**Official** South Africa in England 2012

[theegyptian]

I definitely think Wright is a bit of a crap pick with so many allrounders already in the squad - whenever he's played cricket for England in the last few years it's been as a specialist batsman which is absurd IMO, even in T20 - but it's one we can live with. Lumb, though. Jeez.

yes wright really is in for his batting and fielding. there is no way you can call him an allrounder in the shorter forms of the game. For sussex this year he bowled 9 overs in 9 games in the T20 and went at 10rpo. Whatever faults Bopara has he is a decent 5/6 bowler in T20 and ODI cricket.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Flower getting in behind Strauss some more from the sounds of it.

Sick of this selective sentimentality. Finding it pretty difficult to get behind England at the moment with KP-gate (badly handled and it's pretty obvious there have been leaks aplenty). The endless selection of Bopara and Strauss which is utterly devoid of any merit, meanwhile guys like Onions get royally screwed over. The resident batsmen seem to have an unlimited licence to play utterly brainless cricket, without any chance of being dropped. Meanwhile the guys who are under the most pressure to perform are the newbies like Taylor and Bairstow. The pressure should be on the rest to perform, they've been absolutely rank for the past year. Really am sick of it. The fairness in the system seems to have gone.

Guess you'd prefer the revolving door policy of the 80's and 90's then. That was fun.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Guess you'd prefer the revolving door policy of the 80's and 90's then. That was fun.

Ah good the straw-man arguments are out. Well done.

If you lot can't see the batsmen have too much of a cushy number right now you're out of your heads. The batting has been pathetic over the past year, the only guy to get dropped for poor performances has been Morgan.

The bowling has been by far England's strongest point over the past 2-3 years. Yet they've still regularly swapped it about. The fringe bowlers get a chance to perform and show what they can do. The batsmen only get a chance because someone is injured, this is less of a problem with the bowling because there is far more turnover of players. How are the next big batsmen supposed to put any pressure on the resident piss it away merchants who played in the series just gone? The batsmen have it far too easy and they're not accountable at the moment for their string of poor performances.

I know people will say we don't have the batsmen to come in - well how do we know if they're not given the chance? Bairstow has gone from rubbish to being a great find in one match. Compton earned a go before his untimely injury. We rested our front-line bowlers against West Indies - we left the problem area untouched. So now we're having to put people in against South Africa and away in India - whilst some of the regulars have been ****e against all-comers. Just the fact there's some pressure and competition will make the batting better, even if the personnel end up being more or less what they were.

Remember the times when the likes of Cook, Strauss, Bell and Colly needed a score to keep their place? Where has this been over the past year?

 

[Heboric]

lol cook super talented lol. Cook is always crap at home and is going to have technical problems his whole career. He's similiar to Smith. poor technically but is good mentally and finds a way to score runs. Don't think many people have called Cook super talented on an international level.

Well I have heard a lot of people talk of Cook potentially being the first England batsmen to make the 10000 mark

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Well I have heard a lot of people talk of Cook potentially being the first England batsmen to make the 10000 mark

He will, more due to the fact he will play 150+ games than anything.

 

[Cricketismylife]

"Problem" for England is that none of the batting mainstays have done bad enough yet to be under pressure of being dropped.

Cook is completely secure. He's found it tough against the Pakistanis home and away as well as the South Africans, but he's gritted out some decent scores like the 94 in the 2nd test of winter, and 115 first test here. Plus against most other attacks which are not great he has scored very heavily. With no South Africa series till end of 2015, I don't see him having too many problems scoring well. New Zealand and India are the next challenges and neither side has an especially good bowling attack even in the conditions. New Zealand may have some talent with Boult and Bracewell, and have bowled ok in the last few series, but you wouldn't call them a challenging attack.

Bell is less secure than Cook but secure enough for the same reasons. Expect him to score well against average to weak attacks.

Strauss is still captain and team behind him so undroppable.

And even though Trott is no longer a matchwinner like before, he's scoring enough to not be a failure and is completely secure.

 

[benchmark00]

Bell looked horribly out of form for mine. More so than any other English player, despite making more runs than a few. His innings' were so painful to watch.

 

[Spark]

I don't think he was really 'out of form' tbh. He just decided he wouldn't play any shots on the offside at all (which is not really the way to go about batting IMO). The exception was yesterday/day before, where he looked awful.

