***Official*** England in India 2016/17

[mackembhoy]

because you make adjustment and try who is best suited in different conditions. For me its between Ball and Woakes for a spot. you can drop rashid/batty and play ball still but moeen and batty/rashid dont give me enough confidence and with stokes around and doing a great job, dont really need additionally 3 seamers. Fully aware of Woakes performance but he does not have enough variation for here and also not have enough experience to cover that up. Ball on the other hand, whatever little I've seen, got plenty of variations and will be very useful.

Seemingly picking Ball because of his white ball stuff in Bangladesh. Woakes was our star bowler in the ODI series in Sri Lanka and his variation in that format is decent.

I saw none of Ball's variation in the summer he just bowled less effective line and length than woakes.

 

[mackembhoy]

Kind of annoyed that they are throwing Hameed into the fire now.

Hoping he does well but **** not exactly an easy start to his test career.

IMO Cook would probably step down if we had a decent tour but given we will get smashed I doubt he wants to go out as captain after a 5-0 loss.

They did the same to Lyth and Hales. Too scared to give players a chance in favour of protecting someone else or shoehorning in something stupid.

Lyth should have played in the windies they went for Trott

Hales should have played in the UAE they went for Moeen.

This time round Ballance instead of Hameed and Duckett should have started at 4.

Not selecting the 2 top peforming spinners in county cricket for a tour of the subcontinent.

Playing Ben stokes at 8 then dropping him for Chris Jordan.

Persisting with Woakes when he was rubbish.(thankfully they got one right in the end but that was his work for warks not his England peformances prior to 2016)

Picking Vince and Ballance in the summer despite them averaging 20s and 30s

 

[Stace]

Its not fair to compare Root and Kohli in this series when Root will be facing Ashwin and Jadeja while Kohli will face Ali. To make it fair Root's performance should be compared to how Kohli fared when he was the away batsman in England and vice-versa Kohli should be compared to how Root done against India in England.

So Root needs to score more than 134 and average over 13.40 to outdo Kohli
Kohli needs to score more than 518 runs and average over 103.60.

I think this is the fairest and logical way to compare them.

 

[Daemon]

https://www.facebook.com/englandcricket/videos/10153802387120194/

So much hype.

 

[mackembhoy]

Its not fair to compare Root and Kohli in this series when Root will be facing Ashwin and Jadeja while Kohli will face Ali. To make it fair Root's performance should be compared to how Kohli fared when he was the away batsman in England and vice-versa Kohli should be compared to how Root done against India in England.

So Root needs to score more than 134 and average over 13.40 to outdo Kohli
Kohli needs to score more than 518 runs and average over 103.60.


I think this is the fairest and logical way to compare them.

Root already averages 93 in India. So Root is gun and Kohli has to bow down to Joe.

Easy this

 

[ImpatientLime]

Cos he's Gus Frasers golden child.

Saker ruined him. I thought he'd refound it against the saffers but alas it's gone. Woakes has overtaken him and wood is the quickest in England now not steven.

wood?

 

[weldone]

I don't get these shouts of dropping Woakes. In these conditions, the bloke almost deserves to get selected on his batting alone.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Having thought about it I am happy we are playing Hameed, it is 2 tests too late but better he plays than Ballance or god forbid Buttler. Think we have gone about it wrong by opening with Duckett in Bangladesh and now moving him to 4 but finally we have picked the top 4 i would have started with a few backs back. All we need to know now is who drops out of the bowling attack for Broad and possibly Batty as well to return. I would hope it is Finn and Ansari but gut feeling is we will drop Ansari and Rashid and go in with 4 quicks and 3 off spinners including Root's part timers.

 

[Tom Flint]

Finn isnt even the quickest or best bowler in the mddsx team.

 

[mackembhoy]

wood?

A lad called Mark from the dark depths of Ashghanistan

Which now has it's own shoe

 

[vcs]

****, this starts tomorrow. It's just crept up on me. Wish it was a week or so later TBH. Can't follow Aus vs. SA and this one simultaneously.

 

[mackembhoy]

****, this starts tomorrow. It's just crept up on me. Wish it was a week or so later TBH. Can't follow Aus vs. SA and this one simultaneously.

Well India will beat us in 3 days so you'll be able to watch no problem

 

[SeamUp]

There seems to be odd things happening here with guys like Ballance who cashed in v weak teams and are actually so poor and get dropped and could actually end their careers with high averages. Good examples are Ballance and Voges for Australia.

