NWR Cricket

Oh Dear. 1 down. Root batted well but his captaincy does leave a lot to be desired. Always bat first at Lords, open the bowling with your best bowlers ie Robinson and Wood, the English fielding leaves a lot to be decided. Let's see how responsive the selectors are
 
Time to give Sibley a rest, agreed

Impossible to replace Root as captain until there is somebody else guaranteed a place who might be suited to the role
Ed Smith not bringable back - too many issues from his previous term, with the players. A sad decision but not bonkers.
Though clearly not right to marry the posts of coach and selector

I am not convinced by any of Burns, Sibley, Keating, Crawley, Haseeb, Malan, Vince, Lawrence
Nor by Buttler
Nor Curran, nor Broad

Benefit of doubt for Bairstow, Broad, and Pope

Root and Anderson yes, and Robinson thus far

Stokes, of course, and Woakes if fit

would like to see more of Stone, if fit
 
Betting market in the Ashes changed dramatically.
I only listened to it on the wireless. Had great fun trading the volatility. It sounds like a thoroughly deserved win for India. Hard for us to come back from, but not impossible.

Root just lost the plot in the hour before lunch. Ultimately he takes responsibility, but Firey Fred
will be turning in his grave at the bowlers actions too.
 
But bear in mind your home tests this summer against the top two teams in the world are just warm up games where you can try out a few players before your tour down under. And the 100 is going well so all is good in English cricket.
 
David in my opinion Roots first mistake was after winning the toss not batting. 2nd one was not opening the bowling with Robinson and Wood. 3rd mistake is the overall fielding errors as we know a side that fields well performs well overall. Allowing the opposition to achieve that score was taking your eye off the ball big time. No pun intended. Surely it's time for Broad and Anderson to retire to county cricket. So Butler , Curran, Burns, Sibley to be replaced. Australia was also reluctant to replace players for years to the sides detriment
 
David in my opinion Roots first mistake was after winning the toss not batting. 2nd one was not opening the bowling with Robinson and Wood. 3rd mistake is the overall fielding errors as we know a side that fields well performs well overall. Allowing the opposition to achieve that score was taking your eye off the ball big time. No pun intended. Surely it's time for Broad and Anderson to retire to county cricket. So Butler , Curran, Burns, Sibley to be replaced. Australia was also reluctant to replace players for years to the sides detriment
Time for Anderson to retire? He's our best bowler by some margin.
 
Strip the captaincy from Root; he’s never been more than a mediocre captain and recently he’s totally lost the plot.

If he decides then to take a rest from Test Cricket so be it - at least it would then give the ECB the opportunity to remarket Test Cricket as The Hundred (Overs).

Bring back Brearley - I know he’s knocking on eighty and in a bath chair but he’s the captain we need and tbh he’s probably still a better opener than anything we’ve got now.

Sack off all the rubbish batsmen in the team and the knobs who can do it in one-day cricket but not in tests (Buttler I’m looking at you!).

Forget bringing back Vince we need VP Terry out of retirement.

Wood and Curren banished forever.

And then do a deep trawl of Facebook and Twatter for any county bowlers who may said something slightly off-colour when they were young and/or pissed and get them in the team pronto.

And finally scrap the planned schedule and only play Zimbabwe (and I was going to say Afghanistan but that may prove a tad problematic) and possibly Ireland (if we feel lucky) for the next five years.

And voila a winning test future for England beckons!
 
A total shambles. Agree Root is the only one guaranteed his spot, so by default becomes captain. Replace Sibley, Burns and Crawley (I know he was dropped)! Bring in Milan and persevere. Play Foakes as the best keeper. Replace Pope - already had numerous opportunities - replace Curran, play a proper spinner. Bowling attack of Anderson, Stokes, Leach, Robinson and Wood. Batters - Hasseb, Jennings (although not convinced), Malan, Root, Stokes, Bairstow
 
There is a gripping piece of commentary in the peerless sports documentary 'When We Were Kings' when Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, confesses that after the first round of the Rumble In The Jungle, Ali is forced to confront the nightmare that has come to visit him. For the first time, he found himself in the ring with a man he could not dominate, who was stronger than him, was not afraid of him, who could punch harder than him, and who was determined to knock him out. It was the only time that Dundee saw fear in Ali's eyes. Ali looked into himself as if into the eyes of his maker, summoned up every ounce of steel and nous he had, and figured out a way to beat George Foreman.

Sadly for England there will be no such redemption. The administrators have callously neglected red-ball cricket over the last 6 years and we must now suffer the consequences and the brutal spanking that is to come our way, not only over this summer but also in The Ashes. Ours has been a quite deliberate policy of hubristic self-sabotage and this will be our reckoning.

It matters not which team we pick for the remainder of the series - there are no stand-out alternatives to the existing squad and thanks to the utter joke of our domestic schedule, whoever comes in will not have played any red-ball cricket for 6 weeks. What's more, the poor sods will be thrown into the fire to contend with a hardened, rampant juggernaut. My heart goes out to Joe Root - a poor captain but a wonderful player and a fine and dignified man, undeserving of humiliation.

Rain saved us in the first test and if we can't win at Lord's after Root makes 180, Jimmy takes a first-innings five-fer, enjoying the best of the conditions and a seemingly impregnable position early on day 5, when Ashwin isn’t playing and when Kohli, Pujara, Rahane, Pant are yet to truly fire, then we are not going to beat India barring freak individual performances from Root/Anderson etc. India have England pinned to the ground and intend to spend the rest of the summer stomping all over us, much to their delight.

But at least we’ve got the multi-faceted entertainment package The Hundred to take our minds off the pain (they have DJs at every game!).

Assuming Wood and Woakes are injured, my selection for Leeds would be:

Burns
Hameed
Malan
Root
Bairstow
Ali
Buttler
Curran
Robinson
Mahmood
Anderson
 
Squad for the third test has been released. Crawley & Sibley have been dropped. Malan back in. Would have liked to see Vince back in.

Joe Root (capt), Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler (wk), Sam Curran, Haseeb Hameed, Dan Lawrence, Saqib Mahmood, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Mark Wood
 
I don't think they fancy Vince for tests any more. His stock is still reasonably high in white-ball cricket though.

I really like the look of Mahmood and hope he makes his debut soon although the noise is that Wood might be fit after all.
 
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