***Official*** Sri Lanka in England and Ireland 2014

[Top_Cat]

tbh Cook's bad run really started after he scored his 290-odd against India. My theory is he's gotten a bit lazier with getting nose over bat handle so has lost a bit of his sense of movement on the ball. I know there are claims he's getting 'unlucky' with all the good balls he's been knocked over by but a bloke can only get that so many times before you gotta wonder whether something they're doing technically is making the ball better than it was. Captaincy has probably just made it worse.

 

[GotSpin]

Oh boy. How would you be England. Id Rather they beat India though later on

 

[Cabinet96]

Well it is all rather strange. Senior players only represent half the side - 5 players over 24 yrs old with more than 10 caps. There has been a cull of snr players and possibly, and I don't know the truth, to protect this clique of senior players from being challenged.

I think it needs to be looked at more. Since the last of the Senior players debuted (Broad) and before the start of this series, (a period of 6-7 years) England picked 23 new players at Test level. Of those 23 players only Root and Ballance are in the current side. With the possible exception of Root, England went the entire career of Swann without producing a single player worth persevering with (based on the make up of the current team.)

TR Ambrose
DJ Pattinson
GP Swann
A Khan
TT Bresnan
G Onions
IJL Trott
MA Carberry
ST Finn
JC Tredwell
EJG Morgan
A Shahzad
SR Patel
JM Bairstow
JWA Taylor
NRD Compton
JE Root
SC Kerrigan
CR Woakes
BA Stokes
GS Ballance
SG Borthwick
WB Rankin

I get that the new management want to make their mark but the strangest thing is to pick a group of new players after the last group of new players have not been developed and now jettisoned. By bringing new players in you strengthen rather than challenge the internal clique within the team.

This is actually really interesting. There's a divide of more than five years from Broad's debut to Root's debut meaning there's a pre 2008 group and a post 2012 group. Also worth baring in mind that Cook, Bell et all all struggled a bit initially, but were persisted with. The number of people in that list who were only given a handful of tests is pretty shocking and really shouldn't be a surprise that so many of them have failed to make a mark on the test side much.

 

[viriya]

Honestly I think people are being too harsh on Cook.. He's in terrible form, but he has batted great as captain before - sometimes you just have to back the guy you have because there's really no clear better option. It's true, he's not the greatest tactician, but who really is a better option to captain than him currently?

 

[hendrix]

Honestly I think people are being too harsh on Cook.. He's in terrible form, but he has batted great as captain before - sometimes you just have to back the guy you have because there's really no clear better option. It's true, he's not the greatest tactician, but who really is a better option to captain than him currently?

The options at this point are Bell or Broad.

Or, if they want to back a young guy to the hilt (which to be fair is what they've been doing with Cook lately anyway), Root.

 

[viriya]

The options at this point are Bell or Broad.

Or, if they want to back a young guy to the hilt (which to be fair is what they've been doing with Cook lately anyway), Root.

Broad looked like he wanted to give up T20 captaincy after the WC.. and Bell is backing Cook. England management won't take a Smith-esque risk imo..

Sometimes the team just gets outplayed.. It's not like Cook can fix the lengths his bowlers bowled..

 

[hendrix]

Sometimes the team just gets outplayed.. It's not like Cook can fix the lengths his bowlers bowled..

I'd usually back you on this, and I often think the effect that the captain has on a match is far overstated (don't get me started on all this aggressive captaincy and cute declarations bull****, it's rubbish).

However, this match had some pretty clear issues in terms of captaincy.

1. Spreading the field early in the day.
2. Spreading the field when Mathews was batting with the tail. Lots of captains will do this after a while, but the speed with which he did it was shocking. Remember that the bowlers had just got rid of recognised batsmen Jayawardene and Chandimal and were bowling with a relatively new ball. 2 full sessions of spreading the field for four balls bowling teasers outside off stump (which were hit for four anyway) and then bringing the field in for two balls (which Mathews split for the single anyway). Get the bloke out, ffs.
3. Waiting so long to bowl the spinner.
4. Not trying anything different during that partnership between Cook and Herath.

 

[Burgey]

Burgey and all the other **** ****s who liked his **** Sri Lanka post and thought it was a great rant, suck it hard.

Absurd. Just because they're on the verge of finally doing something doesn't mean they've been replete with away greatness up to this point.

