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*Official* England in India 2023/24 #CryMoreTour

centurymaker

Cricketer Of The Year
Obviously India also made dumb selections but media was going on about how England had been aggressive etc while India had been quite conservative but it's not quite true.
 

Xix2565

International Regular
Lol aggressive selection (what does that even mean) is not the reason it’s 3-1

In the absence of Dawson there haven’t been many changes England could make that would have made a material difference
It means picking 5 bowling options, not having Joe Root cosplay an allrounder on batting surfaces.

Yeah it's dumb. England don't have a Jadeja to enable the balance India have. Closest would have been Dawson or Jacks but they didn't centrally contract them so they picked up franchise deals.
Doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried though? Like it's hard enough either way, why make it even more difficult on yourselves to take wickets? That's essentially the point of the article.
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
It means picking 5 bowling options, not having Joe Root cosplay an allrounder on batting surfaces.


Doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried though? Like it's hard enough either way, why make it even more difficult on yourselves to take wickets? That's essentially the point of the article.
Why make it even more difficult to score runs?

Why not seven bowlers? Eight bowlers?

India's selection wasn't more aggressive, they just had Jadeja.
 

Xix2565

International Regular
Why make it even more difficult to score runs?

Why not seven bowlers? Eight bowlers?

India's selection wasn't more aggressive, they just had Jadeja.
The bowling is more important though? How would being able to make 300 more consistently matter when the bowlers give away 500-600 every time? Like the win condition for Tests is taking 20 wickets better than the opposition, so why pick a team that can't fundamentally achieve that without extreme assistance from the pitches? There's a balance to be found, sure but you can't tell me England have tried to take 20 wickets with the team XIs being picked. They should've adjusted for the pitches but they didn't, and it's shown in the results.

India's consistently picking 5 bowling options, and so far it's been seen as normal because of the ARs available, but it's still more aggressive than stacking the batting and having Joe Root bowl a lot of overs.
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
The bowling is more important though? How would being able to make 300 more consistently matter when the bowlers give away 500-600 every time? Like the win condition for Tests is taking 20 wickets better than the opposition, so why pick a team that can't fundamentally achieve that without extreme assistance from the pitches? There's a balance to be found, sure but you can't tell me England have tried to take 20 wickets with the team XIs being picked. They should've adjusted for the pitches but they didn't, and it's shown in the results.

India's consistently picking 5 bowling options, and so far it's been seen as normal because of the ARs available, but it's still more aggressive than stacking the batting and having Joe Root bowl a lot of overs.
No you are wrong and you should feel bad about your posts.
 

cnerd123

likes this
I think it's a valid point that Rehan over Bashir in the 3rd Test was a big negative, as was Wood over Anderson early on.
 

Daemon

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1st Test- not picking Anderson
2nd Test- not picking Wood to complement Anderson
3rd Test- continuing to pick innocuous Rehan for his batting and for his tailend wickets off full tosses when Bashir had already shown himself to be a better and far more accurate bowler in the 2nd Test.

India on the other hand chose Kuldeep over Axar and Sundar. Picked better bowlers regardless of their batting skill and persisting with 5 genuine bowler strategy.

In the 2nd and 3rd Test it almost felt like England were playing 3.5 bowlers, thus allowing India to rack up scores around 400 or more.
1st Test: Agree on Anderson but they won the first test so doesn’t matter. They need to load manage him as well so playing him here means he missed out somewhere else.

2nd Test: Pick Wood over who? Rehan who bowled well, Bashir who you prefer over Rehan or Hartley who won them the first Test? Wouldn’t have made much of a difference imo. Wood didn’t make much of an impact in the first Test.

3rd Test: The Rehan stuff is hindsight, he bowled well in the second test and got the next game as a result. The third test was on a pretty flat wicket and I don’t think Bashir was much of an upgrade. Again probably no material difference.

India aggressively picked Mukesh and look how that turned out. The Kuldeep selection was good, though it was also a really obvious one to make given how poor Axar was with the ball when they both played in the 2nd test.

I really don’t see how aggressive selection has really had much of a part to play in the scoreline. India has just been better and England don’t have the players required to achieve good balance once Dawson or Jacks became unavailable.
 

