We've seen Crawley seemingly come on technically as the series has come on. I thought he played a lot better in his innings of 70odd than in his ton in terms of control and discipline around off stump. Duckett, I think will always be rather suspect, especially at 28 years old and we've had Moeen do the interim job just playing his way. I still think we can see a lot more of Pope, who is still only 25. So there is still scope for improvement there.
Maybe the philosophy is that batsmen with a technique watertight enough to get in and stay in only come along once every two or three generations. Everyone else has a ball with their name on it and they just need to score as many runs as they can before it gets them.
That absolutely doesn't show up in the stats. Since Stokes/McCullum took over, Root averages 58 with an s/r of 75. Root averaged 46 as captain himself and nearly 53 under Cook. His s/r was mid 50s under both. He had lean series v SA and in Pak last year but has otherwise been outstanding.
Which is actually a myth as he averages 58 in the Stokes era compared to overall average of 50. He's actually been a bit unlucky in this series to get a couple of unplayable deliveries too.
There were quite a few years where some very fluent innings ended with somewhat daft dismissals, especially between 2015 & 2019 when he really did seem to leave runs out on the table. I felt he should have bagged more than one ton, but he didn't quite manage it. Still a good series though, especially as since 2015 he had largely struggled against Australia and Cummins/Hazlewood in particular.
to be fair to root he got two unplayable grubbers in the last 2 tests.
I think a fair difference is him not being captain to be honest. It dragged him down.
I was gonna say that his overall record doesn't tell the whole story as he only seemed to fix his conversion issues in 2021 but it's also possible that he just hit a purple patch then. His conversion rate is now Dravidesque rather than poor and that may be his new standard long term. He did miss out big time in Pakistan though and I think it's because he was trying too hard after the side got quick runs. Hope he never stops reverse lapping quick bowlers for entertainment's sake though.
I mean you'd pick 2021 Root over 99% of batsmen in history, that patch was bound to end sooner or later
You (and England, probably) are just copying a hilarious bit from the movie Baseketball.
The writers are clearly geniuses.
Both Woakes and Wood scored invaluable runs this Ashes. So did the Australian lower order for that matter.
England were vulnerable to collapses before Bazball, just now we sent to collapse for 280-320 off 60 overs rather than 140-180.
