especially as an opener.

And is Pope up to it? It was a nervous, uncertain innings yesterday. I'm yet to be convinced by him yet he's played in more than 30 tests.
 
Crawley's gotta go. Get anyone in, they can't be worse. Get Lees back until Bairstow's fit.

Otherwise I wouldn't change a thing. Pope's decent enough. I mean he's effectively opening the batting so be a bit more generous to him.
 
kabbes said:
I think it’s a useful lesson to the team, actually. Just because you’re great, that doesn’t make you invulnerable. In throwing out the old assumptions, don’t lose the useful wisdom. It’s amazing to win test matches that you had no right to win, but don’t lose ones you had in the bag.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think it's actually surprising that when the defeat did come it was a very narrow one. Since they started with this I think the potential for it all to fall apart and a resultant thrashing has been obvious but the potential for losing by narrow margins not so much.

The new era has obviously been fantastic. Going back to an old theme though the key to NZ's victory was really a proper old school opening partnership in the second innings wasn't it - that's the turning point everything else was built on - and England do still need some degree of resilience from their openers.
 
How come the kiwis only get a 2 test series ? They are a decent test team (as proved) is it a scheduling issue ?
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Positives of the winter:

Brook, obviously, but also Duckett. Even when he hasn't scored many, Duckett has looked good (dare I say it, he reminds me of David Warner). Not a lot wrong with the bowling unit, especially when you look at who is potentially to come in. Leach will never be a world-beater, but if he's the best there is atm, that's kind of ok.

Negatives:

I think Crawley's time should be up now. For once Gower said it well about his second-innings dismissal - he played a very good ball very badly. He's not up to it, especially as an opener.

And is Pope up to it? It was a nervous, uncertain innings yesterday. I'm yet to be convinced by him yet he's played in more than 30 tests.
Click to expand...
Good synopsis. I am probably a little more content with Pope than you. In general I can't fault this England team. Perhaps the most consistent and dangerous batting line up we've ever had (especially with Brook. Every other side would kill to have a new starter like him) combined with the joint best pace attack in the world. If only we had a world class spinner - but Leach seems to have found his role and is good enough right now.
 
marty21 said:
How come the kiwis only get a 2 test series ? They are a decent test team (as proved) is it a scheduling issue ?
Click to expand...
As said, it's down to money. Cricket is massively unbalanced in that regard. Both England and NZ base their payments to players on a formula that includes a certain percentage of revenue. As a result, England test players are paid more than ten times as much as NZ test players. I'm only thankful that so many top New Zealanders remain so committed to test cricket. Not so long ago, most Kiwi cricketers were part-time, so it's an improvement for them all to be fully professional, but given they're the WTC holders, the imbalance is stark.
 
Pope. 3 centuries in 35 matches. Cannot, under almost any circumstances, score second innings runs. He's worse than Crawley.

Last ten second innings.

Crawley 299 at 33

Pope 208 at 23

Suggests to me he does not have the mindset for 5 days.
 
I think this loss is a not a bad thing at all. It’s a reality check before Australia.

Stokes going to the IPL with an injury? That is idiocy. Harmison has been warning Stokes for months not to over do it. Stokes dismissed that advice. I’d be surprised if he’s able to play all 5 tests just as a batter.
 
Well he's getting £1.6m for a few weeks work so you can't really blame him. He's at his peak earning potential. It would be tragic if he's out of the Ashes though. Tough call for him.
 
I get the impression that Stokes is driven more by glory than money. (Also, he earns more than £1million a year for England, so he's not poor.) I also suspect that he won't be around all that much longer. Combination of injuries and mental health will see him jack it in, quite possibly very suddenly. So we need to enjoy him while we can. Once he stops enjoying it, I think he'll walk away.
 
Relentless cricket schedule. ODI against Bangladesh - 183-8 after 43 overs. Wood and Archer seriously quick in tandem, Woakes accurate, Rashid turning the ball square at times.

Batting should be fun - the test team in their current mindset would knock the runs off.
 
WhyLikeThis said:
Cook proposes Root opens.
www.mirror.co.uk

England legend Alastair Cook makes bold opener suggestion ahead of the Ashes

England opener Zak Crawley is under pressure after scoring just 58 runs at an average of 14.50 against New Zealand and Sir Alastair Cook has suggested Joe Root could repace him at the top of the order
www.mirror.co.uk www.mirror.co.uk

Cook should still be playing himself.
Click to expand...

Given that Anderson and Broad (at least) dislike him immensely I don't think he'd be particularly welcome in that dressing room.

And it's SIR Alistair Cook to you thank you. One of the weirdest knighthoods ever but still. Know your place.
 
I've seen them do painful panel sessions - you know the ones - the Sky ones between before the game and between sessions with him in the period when they were dropped, god knows who booked those. 8 hours of awkwardness I imagine off screen. It's fairly obvious they have little respect for him or Strauss.

Could be wrong of course but it was fairly obvious there wasn't much love lost in both cases. Mainly I think because Cook had been pushing for them to be moved on.
 
I guess he did have that excruciating moment with Moeen Ali a while back. Moeen was kind of straight out rude to him, in a quiet Moeen sort of way.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I guess he did have that excruciating moment with Moeen Ali a while back. Moeen was kind of straight out rude to him, in a quiet Moeen sort of way.
Click to expand...
I don't think he was rude, he was just being real and raising a legitimate grievance.

I get the impression that Cooke is one of those superstar cricket people who think leading is just batting well and making decisions out of sight within a clique.
 
I used to knock around with the staff at Lord's indoor school. They knew all the England players and they had a good opinion of Cook. Only one they disliked really was Pietersen.

Doesn't mean he was liked in the team, but at least he didn't strut around off the pitch (which Pietersen very certainly did).
 
FWIW they scraped through the ODI v Bangladesh mainly thanks to an 8th wicket stand of 51 by Malan and Rashid.

Malan now has 4 centuries in 16 ODIs. That's ridiculous. Three of those have been coming in at 3.
 
Idaho said:
I don't think he was rude, he was just being real and raising a legitimate grievance.
Click to expand...

Cook would have felt it was rude but yea, I guess from Moeen’s perspective he was being honest. I wanna see more of Moeen’s commentary speaking truth to power.

Podcast idea: Moeen and David Gower with their contrasting styles pull apart cricket news of the day: Speak Truth To Gower.
 
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