Are you proposing we are more likely to be effective if our spinners bowl another 30 overs per game? If your spinners aren't good enough to bowl long spell in tandem over here then you have to have 4 seamers, because its far to hot and humid for 3 seamers to keep rotating an end. Stokes's average of 35 and economy of 3 per over are pretty good for these wickets and the two days play I've watched he seemed pretty close in speed to Wood (don't know if Sky has the bowling speed technology in use back home) and a lot faster than Broad and Anderson. As a batsman I'd say he was better than Bairstow and has a better record over his test career with a similar number of innings. Bell looks like he might be creeping back to some batting form and he is clearly behind Root and Cook. Short-term my gut reaction is Taylor would get more runs in the UAe, but I'm not that convinced Taylor has a technique that will work better than Stokes in South Africa. Stokes's problem is the number of times he plays daft shots very early in an innings and his average is decimated by his 3 ducks on the bounce against India. If he gets up to around 15 he generally goes on to a 50 plus, but he needs to really work on how he gets through his first 6 or 7 overs. With the lack of balance/quality in our spin attack I think we need 4 seamers and he's done a decent job as the fourth seamer in this series. He also played well first innings in Abu Dhabi, was sent out try and make fast runs in the second. Gave away a dreadful wicket in the first innings of the second test, but I thought he applied himself well in the second innings.
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