Justification for my stanning of the superior South Af- uh, Zimbabwean work ethic.CDG top scoring has got to have somebody tasting it.
Nice to see England fell into a massive heap
CDG was all over Root in "that" CWC final. Really struggled to score.I feel like Root has had trouble vs CDG's bowling before. Kinda random nemesis for him to have (assuming I haven't made it up).
Trust me. They are a million times better than any NZC highlights.The only thing worse in quality that the batting is the ECB's highlights - like they were uploaded through a connection from 2002.
Haha yeah. I mean obviously 17 wickets is a lot, but at most that only would've caused about a half hour of additional delays over what you'd normally expect on day 1 of a test.Did they really only bowl 76 overs in a day though
Sorry, it's not about this one day, all these people including Lawrence have been part of a hideous batting line-up, except Root who holds it together for some of the time, so mucking him about to humour a bunch of losers seems bizarre. A number of people have scored runs at 3 this year in county Championship, play them, there that solved that problem.So, one day into the Test summer seems a pretty good time to make some knee jerk reactions/predictions/judgements.
The two openers possibly deserve to start the summer in the XI, neither concrete in their position but in terms of continuity and giving them enough to rope to hang themselves or put in some decent performances, it seems fair. Crawley looks superb and then snicks off, Lees looks organised and set for the day, then gets out. Neither really convince and for me I’d like us to return to Sam Robson. Knows his game much better and I’ve no issue giving the role to an experienced player rather than a promising kid.
Root should be batting three. Ok he’s earned the right to bat where he prefers but I’m sure he can be just as big a success at three and allow someone like Pope to bat in a position he bats in first-class. It won’t happen so I’d stick with Pope at three for now until I can think of some viable alternatives. I do think Pope will be a Test quality batsman in his career.
Root at four and for me Dan Lawrence comes back in when he’s fully fit at five. Positive and selfless cricketer just what Stokes and BMac are looking for, Bairstow we kind of know what we’ll get and I’m not sure it’s as good as what Lawrence can be.
Stokes at six and Foakes deserves the summer with the gloves at seven. Started the season superbly and is amongst the best glovemen in world cricket.
I think we now finally have the best attack available to us currently in Anderson, Broad, Potts and Parkinson. Potts is a surprise and haven’t seen loads of him but couldn’t be anything other than impressed today. Shame for Leach again though!