I think from England's perspective it hasn't been a great decision that Ballance remains in the squad but is dropped now. It would have been more beneficial for the next player in line to be there around the test set-up whoever that may be. Whether it was Billings or the only batsman in the Lions set-up worth noting at this stage in Joe Clarke. Turning into a bit of Sri Lanka with all these keepers in Duckett, Bairtsow, Buttler, Billings and now Clarke being your best batsman who have kept.

I suppose India have to win the series but I think from England's perspective it will be great to see who actually steps up.


India on the other hand will be without Rahul and Dhawan so basically going to 4th choice opener in Gambhir. Also can Nair step-up & there are doubts whether he was the right choice by some.

 

[Bijed]

There seems to be odd things happening here with guys like Ballance who cashed in v weak teams and are actually so poor and get dropped and could actually end their careers with high averages. Good examples are Ballance and Voges for Australia. I think from England's perspective it hasn't been a great decision that Ballance remains in the squad but is dropped now. It would have been more beneficial for the next player in line to be there around the test set-up whoever that may be. Whether it was Billings or the only batsman in the Lions set-up worth noting at this stage in Joe Clarke. Turning into a bit of Sri Lanka with all these keepers in Duckett, Bairtsow, Buttler, Billings and now Clarke being your best batsman who have kept.

Ballance averages 39 now, so it's not as if people in years to come will look at his stats and end up massively over-rating him, but you're right in that they'd also never guess how utterly wretched he's been for a little while now. Though I'm still backing him to play 70-odd tests for England and average 45 or so.

Didn't realise we had so many keepers in the squad, though. What's Duckett like? It's actually pretty handy as it's not unthinkable that Bairstow will struggle behind the stumps in India, though I can't remember that he embarrassed himself to much in Bangladesh, so who knows.

 

[Furball]

'I wouldn't play James Anderson even if fit' - Sourav Ganguly | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo


Shots fired

Didn't realise Ganguly was considering a comeback.

 

[mackembhoy]

Ballance averages 39 now, so it's not as if people in years to come will look at his stats and end up massively over-rating him, but you're right in that they'd also never guess how utterly wretched he's been for a little while now. Though I'm still backing him to play 70-odd tests for England and average 45 or so.

Didn't realise we had so many keepers in the squad, though. What's Duckett like? It's actually pretty handy as it's not unthinkable that Bairstow will struggle behind the stumps in India, though I can't remember that he embarrassed himself to much in Bangladesh, so who knows.

I gave Ballance the benefit of the doubt as I thought he'd be a good subcontinent player.

He can't play pace and now can't play spin. Send him onto the scrapheap and leave him there

Duckett didn't keep for Northants this season so giving him the gloves wouldn't be a good idea.

 

[Bijed]

I gave Ballance the benefit of the doubt as I thought he'd be a good subcontinent player.

He can't play pace and now can't play spin. Send him onto the scrapheap and leave him there

Yeah, I'll admit I originally thought he'd be the right kind of player for the subcontinent. He's still fairly young, though, and if he can just admit to himself that he needs to change his technique/approach, he could feasibly still turn things around. Seems to have a touch of the stereotypical Ian Bell mental softness as well, which he could do to work on, though that's obviously far easier said than done. FWIW, if he hadn't been picked for the Pakistan series, but had been picked for Bangladesh, I reckon he'd have done ok since he wouldn't have been feeling under pressure for his place at that point, which I think got to him with fairly dire consequences.

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

I don't get these shouts of dropping Woakes. In these conditions, the bloke almost deserves to get selected on his batting alone.

man you are massively overrating woakes batting

 

[fredfertang]

man you are massively overrating woakes batting

I think he has a point. He may be exaggerating the position a little for effect, but then you have to do that to get heard here sometimes

 

[Adders]

man you are massively overrating woakes batting

Yes and No.

Of coarse it's a stretch to say that Woakes could be selected as a specialist batsmen, but on the other hand he has been a huge part of this lower middle order that keeps bailing us out of the ****. In fact I'd go as far as saying he's probably been the most consistent contributor. Batting 8 or 9 he doesn't get the chance to score the big scores that stand out, but he is always there with 20's, 30's or 40's that are getting Eng over the line to par scores......it's not been often that he has failed to do this in the last few months.