*Official* Pakistan in England 2020

[tooextracool]

For England -

Have to rest Anderson and drop Archer now. Bring in Crawley or bat Woakes at 3 But seriously, I would think its time to bring in Crawley and Wood instead of those two and go back to a more traditional batting line up next game. Not too many other things I would change.

Mark Wood vs Sam Curran for me is actually an interesting debate. I know that Wood would appear a shoe in to replace Archer as a like for like “express” pace option, but is that the right course of action in England? For the record, Wood averages 45/21 (home/away) while Sam Curran’s stats are inverse 23/43. Curran does add variety to the attack being a left arm swing bowler and certainly brings some additional batting depth to cover up some of our top order frailties.

I’m not sure if I would necessarily be perturbed if they went either way and ultimately, it will depend on the nature of the surface at the Ageas bowl (and Ben Stokes’ fitness), but to me it’s certainly worthy of consideration.

 

[grecian]

That’s awesome. I was kinda worried Buttler would outscore him by like 10 and the media would just be focusing on him completely. Throughout that partnership the commentators kept saying Woakes was supporting him.

Seems like one of the nicest guys in cricket, which is obviously why Burgey dislikes him since they seem to adore dickheads down there.

Indeed he's a good looking chap too, which makes me think is this the best looking aesthetically England bowling line-up ever, could do with Flintoff ahead of Stokes, but we'll just ignore Ben as he's an all-rounder, and probably ahead of the curve looks-wise from where he came.

 

[vcs]

Buttlers found something with the bat so keep him in the side as a 6. He’s not a test keeper, he’s just not. Foakes takes the gloves.

Also we seem to have developed a nice habit of winning tight matches.

England are simultaneously very beatable at home and also very, very hard to actually put away (as India found out in 2018). Those lower order runs come to their rescue when they need it the most.

 

[grecian]

England are simultaneously very beatable at home and also very, very hard to actually put away (as India found out in 2018). Those lower order runs come to their rescue when they need it the most.

Our bowling too, people keep whining when we have a bad session, but invariably we turn it around and go at the oppos throats at one point.

 

[honestbharani]

For the first time this summer I'm missing work, all the Pakistan fans I know in person are my students.

I'm considering getting a haircut in order to find a Pakistan-supporting barber and talk to them about it

Coz CW is not enough?

 

[wpdavid]

I thought Buttler was impressive during the post-match interview; very honest about his failings with the gloves and how the chase would have been 100 runs easier if he'd done his job properly in Pakistan's first innings. No nonsense about how they won it so what's the problem which we may have heard in previous setups.

On a related point, I read someone suggesting that this sort of attitude is at least partially due to Root's captaincy. Like many of us, this piece reckons that Root's decision-making is flawed at times, but went on to say that he is developing a really healthy team culture that is moving the team in the right direction. I'm paraphrasing this from memory and probably not quite doing the writer justice, but I thought he made a fair point.

 

[wpdavid]

Our bowling too, people keep whining when we have a bad session, but invariably we turn it around and go at the oppos throats at one point.

The problem is that the game can be lost by that poor session, so we're having to play catch-up later. I know it's rarely mattered in home tests (perhaps Edgbaston last year the one significant exception) but it's frequently a problem overseas. Even here, we probably should have lost after we lost the plot a bit in the latter stages of their second innings and we can't expect to be regularly bailed out by minor miracles.

 

[honestbharani]

I thought Buttler was impressive during the post-match interview; very honest about his failings with the gloves and how the chase would have been 100 runs easier if he'd done his job properly in Pakistan's first innings. No nonsense about how they won it so what's the problem which we may have heard in previous setups.

On a related point, I read someone suggesting that this sort of attitude is at least partially due to Root's captaincy. Like many of us, this piece reckons that Root's decision-making is flawed at times, but went on to say that he is developing a really healthy team culture that is moving the team in the right direction. I'm paraphrasing this from memory and probably not quite doing the writer justice, but I thought he made a fair point.

It is always possible that a person can have both good leadership qualities and be bad at strategizing. There are very many captains like that. I always felt Ganguly was way too stubborn to be a good tactical captain, same with Kohli. Very very few can tick both boxes, guess from all that we are seeing and reading, we can assume Root is of a similar kind, good as a leader, bad at the strategy aspect.

 

[Howe_zat]

Root isn’t a bad captain at all, look at how he dealt with having a different attack every game in South Africa.

