He's seldom hit out of the attack as things stand, truth be told. The assault by Gilchrist and Clarke (which turned his match-figures from 8-196 to 8-237 in the space of a few overs) is still really the only time batsmen have successfully actually gone after him (rather than scored at good speed because he's bowled poorly, ie dragging it down too often as he does from time to time).
These days it's pretty rare for a pitch to start offering nothing and finish offering anything much. Wickets don't deteriorate like they used to.
Really, if Bell's poor form continues much longer, Shah has more than earned the opportunity to replace him. I don't know what it is about him that people "don't have confidence inspired" from but you could barely have a player who's done more to earn a Test chance. Shah has barely stopped scoring First-Class runs since 2001.
With all due respect to you mate, have you seriously seen KP bat, he treats spinners with no respect whatever, he has got an unorthodox style of tackling spin bowling, but.. boy its surely effective, i can't really understand where you are coming from as KP has never been troubled by even great spin bowlers, he is more vulnerable against good fast-bowling rather than spin bowling.
He's more likely to get out to a bad spinner than a bad seamer, though. Tendulkar knows. So does Paul Harris.
Actually i had a look, and he's got out to more spinners than i'd have thought. Take a glance through:
The real problem with Bell is that he doesn't make good use of good form when he has it, he gets a lot of good starts, plays some good, and when he looks set to score big he finds a way to get out, so he's virtually wasting all his talent with the lack of proper temperament and concentration.
He just looks good. It's not the same thing as actually being good.
Well... then i've gotta say, my... bad..., but still one can't deny he is one of the best players of spin in his own right.
I don't think that's the case, because Flintoff doesn't run through teams, nor is he likely to score crazy amounts of runs. The key for me is Monty.
But he is the energy source. The captain maybe Kevin. But the motivation still flows from this guy. If he's in form, trust him to pluck out two or three guys at the top, and it's wide open for the others to run through. And his batting is understated. He has good aggressive play against spin, and can confuse Indians whether to go for aggressive or defensive play. Remember that Indians have been weak in knocking out tails, so Flintoff will have job of marshalling them too to England's advantage. Jus the feeling of a Flintoff to come next should give a bolt of confidence to any English batsman.
He is good, in the sense he has got all the shots in his arsenal, but he doesn't seem to have the mental strength to buckle down and make most of his talent, and since he is not really being pushed by any batsman from the domestic level, so he doesn't seem to under any real pressure to improve either.
That's a good point. Some of his best performances have come when his place has been threatened. i.e comeback of Flintoff, then Vaughan. etc. So having a batsman like Owais in the squad can act as a motivation.
I don't know how much of it is anything to do with mental strength. It's not like he throws his wicket away regularly with an irresponsible stroke. He just gets out by mistiming a shot or failing to deal with a good ball. So maybe he just isn't that good at timing shots consistently or dealing with good balls?
If England would be needing too much assistance from Flintoff with the bat, then England would be in some trouble, because its well known that Freddie sucks against good spin bowling, so i am really not expecting him to score a ton of runs in this series, but as you said he is talismanic figure for England, but he would have a bigger role to play with the ball with good chance of the ball reversing in India.
Kaif probably didn't have a very strong case when he was initially picked for the test side. Over the past few seasons, he's been up on the domestic run charts, something he never managed to do earlier in his career.
Forgot what Freddie did with the willow back in 06 haven't you?
