The Ashes 2021/22

[Mumbles274]

Wood

 

[planetgeli]

Spectacular dismissal for Wood. 123/9

 

[planetgeli]

Last 9 wickets for 43.

Thank fuck that's over.

 

[a_chap]

And the torture was over quickly

 

[Mumbles274]

Well done Australia. Deserved win.

 

[Balbi]

Tail looked like they wanted it over and done with, absolutely giving up and not even fucking bothering.

 

[Mumbles274]

Warner pretending not to shake Bairstows hand for a second

 

[RileyOBlimey]

Key members of the squad need to be investigated for match fixing. This can be the least disgraceful reason for this abomination.

 

[planetgeli]

England batting averages

Player	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	0	4s	6s
JM Bairstow	2	4	0	194	113	48.50	356	54.49	1	0	0	14	3
JE Root	5	10	0	322	89	32.20	667	48.27	0	3	2	33	0
Z Crawley	3	6	0	166	77	27.66	283	58.65	0	1	0	26	0
DJ Malan	5	10	0	244	82	24.40	632	38.60	0	2	1	33	0
CR Woakes	3	6	0	146	44	24.33	267	54.68	0	0	0	24	1
BA Stokes	5	10	0	236	66	23.60	561	42.06	0	2	0	32	4
JC Buttler	4	8	1	107	39	15.28	390	27.43	0	0	2	12	0
SW Billings	1	2	0	30	29	15.00	57	52.63	0	0	0	6	0
SCJ Broad	3	6	3	42	15	14.00	107	39.25	0	0	1	2	1
RJ Burns	3	6	0	77	34	12.83	178	43.25	0	0	2	12	0
MJ Leach	3	6	2	51	26	12.75	92	55.43	0	0	1	4	1
OJ Pope	3	6	0	67	35	11.16	160	41.87	0	0	0	8	0
MA Wood	4	8	0	86	39	10.75	111	77.47	0	0	2	8	3
H Hameed	4	8	0	80	27	10.00	285	28.07	0	0	2	9	0
JM Anderson	3	6	4	13	5*	6.50	36	36.11	0	0	0	2	0
OE Robinson	4	8	1	38	22	5.42	95	40.00	0	0	4	4	0

 

[RileyOBlimey]

Silverwood needs to atone for his sins. Strip him naked at Heathrow and beat him through the streets to the Tower of London to be hung drawn and quartered is the most compassionate resolution I can muster.

 

[RileyOBlimey]

The pity from Australia.

 

[Balbi]

Team average: 20.21, the lowest since 1890.

 

[Balbi]

Scott Boland though, 18 wickets at 9.6. Probably the thing I'll actually try and remember fondly about this series, his six fer at the G was absolutely incredible viewing.

 

[RileyOBlimey]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

England's top four bowlers all averaged mid 20s this series. Would have taken that. And that's with all the dropped catches.

I would have guessed that someone would have scored significant runs. In the end even Root was mediocre.

Big series coming up in West Indies now. Let's not pretend we're not down with WI, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the bottom half of the test league.

But who bats in WI? Who deserves another go? Dunno tbh. And there's nobody other than this lot who has played red ball cricket since September.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

My heart sank after the first ball of the series. Everything that has happened since that ball has felt grimly inevitable. That's the worst of it.

 

[RileyOBlimey]

Crawley has shown glimmers of his potential so, I’d keep him on. However, I would jettison the other youngsters (Hameed & Pope) in the hope Strauss can bang county heads together to adopt better playing conditions in FC cricket for them and others to develop.

I would bring in experienced batters, giving Sam Robson and James Vince another crack.

Malan may have frazzled out but he’s shown enough to be given an extended run.

 

[kabbes]

I’m still totally confused as to why we’ve given up on the idea of openers that can grind down the opposition bowlers through hour after hour of resistance. Have we been in a lot of races to win against the clock? Most of our matches seem to be over within 3.5 days. I’d be more inclined to help a gritty batsman like Sibley learn when to turn on the attack than keep trying to teach attacking batsmen how to defend.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Wait... hang on...

What??

Checked in first this morning and we were something -0, now it's all over??!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'd take Bangladesh's top six ahead of England's atm. That's how bad things are. Stokes will come good again, but aside from him and Root, the top seven need some kind of renewal. No idea who for though. The idea of bringing back a bunch of players who have already failed once in test cricket doesn't exactly appeal.

 

[RileyOBlimey]

Harrison, Giles, Silverwood & Thrope all need to go.

