[Cricket] Eng v Ind - 5th Test - Edgbaston kick-off 11am

[LamieRobertson]

I really don't have an issue if we do. We were the worst Test team on the planet just a few months ago and we've just whitewashed one of the best (albeit with us at home) in a highly exciting and risk taking manner. The days of Tavere and Boycott boring people to death for three days are long gone, and so they should be if the likes of The Hundred are to have some competition with the modern, thrill a second, short attention spanned cricket fan.

I can remember having a post village game chat with an opposing skipper after a game in which both of our sides had batted poorly. He reminisced about his side getting out for around 70ish in a different game and being asked in the dressing room "how will we defend that Skip?". His answer was "we won't, we'll attack it" and he fired up his best fast bowlers and set them an attacking field, and won the game.

This England side will win from impossible positions and, every now and again, we'll concede 500 or so to a poor side or get all out for less than 100. So long as there are wins in there as well it'll kick the shit out of the dross served up by Root and Silverwood.

However.....



This is a real issue and could undo all of that decent entertainment value work. Combined with high ticket prices, low over rates represent the paying public having the piss taken out of them. I agree it needs sorting. Penalties should be much heavier and extend to penalty runs (and lots of them).

Agree with all that lot

 

[Eeyore]

Interesting debate- best player who should have played for England but never did.

I've gone with Gordon Greenidge.

 

[Eeyore]

I really don't have an issue if we do. We were the worst Test team on the planet just a few months ago and we've just whitewashed one of the best (albeit with us at home) in a highly exciting and risk taking manner. The days of Tavere and Boycott boring people to death for three days are long gone, and so they should be if the likes of The Hundred are to have some competition with the modern, thrill a second, short attention spanned cricket fan.

I can remember having a post village game chat with an opposing skipper after a game in which both of our sides had batted poorly. He reminisced about his side getting out for around 70ish in a different game and being asked in the dressing room "how will we defend that Skip?". His answer was "we won't, we'll attack it" and he fired up his best fast bowlers and set them an attacking field, and won the game.

This England side will win from impossible positions and, every now and again, we'll concede 500 or so to a poor side or get all out for less than 100. So long as there are wins in there as well it'll kick the shit out of the dross served up by Root and Silverwood.

However.....



This is a real issue and could undo all of that decent entertainment value work. Combined with high ticket prices, low over rates represent the paying public having the piss taken out of them. I agree it needs sorting. Penalties should be much heavier and extend to penalty runs (and lots of them).

I would offer that had Kyle Jamieson been available for the 2nd innings of the 2nd Test and 3rd Test the results may have been different. Devil's advocate- perhaps.

I like the attacking approach. But I'm not a fan of it's uncompromising application.

The difference has been Bairstow. And his approach is the benchmark, having.adapted his white ball experience into the longer format. He also understands that he has time. Stokes is a decent batsman who is in danger of becoming unreliable. He should sit at Bairstow's feet for a while.

But take out Root and an in form Bairstow and I'm not convinced things are going to hold. More entertainment, but folk's will soon tire if it means the same old.

So, as enjoyable as the new approach is, the fact remains that we are three batsman and two bowlers short of a decent international side (assuming Potts replaces the wanting Broad). It's not a lot different.

 

[Eeyore]

And for those who don't know. Just in case it couldn't get any worse.

Sorry to bring this news to your door.

RIP Cricket

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/61899721

Why don't we just have a format where there is no cricket at all ? That might be best for those with the attention span of a goldfish.

 

[Guinness Boy]

And for those who don't know. Just in case it couldn't get any worse.

Sorry to bring this news to your door.

RIP Cricket

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/61899721

Why don't we just have a format where there is no cricket at all ? That might be best for those with the attention span of a goldfish.

Basically human Stick Cricket

 

[Guinness Boy]

I would offer that had Kyle Jamieson been available for the 2nd innings of the 2nd Test and 3rd Test the results may have been different. Devil's advocate- perhaps.