 

[amanuensis]

I don't think he was really 'out of form' tbh. He just decided he wouldn't play any shots on the offside at all (which is not really the way to go about batting IMO). The exception was yesterday/day before, where he looked awful.

So he opted out of playing on the offside & got out when he did - how else do you define "out of form"?

 

[benchmark00]

So he opted out of playing on the offside & got out when he did - how else do you define "out of form"?

Yeah, kinda weird post. He opted out of playing them because he didn't have the confidence of executing them. Not sure how else you would define as out of form.

 

[Spark]

My take on it was that he decided to put away all potentially risky shots at the Oval tbh, because he was trying to stonewall. Maybe it was because he lacked confidence, but I didn't see it that way at the time.

 

[benchmark00]

My take on it was that he decided to put away all potentially risky shots at the Oval tbh, because he was trying to stonewall. Maybe it was because he lacked confidence, but I didn't see it that way at the time.

Well they're not risky shots when you're in form.

I'm definitely willing to cut him some slack about the Oval second innings because he was just trying to play out the draw (even though I'm not sure he went about it in the very best fashion), but the other innings didn't strike me as a man anywhere near form. Had no flow. And credit to SA for not allowing him to get into rhythm, that must be said.

 

[amanuensis]

My take on it was that he decided to put away all potentially risky shots at the Oval tbh, because he was trying to stonewall. Maybe it was because he lacked confidence, but I didn't see it that way at the time.

That might explain that innings, but it doesn't really extend to the others. Having said that, match situations in this series have been pretty **** for him, which clearly doesn't help if you're struggling a bit with your game.

 

[Spark]

Well they're not risky shots when you're in form.

I'm definitely willing to cut him some slack about the Oval second innings because he was just trying to play out the draw (even though I'm not sure he went about it in the very best fashion), but the other innings didn't strike me as a man anywhere near form. Had no flow. And credit to SA for not allowing him to get into rhythm, that must be said.

Oh, I definitely agree that it was the wrong approach, I'm just not sure that it could be put down to him not being reasonably confident in his strokeplay/not seeing the ball well - at the start of the series, anyway. Perhaps it's one of those cases of someone playing themselves into bad form.

 

[amanuensis]

Oh, I definitely agree that it was the wrong approach, I'm just not sure that it could be put down to him not being reasonably confident in his strokeplay/not seeing the ball well - at the start of the series, anyway. Perhaps it's one of those cases of someone playing themselves into bad form.

I would slightly rephrase that, with "a rut" replacing "bad form".

 

[Scaly piscine]

"Problem" for England is that none of the batting mainstays have done bad enough yet to be under pressure of being dropped.

Cook is completely secure. He's found it tough against the Pakistanis home and away as well as the South Africans, but he's gritted out some decent scores like the 94 in the 2nd test of winter, and 115 first test here. Plus against most other attacks which are not great he has scored very heavily. With no South Africa series till end of 2015, I don't see him having too many problems scoring well. New Zealand and India are the next challenges and neither side has an especially good bowling attack even in the conditions. New Zealand may have some talent with Boult and Bracewell, and have bowled ok in the last few series, but you wouldn't call them a challenging attack.

Bell is less secure than Cook but secure enough for the same reasons. Expect him to score well against average to weak attacks.

Strauss is still captain and team behind him so undroppable.

And even though Trott is no longer a matchwinner like before, he's scoring enough to not be a failure and is completely secure.

To an extent the problem has taken root from the past 4-5 years. This season there has been limited opportunity for up and coming batsmen to show what they can do. The only time was really against West Indies, but that was only 3 Tests and early in the season. Previous to that we wasted too much time on Ravi Bopara and on Eoin Morgan. More faith had to be placed in the county system, Morgan had to show his quality there and he's always struggled - if he was good enough for England he would have been good enough to score bucketloads of runs there, even if it was just one season. He's never done that.

There have been times when England could rested someone like KP, or rotated a bit and allowed someone else to have had a run of Test matches. I'm not on about during the Ashes here, but against Bangladesh, West Indies, New Zealand - or even a touring side like Sri Lanka or India.

 

[Jarquis]

No Buttler or Taylor in the ODIs ffs

 

[amanuensis]

No Buttler or Taylor in the ODIs ffs

In place of?

 

[Viscount Tom]

Bopara??

 

[Pup Clarke]

Thought Bopara was MOTS in the Windies games?