Sorry for the slightly mangled Moody Blues reference, but I just wanted to mention another failure for Gary Ballance. What on earth are England selectors thinking putting him in against Pakistan? He's not been good for as long as I can remember and he has just failed again. Decent ball got him LBW but he is totally unreliable as a top order batsman. He's not doing great for Yorkshire this season either. Cooky is going well and Jonny B has just joined him, so let's home they both get hundreds.
Oops, there goes Cook for 81. Played on to his stumps but he was put down twice earlier in his innings.
Why not? His batting, fielding and even bowling has been great for Yorkshire this season. Might he hard to dislodge Hales but I would put Lyth in ahead of Ballance any day of the week. He is twice the cricketer.
Ballance really winds me up. He's always had some technical issues, but they were kind of glossed over before other teams worked him out and he was scoring runs for fun. But what gets to me most is his attitude to said issues. When Root was dropped, he went away and worked his gonads off to become one of the worlds best. Same with Johnny Bairstow. Struggled with both gloves and bat at first, so goes away and sorts most of them out and now hes one of the first names on the sheet. Ballance though, I just can't see what he's worked on. Even for Yorkshire, he looks like a walking wicket. I think he needs someone to give him a good shaking to get his arse into gear.