I like the attacking approach. But I'm not a fan of it's uncompromising application.

The difference has been Bairstow. And his approach is the benchmark, having.adapted his white ball experience into the longer format. He also understands that he has time. Stokes is a decent batsman who is in danger of becoming unreliable. He should sit at Bairstow's feet for a while.

But take out Root and an in form Bairstow and I'm not convinced things are going to hold. More entertainment, but folk's will soon tire if it means the same old.

So, as enjoyable as the new approach is, the fact remains that we are three batsman and two bowlers short of a decent international side (assuming Potts replaces the wanting Broad). It's not a lot different.

It certainly suits Bairstow the most in the batting sense but I think it should also suit most of the middle order. Root's done ok, freed from the captaincy shackles, Stokes has been used as a momentum shifter a couple of times as well as getting out stupidly, and Foakes, when fit and not Coronaed can do exactly the job he's picked for.

They will often come in at 30-3 or something, however, here I agree with you. Crawley just isn't good enough, Lees has something but is too inconsistent and already has a poor average for a Test opener but Pope is the interesting one. There's a really decent batter in there somewhere but, of all of them, perhaps it's him who has to be left to play his natural game the most.

Bowling wise I think you're forgetting our huge injury list in terms of fast bowlers. I'd love to see Archer or Wood sent out there to attack and menace the opposition or Robbo strangle batters out who are trying to compete with us on run rate. But we have no decent spinner at all, which will make away series interesting to say the least.

The game as a whole needs to find an answer to the over rate issue and to fast bowlers getting stress fractures in their back. England need to find an opener and a spinner.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Fifteen overs short of the day's allocation - utterly disgraceful. These have been exciting test matches this summer, so the shortfall has been unnoticed but it's depriving spectators. It doesn't help that the ball is being changed so often that's something that needs to be looked at but the interruptions from people walking behind the bowler's arm are getting tedious. I think it's time that stewards went in and removed offenders from the ground - that would stop it pretty quickly.

I'm not impressed by batters' delaying tactics towards the end of the day either - England did it yesterday, India today. Umpires should tell them to get on with it. We used to see more than 100 overs in a day (and that was in six hours). We have more time now and are seeing 25 to 30 overs fewer, how low does it have to go before the authorities start acting?

The general slowness, between overs, etc doesn't bother me to much, and if I were at a game and saw 80 overs or more, I wouldn't be annoyed, so long as the play we got was entertaining. The actual CHEATING, to deliberately steal overs from the day's play like we saw at the very end yesterday, is something quite different and should be dealt with on field.

In terms of the authorities, I'm not convinced they see it as in their interests to be too hard on it. Any day with MOST of the overs fulfilled is money in the bank. How many Tests are over within 4, 80 over days? Three days of a full 90 overs might actually cost them their precious Day 4 ticket money...

 

[jakarta]

And for those who don't know. Just in case it couldn't get any worse.

Sorry to bring this news to your door.

RIP Cricket

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/61899721

Why don't we just have a format where there is no cricket at all ? That might be best for those with the attention span of a goldfish.

This is a late April 1st Joke Shirley?

 

[Greg Bobkin]

And for those who don't know. Just in case it couldn't get any worse.

Sorry to bring this news to your door.

RIP Cricket

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/61899721

Why don't we just have a format where there is no cricket at all ? That might be best for those with the attention span of a goldfish.

Blimey, how low can they go? I'm half expecting the announcement of the Superover Series by the end of the summer! Broady should probably give that one a miss

 

[Eeyore]

Basically human Stick Cricket

You once said 'cricket for people who don't like cricket'

Maybe you need to upgrade that now. I need a new phrase to use.

 

[Gwylan]

The general slowness, between overs, etc doesn't bother me to much, and if I were at a game and saw 80 overs or more, I wouldn't be annoyed, so long as the play we got was entertaining. The actual CHEATING, to deliberately steal overs from the day's play like we saw at the very end yesterday, is something quite different and should be dealt with on field.