What people are doing now is just picking up on everything that doesn’t work in hindsight and attacking him for it, like they do with every England captain in my lifetime, and then pretend that good captains make decisions that always work.

 

[Daemon]

Root isn’t a bad captain at all, look at how he dealt with having a different attack every game in South Africa.

What people are doing now is just picking up on everything that doesn’t work in hindsight and attacking him for it, like they do with every England captain in my lifetime, and then pretend that good captains make decisions that always work.

His bowler management is pretty annoying, bad and even dangerous.

 

[vcs]

TBH, by CW standards, there is so such thing as a good captain. Only different degrees of bad. Same goes for commentators.

 

[Daemon]

Misbah, Faf, KW, Strauss, Clarke, Paine in the recent-ish past all pretty good.

In ODIs there's been some pretty good ones too.

 

[91Jmay]

Misbah, Faf, KW, Strauss, Clarke, Paine in the recent-ish past all pretty good.

In ODIs there's been some pretty good ones too.

Morgan is terrific in ODIs.

 

[Pothas]

Buttler's keeping was not seen as an issue until the last couple of matches, we have had similar things with Bairstow in the past.

Foakes has of course become the greatest keeper in history during his absence, am sure he dropped at least one in the West Indies.

 

[Daemon]

Buttler's keeping was not seen as an issue until the last couple of matches,

Nah. People even brought it up in the intra squad game. He did improve but it's been an issue for ages.

 

[Pothas]

I don't remember it being mentioned at all in the SA series. Obviously if he has a game like this every single time then it is untenable but he has mostly been fine. When it comes to the tour of India then they will probably bring back Foakes anyway.

 

[Spark]

It is always possible that a person can have both good leadership qualities and be bad at strategizing. There are very many captains like that. I always felt Ganguly was way too stubborn to be a good tactical captain, same with Kohli. Very very few can tick both boxes, guess from all that we are seeing and reading, we can assume Root is of a similar kind, good as a leader, bad at the strategy aspect.

Surely the best example of this in relatively recent memory is Ponting. From all reports an incredible man manager and peerless leader of men -- which seems to have bled into his coaching career as well -- but really not a good on-field tactician at all, especially in pressure situations, and would visibly let situations get to him rather than keeping cool and clear-headed.

 

[Bijed]

I don't remember it being mentioned at all in the SA series. Obviously if he has a game like this every single time then it is untenable but he has mostly been fine. When it comes to the tour of India then they will probably bring back Foakes anyway.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned Buttler's performance behind the stumps in this match was an abberation - that's not to overlook the fact that, had we fallen short of the target it would probably have been the main (but not the only) reason we lost, but I'm not going into the next match thinking "Oh no, Jos is going to drop a load of catches again"

 

[Shady Slim]

probably going to cop some flack for this take because it's pretty out there and pretty stupid (or maybe it's secretly brilliant)

with keepers, who will have many chances come to them almost every test match, you can come as close as you can to isolating a player's fielding impact by way of runs scored by players after a keeper's drop. it's disingenuous to do this with a regular fielder given chances don't come with the same regularity to your average fielder (though if an outfielder is notably bad such that he's giving you a clanger a game you can probably debit his account too)

anyway

what i'm saying is with keepers you sort of can debit them for runs scored by guys dropped off absolute clangers. a drop on a sitter to a keeper is the closest that you'll get to a drop where the only thing that goes wrong is the catch (as opposed to a fielder's positioning or their walking in and so on), and as such, i think it's reasonable to debit a keeper who's regularly clanging them - and that's the important caveat - but it's quite reasonable to put the black mark against their name for the runs scored after a drop.

this is to say, when you have a keeper who's in such dire form with the gloves as buttler is, their contributions are potentially outweighed by the runs scored after a drop and you can measure that.

now obviously this is a ceteris paribus exercise and doesn't account for the butterfly effect but i still think it's a conversation we have to have, especially as the standard of test keeping gets worse at an almost yearly rate

 

[honestbharani]

Buttler's keeping was not seen as an issue until the last couple of matches, we have had similar things with Bairstow in the past.

Foakes has of course become the greatest keeper in history during his absence, am sure he dropped at least one in the West Indies.

Yeah, in the Windies series, the same Sky commentators were pointing out how well Buttler was doing and why he was adjusting better than Dowrich when Dowrich was struggling. He is not the best and obviously has to improve at keeping to the spinners but he is not like a Kakmal or anything.