Xix2565

International Regular
The first Test needed an almighty fluke from Pope to win and even then while bowling 4th they won by 28 runs. The rest of the Tests showed how the lack of general control from the bowlers allowed India to make bigger totals and how England had to basically play perfectly to try to match, which ended up not happening enough to win the series. England were too defensive and regressive, for all this talk about changing Test cricket.
 

centurymaker

Cricketer Of The Year
India's selection wasn't more aggressive, they just had Jadeja.
In the 2nd Test, India were without Jadeja, so India put Axar at 6 and picked Kuldeep & Mukesh instead of Washington Sundar when there were suggestions that India should look to reinforce the batting in the absence of Kohli, Rahul and Jadeja.

India was 1-0 down, yet India went in with a weaker batting line up (Iyer at 4, Patidar at 5, Axar at 6, Bharat at 7) in order to keep the bowling relatively strong... but you claim India was not aggressive in selection.

Going with batting depth (at expense of bowling) is a sure sign of conservatism. India despite missing half the batting side, didn't care about it and picked 5 frontline bowlers. And it has somewhat contributed to England collapsing in all of the last 3 tests.

114-1 to 253-10
207-2 to 319-10
110-3 to 145-10

India won not just because of bowling quality but also bowling depth provided by 5 proper bowlers. It meant Ashwin could walk out in the 3rd test without affecting the attack so much or even if 1-2 bowlers were crap/off color, others could compensate for them.
 
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mackembhoy

International Regular
1st Test- not picking Anderson
2nd Test- not picking Wood to complement Anderson
3rd Test- continuing to pick innocuous Rehan for his batting and for his tailend wickets off full tosses when Bashir had already shown himself to be a better and far more accurate bowler in the 2nd Test.

India on the other hand chose Kuldeep over Axar and Sundar. Picked better bowlers regardless of their batting skill and persisting with 5 genuine bowler strategy.

In the 2nd and 3rd Test it almost felt like England were playing 3.5 bowlers, thus allowing India to rack up scores around 400 or more.
Oh your actually being serious :laugh:
 

mackembhoy

International Regular
Of course the English fans don't know what Test cricket actually is, not surprising to be frank.
You have Jadeja and Ashwin who are superb all rounders especially in India, even Axar is better than anything we could call on. Our only capable test all rounder can't bowl.

The suggestions above seems to be we should have dropped one of Pope/Bairstow have Foakes at 6 and pick 5 bowlers.

We'd have lost all 4 tests comfortably had we done that.
 

CricAddict

Cricketer Of The Year
You have Jadeja and Ashwin who are superb all rounders especially in India, even Axar is better than anything we could call on. Our only capable test all rounder can't bowl.

The suggestions above seems to be we should have dropped one of Pope/Bairstow have Foakes at 6 and pick 5 bowlers.

We'd have lost all 4 tests comfortably had we done that.
I agree with this. There isn't much wrong in the team structure for England. In India, 7 batsmen and 4 bowlers with 2 of them spinners is the way to go.
 

Xix2565

International Regular
You have Jadeja and Ashwin who are superb all rounders especially in India, even Axar is better than anything we could call on. Our only capable test all rounder can't bowl.

The suggestions above seems to be we should have dropped one of Pope/Bairstow have Foakes at 6 and pick 5 bowlers.

We'd have lost all 4 tests comfortably had we done that.
Yeah and you won 1 Test off a fluke innings, how is that much better? It's a better strategy to pray to God for a good toss and a win? They could've taken some actual risks considering that their bowling options aren't all number 11s with the bat. It's not like the extra batting helped all that much when they're still largely getting outscored.

I agree with this. There isn't much wrong in the team structure for England. In India, 7 batsmen and 4 bowlers with 2 of them spinners is the way to go.
Maybe in the past. Against this India, you need pitches and tosses to have a strong chance at winning with that strategy given the 5 good Test quality bowling options India have. You can't say it's the way to go when they lose 3-1 for ****'s sake.

This isn't unique to India though, when strong teams play in home/familiar conditions they have more bowlers that can fit in an XI without imbalance because they're that good. Curran, Woakes, Stokes etc in 2018, Australia with Green and Marsh, NZ with de Grandhomme, Mitchell, Jamieson and so on.
 

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