**Official** West Indies in England 2012

[Manee]

Absolutely ridiculous move

God knows what they were thinking to drop the most successful bowler from their last series for a completely unknown quantity, particularly when the former bowls the sort of stuff that the English have a well known weakness to

If they were going to gamble, they may as well have punted on Rampaul's fitness and dropped Edwards

Yeah, it's baffling. I assumed when I heard it that they'd dropped Fiddy for Gabriel.

I thought Rampaul was injured with a stiff neck.

 

[Howe_zat]

They're talking about Shillingford being dropped to play Gabriel on debut.

 

[Jacknife]

Creamy couple of cover drives from Trott

 

[screamingfields]

They need a spinner. Just one. Windies to score 300 next innings regardless of England's total right now.

 

[Viscount Tom]

Think you might be a bit hopeful there.

Likelihood is that the pitch will have degraded by then and this batting line up of the Windies isn't up to much.

 

[Spark]

Agree that both have natural speed and a lack of seam movement but Yadav can extract good swing on his day and is more conventional and less slingy in action.

Yeah the similarity only goes so far. Not hitting the seam the big one.

Gabriel with less of a propensity to bowl rank pies apart from that shocker down leg thus far, mind.

EDIT: **** me the over rate is abysmal, isn't it? They're about 10 short!

 

[tooextracool]

Absolutely ridiculous move

God knows what they were thinking to drop the most successful bowler from their last series for a completely unknown quantity, particularly when the former bowls the sort of stuff that the English have a well known weakness to

If they were going to gamble, they may as well have punted on Rampaul's fitness and dropped Edwards

Don't entirely agree that England are known to have a weakness against bowlers of a similar ilk as Shillingford. Conventional Off-spin has rarely ever caused any damage against England, and this is decidedly the case for almost any non-mystery finger spinner (include SLA) on English soil. Shillingford is actually a fairly average spinner anyways, and I'd be shocked if he caused any problems for England especially in the month of May.

That being said however, I do agree that Gabriel was a poor choice as he is a bowler that is not likely to cause problems anywhere in the world and has never played a test match before. I would have played Shillingford, but I think WI threw away their chance of any sort of fight this series when they didn't pick Narine for this tour.

 

[Jacknife]

They need a spinner. Just one. Windies to score 300 next innings regardless of England's total right now.

Don't necessarily think they need a spinner, they just need a good swing bower who can take wickets. I'd also be very surprised if they get close to 300, you also seem to think that the pitch has flattened out rather than the bowling been inferior.

 

[screamingfields]

Windies have the best fielding team in the world? Better than England's for sure.

 

[Spark]

Windies have the best fielding team in the world? Better than England's for sure.

Not on today's evidence tbf. Their ground fielding today has been pretty rank.

They were good in the field against us, mind, though Sammy dropped a fair few at slip.

 

[Jacknife]

windies have the best fielding team in the world? Better than england's for sure.

 

[Spark]

England have dropped a hell of a lot of catches over the last year, so it's not the worst claim.

 

[Jacknife]

England have dropped a hell of a lot of catches over the last year, so it's not the worst claim.

More the first part, even with the drop catches of recent times, I wouldn't say they were any better, think our ground fielding is better though, can't quite explain the catching though.

Anyway excellent session for England, these two have ground them down nicely. Strauss has been imperious out there and Trott's been Trott.

 

[Manee]

They're talking about Shillingford being dropped to play Gabriel on debut.

Of course they are, stupid on my part.

 

[Spikey]

you can't take national pride to the supermarket

 

[Jager]

The agony I feel for West Indies fans at the moment.

 

[Spark]

Not sure what to say about that.

 

[Jacknife]

Defo got nervous since he got to about 85, wafted at a few that he was previously leaving, glad he got that moment of luck, he deserves it.

 

[Spark]

Geez they needed that.

 

[Jager]

Finally a breakthrough, although with Pietersen and Bell to come, getting Trott out might just accelerate the agony.