**Official** Pakistan and England in the UAE 2015/16

[Cabinet96]

Yasir wicket coming here.

 

[91Jmay]

Tomorrow is going to be a belting day, hundred from either of these two required. Been a good series for most part this one, drama in each match.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Fascinatingly poised game.

The lack of reviews for Pakistan may well be vital tomorrow.

 

[Cabinet96]

Yeah, you'd think one of these two needs a big score and then maybe a Taylor fifty.

 

[indiaholic]

0 down
1 down - Indiaholic
2 down - morgieb, King Pietersen, flibbertyjibber
3 down
4 down - Cabinet96
5 down
6+ down


20-29 runs
30-39 runs - King Pietersen
40-49 runs - flibbertyjibber
50-59 runs - Cabinet96
60-69 runs - morgieb, Indiaholic
70-79 runs
80-89 runs
90-99 runs
100+ runs

Flibberty ftw.

 

[Stace]

Time to get some sleep soon then wake up and watch NZ hopefully run through AUS then see Root and Cook put on a big partnership and lead us to victory. If that happened I could die a happy man.

 

[marc71178]

Rashid still bowls a lot of trash. Could be good if we persist with him and he improves his control of length, but for now, he'll get punished by good players of spin bowling.

He shouldn't be learning that sort of thing in the Test side - cannot carry a player when you only have 11.

For a player with so much experience, he doesn't look to have learned much about bowling to me and I do wonder if he ever will.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Tomorrow's shaping up to be the best day of test cricket in a while. So much awesome cricket to look forward to. And I won't be able to watch a ball of it.

 

[duffer]

Tomorrow's shaping up to be the best day of test cricket in a while. So much awesome cricket to look forward to. And I won't be able to watch a ball of it.

Become a dealer. You can work from home.

 

[theegyptian]

Bayliss and Cook and other selectors have to take it on the chin for this tour. They've made some awful team selections.

You can't cater for injuries likes Stokes but at what point in the last game did they decide ' yes our spinners our getting smashed and are crap - lets add another to the team'. If they wanted to play Patel they should have grown some balls and dropped Ali or Rashid.
Taylor coming in for the third test when even jonny noname on his sofa in blightysville could have told you he was a better bet than most of the batting before the first test.
Not selecting a senior spinner in the squad and/or no spin bowling coach to guide what was basically 3 rookies.
Selecting Ali as opener when he should of been concentrating on his spin bowling, was ill-equipped to open, and was never a long term option as opener.

They may not have done any better if they did anything different. But all these selections have been shown up as poor.


Still it really was a great effort involved by nearly all the players on the tour. Everyone but Ali and Buttler(and even he wasn't that bad. First test both innings he had to attack, and kept well except for one day) can really hold their heads high knowing they either were excellent (Cook, Root, Broad, Anderson, Taylor) or improved massively(Wood, Bairstow, Stokes) or performed as well as you could have reasonably expected(Samit, Bell, Rashid).

Hell Cook, or Root or Taylor may pull something off special and win the game and it's a result oriented game so it won't matter what **** decisions they made if they come away with a 1-1.

 

[Stace]

Tomorrow's shaping up to be the best day of test cricket in a while. So much awesome cricket to look forward to. And I won't be able to watch a ball of it.

Some people feel sorry for me because I was in a car crash and got a spinal injury and cant walk or move my arms properly, but what they don't realise is i'm living a dream by being able to stay home and watch cricket at any time while everyone else has to go to work, I feel sorry for everyone else!

 

[Black_Warrior]

Another closely fought test match. A great finish in store for us tomorrow.

I knew this was going to be a tight series.

 

[Spark]

Some people feel sorry for me because I was in a car crash and got a spinal injury and cant walk or move my arms properly, but what they don't realise is i'm living a dream by being able to stay home and watch cricket at any time while everyone else has to go to work, I feel sorry for everyone else!

Man I know you were making a light-hearted post but **** me, that's brutal

 

[Stace]

Man I know you were making a light-hearted post but **** me, that's brutal

Yeh it sounds bad but its not so bad

 

[theegyptian]

Bell will play in SA. They've already got to find a new opener they're not going to put Taylor at 3 as well.

It would be stupid if they dropped Bell now imo.