In terms of the authorities, I'm not convinced they see it as in their interests to be too hard on it. Any day with MOST of the overs fulfilled is money in the bank. How many Tests are over within 4, 80 over days? Three days of a full 90 overs might actually cost them their precious Day 4 ticket money...

I did say that the cricket has been entertaining which has masked the appalling over rates but you may be more annoyed if the cricket had been more conventional. I also did point out that the umpires had been lax in allowing the time-wasting by England on Saturday and India yesterday - that's something to look at and maybe give umpires more teeth in dealing with it.

You do raise a good point about making sure that games last till the fifth day - authorities would be loath to lose that extra cash.

 

[Simster]

You once said 'cricket for people who don't like cricket'

Maybe you need to upgrade that now. I need a new phrase to use.

The thing is, T20 has been a force for the good. It is basically 50 over cricket without the boring middle overs, it promotes athletic fielding and catching, speed of play and obviously big hitting. Plus you get to see a game with a result in a single evening, so it is marketable. The IPL (and the Big Bash to a lesser extent) has been absolutely outstanding entertainment and attracted huge crowds. The Hundred is trying to leverage this sort of big city, big stadium marketability and we can debate the whys and wherefores of that.

But 60 ball cricket? What does that add? Absolute shite.

 

[Guinness Boy]

You once said 'cricket for people who don't like cricket'

Maybe you need to upgrade that now. I need a new phrase to use.

The only equivalent I can think of is that this is a bit like not bothering with a 90 minute football match and going straight to penalties.

Presumably, to make it value for the paying customer, you'd have to have double headers anyway, otherwise you'd have missed a quarter of the game queuing for a beer.

 

[Machiavelli]

In terms of England's new approach of aggressive cricket, I agree with the points made that broadly it's welcome and has played a significant role in England's recent upturn. Yet it seems to have become a bit of an ideology that is aggressively pursued. As others have said, Bairstow is the player that has benefited from it the most, or utilised it most effectively (although check out the stats on number 5 batsmen this summer, which is related to this ball, which favours the batsmen from overs 30-80), but I'd raise three more problematic aspects:
1, the short ball balling has been disastrous: it has led to the most expensive over, but really can't see many benefits thus far
2, Stokes' batting. Stokes is the chief ideologue of this aggressive cricket, and the way he's batting at present isn't doing justice to his ability
3, Root. One of the, if not the, best batsmen in the world currently. His first innings in this Test illustrates why the rigorous implementation of this ideology is so problematic: why disrupt the way such a top batsman plays, particularly one that already scores at a fair rate? On this, see:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jul/02/england-ben-stokes-india-reality-check-test

 

[Titanic]

Two wickets this morning... Broad and Potts... 190-5, lead by 322

 

[Greg Bobkin]

The only equivalent I can think of is that this is a bit like not bothering with a 90 minute football match and going straight to penalties.

Presumably, to make it value for the paying customer, you'd have to have double headers anyway, otherwise you'd have missed a quarter of the game queuing for a beer.

I could (sort of) see the appeal if it was effectively like a kids football tournament, where you have shed loads of teams who all play each other and the top teams go straight to semi-finals and the final – and it's all done in one day. But that's not professional sport – at best, it would be some kind of pre-season affair or an exhibition or charity thing. But, reading the blurb, it doesn't seem to be like that.

Not for me, Clive.

 

[Titanic]

Leach tempts Pant into an extravagant reverse sweep... tickled to Root at slip... 198-6, lead 330

 

[Titanic]

Thakur bounced out by Potts... 207-7, lead 339

This game is moving on at pace.

 

[jakarta]

Thakur bounced out by Potts... 207-7, lead 339

This game is moving on at pace.

Even if Jadeja goes cheaply, thats more than can be chased by our less than wonderful Top Order.

If only we had Archer to blast out the tail enders.

 

[Is it PotG?]

Jimmy drops one up high.