[Cricket] Ashes 2021-22

[Mackenzie]

Good that they at least showed a bit of fight in that last innings.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Good that they at least showed a bit of fight in that last innings.

You mean 2 of them?

Only 1 batsman faced 100 balls or more. Not sure what your definition of fight is?

 

[Mackenzie]

You mean 2 of them?

Only 1 batsman faced 100 balls or more. Not sure what your definition of fight is?

It’s comparative. I wasn’t expecting them to still be batting into the last session after 100+ overs. Small steps.

 

[jakarta]

I think we have a winner.

Well done cjd, you get to Manage England for the rest of the Ashes...

 

[Lower West Stander]

There's so much about the team and setup which is wrong.

1. Going into the test with an only right arm medium pace seam attack. No Wood and no Leach. Lyon was turning the ball square and we had Malan doing donkey drops to compensate for our best batsman and part time spinner being off the pitch.
2. Leaving aside the one day stuff, is this really the best 11 players we can muster? We are relying on a 39 year seamer with a strictly average record down under to bail us out. Two players who are in the team seemingly only because they play for Surrey. The best wicket keeper in the country (who bizarrely does play for Surrey) can't get in the team even though he can bat.
3. Silverwood's policy of the batsmen poking and prodding around "to build a score". Attack the bowlers, get them off line. Pietersen was a master of this as was Trescothick. OK you may get some low scores but we have those anyway.
4. Try some hungry young lads. They may not all come off but we'll never know unless we try. Livingstone? Salt?
5. And please, just get rid of Silverwood and Giles. They are useless. Get an international coach who knows what he's doing.
6. Bring back a selector. Silverwood has way too much influence (see 1 and 5 above).

Rant over.

 

[Brovion]

Well done cjd, you get to Manage England for the rest of the Ashes...

Poor man doesn't deserve that!

Yeah, reaping what we've sown aren't we? Can't blame Sussex for not taking red ball cricket seriously when the ECB don't either. A 4-0 defeat at this stage will represent a major achievement. Ah well, the Hundred was a roaring success, so all's well.

 

[Pavilionaire]

There's so much about the team and setup which is wrong.

1. Going into the test with an only right arm medium pace seam attack. No Wood and no Leach. Lyon was turning the ball square and we had Malan doing donkey drops to compensate for our best batsman and part time spinner being off the pitch.
2. Leaving aside the one day stuff, is this really the best 11 players we can muster? We are relying on a 39 year seamer with a strictly average record down under to bail us out. Two players who are in the team seemingly only because they play for Surrey. The best wicket keeper in the country (who bizarrely does play for Surrey) can't get in the team even though he can bat.
3. Silverwood's policy of the batsmen poking and prodding around "to build a score". Attack the bowlers, get them off line. Pietersen was a master of this as was Trescothick. OK you may get some low scores but we have those anyway.
4. Try some hungry young lads. They may not all come off but we'll never know unless we try. Livingstone? Salt?
5. And please, just get rid of Silverwood and Giles. They are useless. Get an international coach who knows what he's doing.
6. Bring back a selector. Silverwood has way too much influence (see 1 and 5 above).

Rant over.

1 and 2. I think there is a good case for picking the best wicketkeeper and -yes - the selectors do sometimes pick the wrong XI for a particular pitch, but in terms of WHO they are selecting for the squads I think they are getting that bit right. There are no glaring omissions; I just think the quality of red ball cricketer is below par and the England coaches are also below par.
3. If you go with the specialist keeper then you don't get what we just had, which is our all-rounder keeper being able to block 207 balls when called upon in a rearguard action. The top order - particularly the openers - are too flaky to be able to have a weak keeper / batsman. The modern day Jack Russell does not exist.
4. If they are young lads they certainly won't be hungry for test cricket. There's no money it, and diminishing glory too. All of the good emerging players seem to be primarily white ball cricketers.
5 and 6. Agreed, although I think there are systemic problems with test cricket. There is no 4-year cycle for test cricket like there is for Eddie Jones and Gareth Southgate between World Cups. Similarly, there is no prestigious test winners trophy; I know they are trying to knock something together but with Covid this is dead in the water. The nearest thing is the No. 1 World test ranking but as we saw in 2011, once England achieved that we went off the boil and the rot set in.

 

[Berty23]

At some point they might twig that having championship matches in April, may and September where the likes of Darren Stevens can be unplayable will not produce capable batsman. Our bowling has actually been alright on this tour (granted wrong line up) but the batting has been shambolic.

I assume we will see a few bowlers rotated and batsman given one more chance.

 

[DJ NOBO]

There's so much about the team and setup which is wrong.

1. Going into the test with an only right arm medium pace seam attack. No Wood and no Leach. Lyon was turning the ball square and we had Malan doing donkey drops to compensate for our best batsman and part time spinner being off the pitch.
2. Leaving aside the one day stuff, is this really the best 11 players we can muster? We are relying on a 39 year seamer with a strictly average record down under to bail us out. Two players who are in the team seemingly only because they play for Surrey. The best wicket keeper in the country (who bizarrely does play for Surrey) can't get in the team even though he can bat.
3. Silverwood's policy of the batsmen poking and prodding around "to build a score". Attack the bowlers, get them off line. Pietersen was a master of this as was Trescothick. OK you may get some low scores but we have those anyway.
4. Try some hungry young lads. They may not all come off but we'll never know unless we try. Livingstone? Salt?
5. And please, just get rid of Silverwood and Giles. They are useless. Get an international coach who knows what he's doing.
6. Bring back a selector. Silverwood has way too much influence (see 1 and 5 above).

Rant over.

Not that I’m defending England cricket but….