Will be bloody funny if it rains though, not that England deserves it.

 

[nevermind]

Yeah, England basically gave up -- they 100% resigned themselves to the fact that they couldn't get Mathews out. It was something else. 2 ball overs for 2 full sessions.

Full credit to Mathews though, boy did he take advantage of the situation, what a great knock.

Also, Billy Bowden has sort of gone under the radar - he had a shocker!!

 

[social]

Yeah, England basically gave up -- they 100% resigned themselves to the fact that they couldn't get Mathews out. It was something else. 2 ball overs for 2 full sessions.

Full credit to Mathews though, boy did he take advantage of the situation, what a great knock.

Also, Billy Bowden has sort of gone under the radar - he had a shocker!!

Billy is a poor umpire and has been for years

The only reason he continues to get a gig is because there is an alarming lack of international quality umpires

The English tactics were ridiculous but of major concern is the lack of leadership as you would have thought that someone would've tried to change them even if Cook couldn't see wood for the trees

 

[Cabinet96]

Bowden got brought back because there were only three or so elite umpires who weren't from England and Australia and we were in the middle of an Ashes double header.

 

[Contra]

Cook has mostly been a player who either scores big or gets out early, even in the 2011 series against India he scored 348 runs and averaged 58, with his 294 accounting for the majority of those runs. Going back to the run scoring lists of most of the series he's participated in he's had one, maybe two big innings (and some really big innings) and not much else outside of that. The SA series in 2012, the NZ series (both of them) in 2013 also suggest the same thing. The only issue is now he is not able to covert the starts into bigger scores to offset his early dismissals.

 

[Jono]

England v Sri Lanka, 2nd Investec Test, Headingley, 4th day : Mahela Jayawardene turns up heat on Alastair Cook | Cricket News | England v Sri Lanka | ESPN Cricinfo

****ing love Mahela. First he sprayed the **** out of Maxwell, Wade and warner last year and now he's just slammed Cook and co.

Badass.

 

[hendrix]

just needs to pluck his ****ing eyebrows

 

[Jono]

We should not be surprised that a bloke who rocks up to his profile photo shoot hungover is a badass

 

[The Battlers Prince]

When your side puts catches down, most captains will struggle

 

[Burgey]

We should not be surprised that a bloke who rocks up to his profile photo shoot hungover is a badass

Jayawardene rockin' the Clint Bolton dodgy eye right there.

 

[smash84]

SL under matthews are really playing well. They almost beat Pakistan in the UAE and are now on the verge of defeating England

 

[Top_Cat]

Cook has mostly been a player who either scores big or gets out early, even in the 2011 series against India he scored 348 runs and averaged 58, with his 294 accounting for the majority of those runs. Going back to the run scoring lists of most of the series he's participated in he's had one, maybe two big innings (and some really big innings) and not much else outside of that. The SA series in 2012, the NZ series (both of them) in 2013 also suggest the same thing. The only issue is now he is not able to covert the starts into bigger scores to offset his early dismissals.

Every opening bat ever, innit. It's why most of them average <50, sometimes you just cop a good one early.

Cook's not even getting the big sores any more. Weirdly he looks solid until 20 and then gets cagey.

 

[vic_orthdox]

So putting this out there, not because I think it's true, but...

Could it be that Cook's career is an extreme symptom of the increase in quality of bowling over the last few years?

He made mountains of runs during a period where the bowling wasn't very good, and all of a sudden has found life very difficult. Obviously there are extenuating circumstances - the mental stresses of captaincy, general fluctuations in form etc. But is it possible that he's sorta the enhanced Phil Hughes? Outstanding against bowling that's not very good, but as soon as teams bowl well to him he's incapable of scoring runs?

tbh Cook's bad run really started after he scored his 290-odd against India. My theory is he's gotten a bit lazier with getting nose over bat handle so has lost a bit of his sense of movement on the ball. I know there are claims he's getting 'unlucky' with all the good balls he's been knocked over by but a bloke can only get that so many times before you gotta wonder whether something they're doing technically is making the ball better than it was. Captaincy has probably just made it worse.

Personal theory - a perceived need to be more "aggressive", especially with his captaincy being perceived as being negative, has also played with him. You look at a number of his starts in Australia, and Cook would come out scoring quickly but playing a lot of shots that you wouldn't normally see him play till he was 80+.