Placing our bets on "Test Cricket's Young Fab Four"

[Burgey]

Johnson was ****ing great that series, but a lot of it was exaggerated by just how pathetic England were.

Unless he's injured he'll do the same if not worse to India. It's not physically possible to play that kind of remorseless attack over a five test series. It wasn't just Johnson, Harros was immaculate, and Siddle did his bit too. There was no escaping it. There is no escaping it because it's relentless.

Pack lots of helmets. It's a very good thing for India there's no Perth test this summer.

 

[Esperance]

I am not familiar with cricketer TPC.

 

[ohnoitsyou]

Unless he's injured he'll do the same if not worse to India. It's not physically possible to play that kind of remorseless attack over a five test series. It wasn't just Johnson, Harros was immaculate, and Siddle did his bit too. There was no escaping it. There is no escaping it because it's relentless.

Pack lots of helmets. It's a very good thing for India there's no Perth test this summer.

But I think most people would have expected kp, or cook, or prior to step up at least once and take the fight to johnson. And they just didn't, it being a five tests series is irrelevant when england were mentally ****ed after the first test.

Same thing with india, harris and Johnson will probably roll through them, but I expect one of kohli or pujura or rahane to stand up at least once

 

[Jono]

He already is, close the door on the way out.

End of career ya bum

 

[hendrix]

What we saw was Harris being absolutely immaculate and Johnson being outstanding.

Harris in that series and honestly more often than not when he's played in his test career approaches ATG levels.

That's basically a Warne-McGrath level attack at that particular point in time. It's better than Steyn-Philander. You need someone like Tendulkar to have a hope and England didn't have anyone like that.

India don't have anyone like that either. They will need for Harris-Johnson to be off. Which is not out of the realms of possibility given Harris' age and injury history and Johnson's inconsistent career.

another option is to try and hit Harris off his length. Could backfire of course but it's better than succumbing to the relentlessness the way England did.

 

[Flem274*]

Yeah people will remember Mitchell Johnson more but Ryan Harris is the real deal in that Aussie side. He's as good as Steyn, he just plays a lot lot less. He, Bond and Shoaib should form a club.

 

[King Pietersen]

Can you imagine those 3 bowling together. All on-form, at their best; they'd be a ****ing scary attack.

 

[harsh.ag]

Jeff Thomson, Sylvester Clarke, and Frank Tyson/Patrick Patterson.

Show much pace.....

 

[watson]

RE: Recent ENG V IND Test Series

Root's fifties…
Joe Root became only the third England player to reach 50 in at least one innings of every match of a five-Test series, following Wally Hammond in South Africa in 1938-39, and Peter May at home to South Africa in 1955. John Edrich went one better in 1970-71, reaching 50 in each Test of the first six-Test series, in Australia.

… and Root's average
Helped by his undefeated 149 at The Oval, Joe Root lifted his average in home Tests to 64.71, the highest by any Englishman with more than 1000 Test runs in England. Root edged ahead of Herbert Sutcliffe (64.60); Denis Compton (60.04) also averaged over 60. Ten other players, including Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell, top the 50 mark.


Kohli doesn't flower
Virat Kohli's average of 13.40 is among the lowest for any top-order (1-6) batsman who played throughout a five-Test series. The lowest of all was 6.22 by Bill Playle of New Zealand, who made only 56 runs in nine innings in England in 1958. Then comes Learie Constantine (65 runs at 7.22 for West Indies in Australia in 1930-31), Tommy Andrews (49 at 8.16 for Australia in England in 1926), Mike Atherton (79 at 8.77 for England v West Indies in 1991), Pelham Warner (85 at 9.44 for England in South Africa in 1905-06), Peter Carlstein (77 at 9.62 for South Africa in England in 1960), Chandu Sarwate (100 at 10.00 for India in Australia in 1947-48), Gundappa Viswanath (96 at 10.66 for India v England in 1976-77), Louis Stricker (99 at 12.37 for South Africa in Australia in 1910-11) and Maqsood Ahmed (102 at 12.75 for Pakistan in India in 1952-53). Sarwate was the only one apart from Kohli to have ten innings.


ESPNcricinfo XI: Interesting statistics from the England-India series | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[Flametree]

Constantine batted in the top 6?

Anyone think Brathwaite should have been included in this poll?

 

[Adders]

What we saw was Harris being absolutely immaculate and Johnson being outstanding.

Harris in that series and honestly more often than not when he's played in his test career approaches ATG levels.

That's basically a Warne-McGrath level attack at that particular point in time. It's better than Steyn-Philander. You need someone like Tendulkar to have a hope and England didn't have anyone like that.

India don't have anyone like that either. They will need for Harris-Johnson to be off. Which is not out of the realms of possibility given Harris' age and injury history and Johnson's inconsistent career.

another option is to try and hit Harris off his length. Could backfire of course but it's better than succumbing to the relentlessness the way England did.

Thank you hendrix........this was what I was trying to say in here a week ago and got lambasted for it. And whilst during that Ashes series there is no doubt at all that Englands ****eness contributed, it's hard to really press home that argument when Johnson and Harris then went to South Africa and did the same to what was probably the best batting line up in world cricket.

So I'll say it again..........that for more than half the away tests Joe Root has played, he has faced a level of bowling way above anything that Kohli has played, even though the later has fronted up (and had success) against Steyn and Philander. I think that should be factored into Roots poor away record.

 

[Spark]

I think you can make a case that Anderson and Broad were bowling at a higher standard for much of the 4th Test at a minimum.

At least, the bits that Kohli actually was at the crease at for.

 

[Dan]

They're all under 25 FFS; you don't expect complete records now.

