Is as bad as ive seen it. Cook jeenings and root all terrible. Pope young. Bairstow is gd but no one is getting runs period.
I can't for the life of me understand why we won the toss and put india in to bat. 2-0 up and india needing to force the pace of the game. 2-0 up and deciding to bat last (not that it's particularly panned out like this because we have performed so poorly). Been a few dodgy toss-winning decisions under the current regime.
Root is not and never will be a captain. A very very good batsman who has the potential to be a “great” but like so many before him for England just can’t handle the pressure. Likes of Broad and Anderson make the decisions for him bowling wise and it’s got to be hard with Cook stood around having seen and done it for so many years. Also having Stokes and Butler in a test team will be good against weak attacks, but against the better teams they are just walking wickets. Add Bairstow and it’s a one day middle order. Give pope a chance but that shoe was School boy cricket. Dropping Curran for Stokes was just stupid. Pushed for by Root. England just don’t have the spine to dominate test match cricket like the great teams over the years. This game has gone. Can see us being bowled out for around 150 again. It’s like there is not one person who can dig in and grind it out and find form.
Would add to the fact we’ve chose Ramprakash as our batting coach.. bizzare to choose a fella who couldn’t convert undoubted potential into quality international form. One of the most frustrating players in the modern game for me.
I agree with many of the points in this thread. No doubt we've improved at ODI's, and to be fair, that was why Strauss appointed the current coach. What he wouldn't have expected is a nosedive at test level against some very average opponents. We can't play spin. We can't play slow bowling when it doesn't spin. We cant play fast bowling. We cant play inconsistent bounce. And we can't play swing bowling, that condition native to the play all of these players will have been brought up on. It's the first time in a long while where everything looks wrong. No obvious leadership either in the field or from the balcony. Dreadful technique and poor application. I know T20 is the thing of the day, but if it develops crap technique like this, i'd bin it, but obviously the counties get tonnes of money from it and that will prevail. Hard hands. Going at the ball. Lack of patience. I'd absolutely have a clear out. Bayliss is all too often absent from view and is tolerating mediocrity. As said, Root just isn't a captain. He's a good number 4. But as captain he's been bullied into being a number 3. The openers aren't doing it, though cook has shown he can. The middle order is built for fast scoring on a flat track in the third innings. We've a good wicket keeper in Bairstow and solid batsmen. And we've a pretty decent bowling line up without a great spinner. We can't catch for toffee and its being teased that Stokes doesn't like being in the slips or gully despite his most consistent attribute being his excellent close catching. Seeing as Bayliss has said he's leaving after the Ashes next year, I'd change now. We need to make some good decisions. From administration, selectors, to batsmen. Very very poor.
It's the mindset of the players coming through imo. Say you're 15 years old and you've a chance of making it. You could be either Haseeb Hameed or Jos Buttler. Do you... A) - Spend hours honing your defensive technique in the hope you'll make a test match opening batsman. If you don't make it, you could be a journeyman county pro on 50k a year or so. B) - Practice reverse sweeps, ramps, range hitting in the hope of playing white ball cricket and the golden goose that is the IPL where you can earn a million dollars for 3 months work. If you don't make the IPL you could land on your feet in the CPL, The Afghan Premier League or the T20 blast. Which is 100k for 3 months work. Plus you don't have to stand in the field for hours on end whilst some bloke scores a double hundred. It's a no brainer. I don't know what the answer is like.
They shouldn't have made Root captain. The team needs someone more experienced and with a lot more personality. Giving him the Ashes in Australia as his first test series meant he was either going to have a bad start to hit his confidence or a good start he couldn't live up to. Just another 360 to win with 6 wickets left.
Quick well done to Stokes and Butler though. Shown a bit of grit, and luck, to bat through until tea. Showing it can be done with the right mindset. All feels far too late, these two would need to be there at the end of the day for any hope but if I was a betting man I’d say as soon as one of these two are out it would end quite quickly. Probably tonight.
To be honest, I think they've batted pretty poorly. The sun coming out has helped massively but some of the balls they've played at and edged or narrowly missed is like they are in ODI mode. They clearly struggle to just bat time and have to feel ball hitting bat.
Can someone please remind me what the score will be in the series after the inevitable loss in this game because I know in this match we have performed poorly, but to read some of the comments in this post , you would think we were getting hammered in this series , just like football , fans up & down with every result .
Think it’s more people who realise yes we’ve beaten a weak Indian team in English conditions despite our batsmen’s best efforts to throw it away. Bowlers have bailed us out with ball and bat. And shock horror the second collapse has happened. We are piss weak with the bat against anything resembling a decent attack. It’s the nature of the game people want to play slap and bang cricket for a bit of cash. To pretend everything is rosy has been the problem with English cricket for years. Get hammered 5-0 by Australia and there is an inquest, then go and beat Bangladesh or West Indies and we pretend all is solved.
We haven’t beaten a weak Indian team. They are the number one test team in the world!! Conditions in England do play are part as they do oversees, to call the Indians poor is wrong though. The advent of T20 cricket is to blame, why would you bother blocking every ball getting a decent county record and the odd go with England ala Haseem habeeb when you can ramp, scoop, flick and bash your way to T20 millions?
