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England (and Wales) gloom, doom and recriminations thread

SteveNZ

Cricketer Of The Year
Bloody hell. I mean I've always thought the guy is incompetent, but he's taking the piss surely?

He was quoted as stating "I was happy with the skillset we had in the pink-ball Test, so I would pick the same team again". Jesus Christ. This is fiction surely?
Egos are a horrible thing to carry. As someone said, just admit you might not have got it right. Or that perhaps there were other options. You don't have to say you completely ****ed it, which is nearer the point.

I'm also surprised by the numbers in this article - https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/59728349 . I would have thought Australia bowled a fair bit fuller, although potentially they bowled fuller in the 'good' area. Dunno how wide the three lengths are but a foot is a lot in terms of length. And 6% more balls left by Australia seems small - one more ball left in just under three overs, by my maths. Significant enough to make different, I guess.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
I can see why he’d say specifically what selection he got wrong; no need to throw players under the bus etc. Just be a politician and say ‘we didn’t get the balance quite right and we will learn from that’ or something.
 

Jarquis

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Arguably he’s not wrong - just we should have picked the team for the second Test in Brisbane and vice versa
 

Chubb

International Regular
Appreciate I am close to being the chief doommonger on this thread but I would be genuinely surprised if Archer plays another test. It's a terrible shame.
 

Nintendo

Cricketer Of The Year
Yeah root really has to be held accountable for this to some degree. Bowled archer into the ground in NZ and he's been consistently injured since. Dude was a beast in the 2019 ashes, sad that we probably won't see him bowl like that in redball again consistently.
 

Apex Predator

State Vice-Captain
You need to hit the pitch at reasonable pace in Australia to make a difference it doesn't matter you bowl full while trundling at 125 kph like most of the English pacers do there.
Mark Wood is a good option but even he doesn't has the ability to run through sides. That's where Archer was crucial for them.
Anderson should not play any test further except the one at Hobart.
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
What is the problem with Pope? Sad.
His form and confidence were shot to pieces towards the end of last season. Not just for the test side; he could barely buy a run at county level either. No idea why that happened. Maybe because he did so badly in India, but that's guesswork.
 

Nintendo

Cricketer Of The Year
His form and confidence were shot to pieces towards the end of last season. Not just for the test side; he could barely buy a run at county level either. No idea why that happened. Maybe because he did so badly in India, but that's guesswork.
He averaged 80 last county season and made 80 in the one test he got last summer.
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
He averaged 80 last county season and made 80 in the one test he got last summer.
His county season was a strange affair. He made a couple of huge hundred early on, but was struggling badly in the later stages of the season. tbh I'd forgotten about his first innings 80 against India, and, for whatever reason, only remembered his second innings failure. He did also play in both tests against NZ, when he averaged low 20s.

Looking back a bit further, he wasn't great during the previous summer's tests at home to WI and Pakistan; a couple of half centuries and a lot of failures. Maybe he just isn't as good as we thought.
 

ma1978

International Debutant
England needs some serious changes.

Jason Gillespie as Director of Cricket

Ravi Shastri or Mahela Jayawardene as Coach (no joke)

Ben Stokes as Captain

Retire Anderson and Broad

Make Foakes permanent keeper

Keep Buttler as a bat.

Zak Crawley back in.
 

Flem274*

123/5
You need to hit the pitch at reasonable pace in Australia to make a difference it doesn't matter you bowl full while trundling at 125 kph like most of the English pacers do there.
Mark Wood is a good option but even he doesn't has the ability to run through sides. That's where Archer was crucial for them.
Anderson should not play any test further except the one at Hobart.
nah, mediocre or even bad bowlers giving even more pace to work with is an easy trap to fall into in Australia.

Australia don't actually bowl that quickly outside Starc, but I can't remember their last skiddy bowler (probably the bad version of Starc, but that's more floaty). Cummins and Haze spend most of their time in the 130s.

You need to bowl into the deck because the saving grace of Australian pitches is the bounce. There's nothing physical holding Stuart Broad back (as the most obvious example) from being excellent in Australia. If you can't bowl into the deck well, then you need to be really fast (and accurate).

A peak Archer is a big loss, as is Stone. Wood, hmm no I don't back him to be a silver bullet.

Anderson and especially Broad need to pull finger and contribute, though their batsmen are making it as hard as possible.
 

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