"Root sucks away from home." Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But he has 10 years to not suck away from home.

Smith's record is still heavily influenced from the time he was **** at Test level in 2010, playing as a no-rounder. Williamson is finally converting his promise into stats after a less-than-stellar opening to his career. After, what, less than 4 years each at the top level, you don't expect them to average 50 home and away against every opposition. Not to mention sample size issues.

When you're looking at the potential of young batsmen to do stuff, you're not projecting their current stats forward for the next 10 years. Batsmen improve, change, evolve and sometimes lose form entirely. Saying "Root sucks away from home" is utterly meaningless. It might very well be true, but the entire point is that they've got 10+ years ahead of them to rectify holes in their record (if you go for analysis-by-checklist), or more generally speaking, become seriously ****ing good Test batsmen.

If you're looking back in 10 years and saying "Well this Kohli bloke would be an ATG, but he averaged 13 vs. England in England one tour back in 2014, so his record isn't complete because of his sub-40 average in England (despite him averaging 55 in 2018 and 48 in 2022)", you're doing it wrong.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Nah but the point is that the others apart from Root haven't sucked away from home. In a direct comparison, of course it matters.

 

[Dan]

If his career ended today, sure. But Root having a worse record away from home now, all of 22 Tests and 2 years after his debut, means almost **** all when it comes to his future potential over the next 50 Tests he plays away from home. If there was an obvious flaw -- like a complete inability to play spin or a pathological fear of anything to get above waist height -- you might question how well he's going to do away from home if he doesn't rectify it. But he's 23; everyone's going to have holes in their records at that age, unless they're a complete freak.

We're talking about 8 Tests here -- his debut one, that Ashes series where nobody from England made any runs at all anyway, and two games versus New Zealand. It's hardly enough to say "oooh here's proof that he can't play away from home so he'll be worse than Kohli over his career".

It's meaningless in assessing his potential; his career isn't over. The best batsmen find ways to evolve and adapt to cover weaknesses. Root's batting away from home, if it even is a weakness, is something he has more than enough time to 'fix' during his career.

 

[Dan]

Nah but the point is that the others apart from Root haven't sucked away from home. In a direct comparison, of course it matters.

Kohli averages about 3 runs higher over double the amount of away Tests. Hardly blowing Root out of the water there.

Which is exactly my point; one bad series against the West Indies and this terri-bad one against England outweigh Kohli's credible showings in Australia & New Zealand and his obvious ability in South Africa. We can see that there's no deterministic reason in Kohli's batting that suggests he's going to be **** away from home for the rest of his career; he just hasn't strung together consistency yet. It's the exact same scenario for Root.

 

[Maximas]

Nah, Root really hasn't shown a great capacity to play big important knocks away from home yet, granted I'm sure he will, and the opportunity he's had compared to the rest means it's hardly fair to judge him on this (hence Adders) however the point is not that Root sucks away from home, more that he has more to prove away from home. Obviously it's all pretty much speculation at this point but it's most difficult to make a call on Root at this stage without an overseas century - despite how complete his game looks now, I suppose we have a bit more evidence to go on with the others, In another 2 years we'll know a lot more about Root IMO

 

[OverratedSanity]

If his career ended today, sure. But Root having a worse record away from home now, all of 22 Tests and 2 years after his debut, means almost **** all when it comes to his future potential over the next 50 Tests he plays away from home. If there was an obvious flaw -- like a complete inability to play spin or a pathological fear of anything to get above waist height -- you might question how well he's going to do away from home if he doesn't rectify it. But he's 23; everyone's going to have holes in their records at that age, unless they're a complete freak.

We're talking about 8 Tests here -- his debut one, that Ashes series where nobody from England made any runs at all anyway, and two games versus New Zealand. It's hardly enough to say "oooh here's proof that he can't play away from home so he'll be worse than Kohli over his career". This is a pretty simple point, I don't know why everyone's complicating it. Of course Root's away record means ****all. It doesn't show whether he'll be awesome or an HTB. We do have a clearer idea of the others though, because they've already atleast got some good runs overseas.

It's meaningless in assessing his potential; his career isn't over. The best batsmen find ways to evolve and adapt to cover weaknesses. Root's batting away from home, if it even is a weakness, is something he has more than enough time to 'fix' during his career.

No one's denying any of this. But Williamson, Kohli, Rahane, Pujara , Bravo have all already got important overseas runs. On multiple occasions. That obviously a point in their favour over Root, and puts them slightly ahead of Root at the moment.

 

[ohnoitsyou]

Root looked the goods in NZ, even if he didn't make big scores he was still very annoying. In fact it was quite depressing seeing how the English young talent looked so much better than ours.

 

[Adders]

No one's denying any of this. But Williamson, Kohli, Rahane, Pujara , Bravo have all already got important overseas runs. On multiple occasions. That obviously a point in their favour over Root, and puts them slightly ahead of Root at the moment.

Seriously?? Yet Roots +50 average doesn't count for anything?

As Dan said, for all these players we are talking about a way too small sample size to be making any real judgments via their stats, but that is especially true re Roots away record.........he's played 8 tests FFS and 5 of those were against Mitchell Johnson on steroids.

Personally I was just a little shocked at the start of this thread where it seemed the consensus was that Root does't belong in this discussion and through (my admittedly tinted glasses) I reckon that's BS. Honestly, if you were to ask me to call it now I would say that Kohli, Williamson and Pujara will all go onto have better test careers, but as it stands now Root is right in amongst them for mine...........and to use his away record to counter that is crazy without considering what he has faced in those total of 8 tests.

Another point worth mentioning is where his standing might be if England hadn't of ****ed him around the batting line-up.