 

[RileyOBlimey]

I'd take Bangladesh's top six ahead of England's atm. That's how bad things are. Stokes will come good again, but aside from him and Root, the top seven need some kind of renewal. No idea who for though. The idea of bringing back a bunch of players who have already failed once in test cricket doesn't exactly appeal.

The biggest fuck up of this Ashes preparation was taking a high risk gamble on kids with potential. When that failed England had to cobble together odds and sods.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'd start with clarity over keeping wicket and put Foakes as the first choice.

They'll probably think Billings deserves a crack at it now.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The biggest fuck up of this Ashes preparation was taking a high risk gamble on kids with potential. When that failed England had to cobble together odds and sods.

I think the problem is much deeper than that. The last truly test class top order batter to come through the England system remains Joe Root. Ten years since England produced a quality batter. In the ten years previous to that, they produced at least half a dozen. This situation has been a decade in the making.

 

[planetgeli]

My heart sank after the first ball of the series. Everything that has happened since that ball has felt grimly inevitable. That's the worst of it.

You lasted one ball further than me. I never thought we had a chance BUT to not play your best team in the first game is just ludicrous. My mind blew when I found out neither of Broad or Anderson were going to play that game. It's still hard to believe they did that. The off field decisions have rivalled the ineptness on field.

We don't have the batsmen. We certainly don't have any openers. When these younger players come in I identified Crawley and Lawrence who looked like batters who looked like they knew what they were doing, who belonged. I still have hope for them both. But Crawley is a number 3, not an opener. Not that being 3 makes much difference in an England line-up. Always going to be 6/1.

Depressing.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The worst of it is that this Aus team isn't that good really. Smith may be in permanent decline now. Warner and Labuschagne were kept reasonably quiet, and would have been kept very quiet if England had taken their catches. Harris was clearly England-class crap. Yes, their bowling attack is excellent. But is it team average 20 excellent in these conditions?

A decent England team could have taken them down. India showed how to do it. You don't even need lots of big hundreds. Gritty half-centuries from your top five would have gone a long way.

My guess is that Aus will struggle when they tour Asia this year.

 

[kabbes]

Further to what I was saying about gritty batsmen, these are the average number of balls faced per innings (over their whole test career) for some of the current crop:

Bairstow 59
Buttler 54
Burns 69
Crawley 52
Hameed 72
Lawrence 48
Malan 67
Pope 51
Root 85
Sibley 78
Stokes 61

If you assume an even share of deliveries, anybody facing less than 90 deliveries on average (ie all of them) is, on average, lasting less than a single session. Another way of looking at that is if you want your top 6 to last a full day, they need to be facing 90 balls each. Those averaging fewer than 60 (Bairstow, Buttler, Crawley, Lawrence, Pope) are typically facing fewer than 20 overs, which would see your top 6 only lasting 2 sessions in total.

(It’s more complicated than that, of course. For a start, there is no equivalent of “not outs” here, so the averages are depressed. So another way of looking at it is to take players that you rate, like Root, and seeing how long they last. Well, his average 85 balls faced is indeed kind of hitting that 90 ball one-session average that I would view as a benchmark. So it’s probably not that unreasonable to say that those facing fewer than 60 are just not hanging around long enough).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Everyone there aside from Root is kind of one level below what they need to be. Burns, Sibley and Hameed are gritty blockers really. Their numbers would be ok if they were fluent scorers like Root. Meanwhile the numbers of the fluent scorers like Bairstow, Buttler, Pope would be ok if they faced as many balls as the gritty blockers Burns, Sibley and Hameed.

(Also need to adjust a little for the batting order - the openers have higher numbers because they open - two factors: fewer not-outs and not batting with the tail. But I agree that your point still stands.)

 

[RileyOBlimey]

For me, pundit of the series was Steve Harmison, here’s his characteristically incandescent take:

 

[Ted Striker]

Wait... hang on...

What??

Checked in first this morning and we were something -0, now it's all over??!

It's nuts the complete disorientation of time, mixed in with the day&night format time, mixed in with uber-collapses....

You tune in maybe catching some of the start of the play late at night, and see (for example) the top 3 or 4 getting skittled, but maybe a bit of a stand with the middle order, and fall asleep....Then you wakle up and read the BBC headlines of the close that those same openers are now struggling to keep us in the game despite the early loss.

Wait, what ? Ah, we're now in the second innings following a collapse, and have followed on!