No point throwing new lads in at this point. After this series we'll have new coaches in place. We won the world cup at home, that was always the plan. We've struggled for a number of years at test cricket with the bat. The next two years will be about bedding in a new team. Anderson's got no more than 8 tests left in him. Broad, Archer will be the mainstays of the attack. Root needs to be removed as captain to concentrate on batting. We need a squad of 18- 20 players who can play on any surface. Horses for courses. Biggest question is can we honestly say there are players out there better than Bairstow, Denly, Roy and Buttler? Pope, Sibley, Foakes and Northeast have all been mentioned. We also need to find at least 2 fast bowlers and a spinner long term who will develop. We can't just throw players in and if they fail drop them. The 1990s were horrific we don't want to go back to that.
I agree we shouldn't rotate and rotate. ideally you'd blood youngsters in a winning environment. But we've made some erratic picks, persisted with the wrong ones and tried others for too short a time. The problem we have now, our best bowlers are ageing. Our next crop seem to be fairly injury prone. The young generation soon won't have anyone to guide them in a match situation and we'll be expecting them to do what our best two pace bowlers did for over a decade. We don't have a quality spinner since Swann left and our wicket keepers, as time has shown, are giving less than what Prior did. And nothing needs saying about the batting. I felt more needed to be said through action for this final test. Unless there have been words to warn these failed batsmen, this is your last chance saloon. But frankly I can't see point. They've failed over many tests, their weak characters have been shown many times. Stokes, Denly, Roy, Bairstow and Buttler in the same batting line up is a disaster waiting to happen every innings. So to stick with the status quo for me is more damaging then showing failure isn't to be rewarded and tolerated over and over and over and over…..
Another big problem is the batsmen don't know there is a happy medium between attack and defence. I think we might have kept the Aussies out yesterday had the likes of Stokes and Buttler not just blocked. When you stop trying to score bowlers don't have to vary their attack. Instead they are removed from the attack. Had England not gone into plain blocking mode Labuschagne might not have been brought on. It was good captaincy by Paine but i can't help think the Buttler wicket that fell was on leave too many and the stokes attempted leave was bought out of the situation.
Joe Denley is 33 and hardly the future of our test team. Roy and Buttler are one day players and struggle to adapt to the longer format especially at test level. The last test is.in effect a dead rubber. Look at the England football squad. Southgate not afraid to blood the youngsters and look at how well they are doing. Perfect time in my opinion to ring some changes. Sibley Pope Ballance or Northeast
I can see the logic behind that and agree our batsmen just cant bat in a typical way. Looking for scoring shots off bad balls and when they are in. I think if you look at several of the wickets, it just highlights bad technique though. Whether you're aggressive, normal or defensive, if your technique is poor, you'll get found out
Time for a bigger money reward for winning county championship, this would encourage the counties to produce future test players and take away the need for putting all eggs in one day basket
Also having the season split halfway through the season doesn't help. Having players going from playing county cricket to.20/20 mid season and at the height of the national home internationals is not conducive to bringing through the form players in the county game
Agree, other than I loved us winning the World Cup. We've done that now & need to get a test side sorted.
I didn't really take much joy from us winning the world cup. It was good watching (or the last hour or so was) but it was forgotten in very quick time. Especially when we won it in the most lucky way possible, and if the rules of the game had been applied, NZ would have been awarded the win. So I had more a feeling of pity for NZ than utter joy of us winning. If it had been a test won that way against the convicts, I would have had more relish (seeing as they are proven cheats) but against the very fair honest kiwi's, I just felt compassion, For me, test cricket should be the heart. It teaches technique and moulds character. Indeed, if we coached our players better technique, tried to instil resilience and character, that can be translated into other forms of the game.
On a more positive note, just watched The Edge on prime video. Fantastic documentary, great insight into that era and makes you remember how much talent we had at that time. Definitely worth watching. And no Bono and co. involved
The only England players to come out of this series with any sort of credit so far are- Burns Stokes Leach Archer Broad
Roy and Overton dropped and have been replaced by Curran and Woakes for the final Test against the Aussies at the Oval.
Am I alone in not particularly wanting England to win the final test? I think if we were to win, it would paper over the cracks, keep Root his position as captain and give us a false sense of where we are as a test team. A 1-3 home defeat in the ashes however, would force the selectors to have a long hard think about the long term strategy of selection and ethos. Have Root as captain diminishes our one world class batsman and for a long time (as @DannyWilsonLovechild has eloquently told us) we've had a soft underbelly and not been prepared to bat properly to set up tests.
I certainly didn’t expect praise in this thread ;-) I’ll be at the oval tomorrow and Monday (if game not over) before jetting off to Sicily for 10 days Tuesday morning. I’ll be miffed if Australia win 3-1, but I think that’s the best outcome... IF... all aspects of England’s set up from chief exec to next generation batsmen heed the lessons handed out.
I'll take a look, thanks for the heads up on this. I know there's a lot of 1981 footage around, but I found this on YouTube. Not seen it since it was broadcast on BBC2 around the time of the 2013 Ashes series.