As you say they already have one opening at the top of the order, two new guys coming in would be extreme against Steyn, Philander and Morkel. Especially as there isn't even one clear cut choice.

How he performed in this series was about as good as you could have expected given his past play in Asia. They could of got rid of him at the start of the series but they didn't. To get rid of him now would tactically be a mistake.

He's got a decent record in SA. That will be his make or break series. Either he fails and a new player gets to come in against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in easier conditions or he does really well. I've been happy to put up with his mediocre performances in the last couple of series because of the lack of alternatives (and younger, poorer players in the team) and because of the toughness of the tours that were coming up - but that ends after SA. A home summer against SL and PAK is an ideal opportunity to blood someone new so make no mistake he would have to be very good in SA to continue into the summer of 2016.

Bell is basically the sacrifice for the team at the moment. He is performing indifferently but he's doing a job bridging between generations and giving the selectors another year before they have to make some big calls/ allow players who aren't ready another year to develop. My memory isn't great but isn't that what Ponting did at the end of his career.

 

[King Pietersen]

Ian Bell is no Ricky Ponting.

 

[OverratedSanity]

I'm honestly amazed at the how much fans defend Bell saying that there's no better replacement. I find that to be total nonsense. Bell averages in the low 30s in the last 3 and a half years and without that ashes 2013 performance jis average drops to the 20s. That is incredibly, woefully terrible. Hes stunk up the team when you've had Taylor waiting in the wings for 2 years twiddling his thumbs. Ballance was found out badly but it's better to have them failing in test cricket after being given an opportunity than to keep ****ing Bell in the team in the hope that he may reproduce a series like the 2013 ashes. He's exhausted every bit of credit he had in the bank and more.

 

[theegyptian]

I'm honestly amazed at the how much fans defend Bell saying that there's no better replacement. I find that to be total nonsense. Bell averages in the low 30s in the last 3 and a half years and without that ashes 2013 performance jis average drops to the 20s. That is incredibly, woefully terrible. Hes stunk up the team when you've had Taylor waiting in the wings for 2 years twiddling his thumbs. Ballance was found out badly but it's better to have them failing in test cricket after being given an opportunity than to keep ****ing Bell in the team in the hope that he may reproduce a series like the 2013 ashes. He's exhausted every bit of credit he had in the bank and more.

Great analysis about the 2013 ashes. Also, without your parents having *** that time you wouldn't be here. You can't just discount that series.

And Taylor is not a number 3 bat. He has almost never batted there in first class cricket. His great strength is playing spin. His great weakness is playing pace. He falls over often and as a result is a big lbw candidate and knicks off to the slips too much as well. His best position is 5 or 6 where he can face an older ball. He wouldn't average more than 20 at 3.

You think Bell wants to be batting at 3? Of course not, he'd much prefer 5 or 6 where he has scored tons of runs - and in all likelihood would still be scoring lots of runs. But you move around to best suit the team.

 

[wpdavid]

Still it really was a great effort involved by nearly all the players on the tour. Everyone but Ali and Buttler(and even he wasn't that bad. First test both innings he had to attack, and kept well except for one day) can really hold their heads high knowing they either were excellent (Cook, Root, Broad, Anderson, Taylor) or improved massively(Wood, Bairstow, Stokes) or performed as well as you could have reasonably expected(Samit, Bell, Rashid).

That really is one of the more damning indictments of Ian Bell that I've read, even on these pages. If we only expect a top order batsman with > 100 tests to average 20something, then we might as well give up.

Beyond that, at the risk of being awkward ....
I'm not sure we expected Rashid to be as poor as he has been. No-one seriously expected him to be great, despite what one or two posters will persist in calling the 'hype' about him, but I expected something better than his series average of about 70, iirc. I'm not convinced that Bairstow or Stokes improved massively. Stokes bowled OK, but his batting as continued to be dire. Bairstow has continued to make starts without going on with it, and his missed stumping at the start of today may well have cost us the match.

Basically we've been trying to win despite playing about 8 against 11.

 

[91Jmay]

Hold on Pakistan are getting credit for 11 players? On what planet, their opener with Hafeez has been putrid and Zufi has been as threatening as a water pistol against an aircraft carrier.