1 did you watch the last Test? Jack Leach was destroyed by the Aussies. They’ve well and truly got his number. He was pretty much unselectable for this test.
2 Jimmy is not any old 39yo is he? And he did well last time in Adelaide. It was right to select him and broad for this test. Foakes has been below par for Surrey for a while at county level, so it’s not some massive oversight to ignore him .
3 our batsmen need to learn how to stay in for 30 balls before worrying about smashing it around.
4 like Ollie Pope? He’s the best of them. Averages 60 odd in county championship. Again, there’s no big oversight . Unless you want to go back to late 80s in and out and in and out- style selection. Putting to one side the fact that salt hasn’t played Longform for over a year, it would be a shot in the dark to select a rookie now.
5 + 6. I wouldn’t cry if silverwood was sacked but The biggest problem for England in this series is that the Aussie team is simply better . No different combination or selection is going to change that fact, although it is not helped by us playing even worse than the sum of our parts.
There’s a bigger picture behind our feeble performances . Longform cricket has been neglected in England for a while now. It’s really starting to show.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Not that I’m defending England cricket but….

1 did you watch the last Test? Jack Leach was destroyed by the Aussies. They’ve well and truly got his number. He was pretty much unselectable for this test.
2 Jimmy is not any old 39yo is he? And he did well last time in Adelaide. It was right to select him and broad for this test. Foakes has been below par for Surrey for a while at county level, so it’s not some massive oversight to ignore him .
3 our batsmen need to learn how to stay in for 30 balls before worrying about smashing it around.
4 like Ollie Pope? He’s the best of them. Averages 60 odd in county championship. Again, there’s no big oversight . Unless you want to go back to late 80s in and out and in and out- style selection. Putting to one side the fact that salt hasn’t played Longform for over a year, it would be a shot in the dark to select a rookie now.
5 + 6. I wouldn’t cry if silverwood was sacked but The biggest problem for England in this series is that the Aussie team is simply better . No different combination or selection is going to change that fact, although it is not helped by us playing even worse than the sum of our parts.

Agree with all of that.

Pope looked incredible when he first arrived (in South Africa?). Huge talent. I'd love it if he could sort himself out and come good.

Someone earlier suggested tat they stop searching for a new Cook, and find an opener in the mould of Warner, etc. They've already tried that as well, with Jason Roy. It didn't work.

 

[Berty23]

Re attacking leach. It was a calculated gamble on a flat pitch. It was very clever by Australia. Leach out bowled Lyon in the last ashes series over here and they decided that attacking him on a very flat pitch might come out selectors into thinking he was unpickable on a turning pitch. It was genius.

The mismanagement of English spinners over the last 2 years has been shocking.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Agree with all of that.

Pope looked incredible when he first arrived (in South Africa?). Huge talent. I'd love it if he could sort himself out and come good.

Someone earlier suggested tat they stop searching for a new Cook, and find an opener in the mould of Warner, etc. They've already tried that as well, with Jason Roy. It didn't work.

Not quite what I suggested in the search of an opener. It was a bit more nuanced than 'lets try a new opener, oh here's Jason Roy, well that's the end of that'. As mentioned India had Rohit Sharma who wasn't holding down a place in the middle order, so they tried opening with him and it worked. I'm not saying you need a T20 opening specialist, I'm saying you don't necessarily need a county dead bat opener in a traditional style.

As for Ben Foakes, he averages the same as Buttler in Tests, is superb with the gloves, and has just under a 40 average in first class cricket. It's pretty shocking he hasn't been given another chance for 2 or so years given how many chances have been missed with the gloves on. I'd love to see us be a bit more flexible with the batting positions. Malan as an example may as well be opening this series and is actually batting well. Buttler without the gloves could bat higher, perhaps even ahead of Stokes and Pope, or at least 1 of them. We seem stuck with the same formula over and over again.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Re attacking leach. It was a calculated gamble on a flat pitch. It was very clever by Australia. Leach out bowled Lyon in the last ashes series over here and they decided that attacking him on a very flat pitch might come out selectors into thinking he was unpickable on a turning pitch. It was genius.

The mismanagement of English spinners over the last 2 years has been shocking.

Completely agree, just because he got attacked in the first test when the other bowlers had a melt down too, doesn't mean he is suddenly not going to have an impact. Then you have Malan, Root even Robinson all bowling spin - embarrassing.

 

[Simster]

Someone earlier suggested tat they stop searching for a new Cook, and find an opener in the mould of Warner, etc. They've already tried that as well, with Jason Roy. It didn't work.

Not having that - Jason Roy has played exactly FIVE test matches. It's not like he's had any sort of extended run in the team.

 

[Jeremiah]

Have we had the " I'm sure we can turn this around and still win the Ashes" official statement yet ?

 

[Bold Seagull]

Not having that - Jason Roy has played exactly FIVE test matches. It's not like he's had any sort of extended run in the team.

He only opened for 7 innings in those 5 matches, also coming out at 3, 4 and 5.

 

[Deleted member 2719]

Do we stand any hope at all in Melbourne?

 

[Simster]

Do we stand any hope at all in Melbourne?

We have just been absolutely slaughtered twice. What do you think?

 

[A1X]

Re attacking leach. It was a calculated gamble on a flat pitch. It was very clever by Australia. Leach out bowled Lyon in the last ashes series over here and they decided that attacking him on a very flat pitch might come out selectors into thinking he was unpickable on a turning pitch. It was genius.

The mismanagement of English spinners over the last 2 years has been shocking.

Yep. Not to mention that England insist on picking their bowlers based on how well they bat, and as such picked a poor Moeen Ali repeatedly.

 

[GREASED WEASEL]

Perhaps if we played in pyjamas

Cricket has been so diluted in this country over the years

What's the staple diet of aussie cricket these days,still the Sheffield Shield?