*Official* England in India 2023/24 #CryMoreTour

[mackembhoy]

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.


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.

Pretty much in India for visiting sides

 

[Owzat]

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.

"almighty fluke" or India to drop him on 104 (?) which ultimately cost them 90 runs from just him and made the target trickier than it needed to be

bottom line is England won when someone made a big score, were competitive when someone else made a hundred, similar issues to down under when their totals are too often not good enough

246 & 420
253 & 292*
319 & 122
353 & 145

*chasing 399


you can't be regularly bowled out for around 250 or less and expect to win too many games, not against top end opposition on blameless pitches. England have posted a decent total (353) and one good total thanks to Pope/drop, yet so many bang on about "Anderson wasn't..." this and "Wood wasn't..." that and "must pick Foakes etc, FACT in cricket is if you don't put enough runs on the board you are facing an uphill struggle without a quartet of quality bowlers to do to your opponents what happened to your batting!

and those totals are pretty poor considering Pope 196, Duckett 153 and Root 122no, may be the only hundreds scored and decent at that but in each batsman case it half or more of their series runs and mainly makes averages look decent

interesting to note less than half a run average difference between Foakes and Bairstow, just a mention not fuel for the debate on that area. Maybe useful for a #8 but not really enough by either in spite of many drooling over the odd Foakes effort with bat - Stokes not many runs better

 

[Xix2565]

"almighty fluke" or India to drop him on 104 (?) which ultimately cost them 90 runs from just him and made the target trickier than it needed to be

bottom line is England won when someone made a big score, were competitive when someone else made a hundred, similar issues to down under when their totals are too often not good enough

246 & 420
253 & 292*
319 & 122
353 & 145

*chasing 399


you can't be regularly bowled out for around 250 or less and expect to win too many games, not against top end opposition on blameless pitches. England have posted a decent total (353) and one good total thanks to Pope/drop, yet so many bang on about "Anderson wasn't..." this and "Wood wasn't..." that and "must pick Foakes etc, FACT in cricket is if you don't put enough runs on the board you are facing an uphill struggle without a quartet of quality bowlers to do to your opponents what happened to your batting!

and those totals are pretty poor considering Pope 196, Duckett 153 and Root 122no, may be the only hundreds scored and decent at that but in each batsman case it half or more of their series runs and mainly makes averages look decent

interesting to note less than half a run average difference between Foakes and Bairstow, just a mention not fuel for the debate on that area. Maybe useful for a #8 but not really enough by either in spite of many drooling over the odd Foakes effort with bat - Stokes not many runs better

The point you're missing is that England don't have much of a chance putting up runs vs India's bowling anyway even with padding the batting so they still need to fix their bowling first in order to have a better chance. In batting friendly conditions, anything they put up is surpassed handily by India, because they don't have the bowling to slow India's batters down. This Indian side is good enough with the ball to keep teams down to under par scores at home, so the best chance of winning needs teams to try to do the same with the ball to them.

 

[Sunil1z]

The point you're missing is that England don't have much of a chance putting up runs vs India's bowling anyway even with padding the batting so they still need to fix their bowling first in order to have a better chance. In batting friendly conditions, anything they put up is surpassed handily by India, because they don't have the bowling to slow India's batters down. This Indian side is good enough with the ball to keep teams down to under par scores at home, so the best chance of winning needs teams to try to do the same with the ball to them.

But they don’t have the required bowlers . And if they play extra bowler their batting will become weaker which has been their main strength in this series.

 

[Spark]

Yeah like it's all well and good talking about the absolutely optimal minmax balance for the conditions but you have to work with what you have.

 

[mackembhoy]

The point you're missing is that England don't have much of a chance putting up runs vs India's bowling anyway even with padding the batting so they still need to fix their bowling first in order to have a better chance. In batting friendly conditions, anything they put up is surpassed handily by India, because they don't have the bowling to slow India's batters down. This Indian side is good enough with the ball to keep teams down to under par scores at home, so the best chance of winning needs teams to try to do the same with the ball to them.

I mean this series has been great batting conditions for large periods, chalk and cheese from last time. Joe Root from 2021 would have feasted on these pitches.

England's middle order haven't been anywhere near good enough and we could have done with Crawley converting in the second test, as Jaiswal did and was the difference in that one.

Not sure England were supposed to make their spinners who've bowled less in FC cricket than Jimmy had against WI in tests any better than they've been.

 

[Xix2565]

But they don’t have the required bowlers . And if they play extra bowler their batting will become weaker which has been their main strength in this series.

Yet when they played the extra batter it made India's batting even better because they got to feed on more trash overs than a 5th bowling option would give them. So they basically lose anyway bar the occasional miracle, which isn't impossible if they picked the extra bowler to be honest.

I mean this series has been great batting conditions for large periods, chalk and cheese from last time. Joe Root from 2021 would have feasted on these pitches.

England's middle order haven't been anywhere near good enough and we could have done with Crawley converting in the second test, as Jaiswal did and was the difference in that one.

Not sure England were supposed to make their spinners who've bowled less in FC cricket than Jimmy had against WI in tests any better than they've been.

Joe Root in 2021 also had a better team balance to work with to be fair, for all the **** Bess got and the dumb selections for the 3rd and 4th Tests in that series.

Still missing the point about aggressive selections, the point about having more bowlers was to increase the amount of difficult to score overs for India to face. India did this to England well enough to make England's middle order useless for good parts of the Tests, while England couldn't with fewer bowlers.

 

[Red_Ink_Squid]

I mean this series has been great batting conditions for large periods, chalk and cheese from last time. Joe Root from 2021 would have feasted on these pitches.

England's middle order haven't been anywhere near good enough and we could have done with Crawley converting in the second test, as Jaiswal did and was the difference in that one.

Not sure England were supposed to make their spinners who've bowled less in FC cricket than Jimmy had against WI in tests any better than they've been.

Look, India took the courageous decision to play all rounder Ravi Jadeja. England took the cowardly decision not to play Ravi Jadeja.

We duly lost the series for our cowardice.

 

[Xix2565]

England took the cowardly decision to not pick or call up more bowlers for the tour and paid for it. Brilliant way to change Test cricket, just decide to lose in advance to get the excuses ready.

 

[Sunil1z]

I will say Stokes captained better than Rohit in this series considering the kind of bowling attacks they had at their disposal. England had no business being this competitive considering their spin attack

 

[Shri]

yes stokes has been brilliant as captain

csk boys always better than mumbai boys

 

[honestbharani]

Look, India took the courageous decision to play all rounder Ravi Jadeja. England took the cowardly decision not to play Ravi Jadeja.

We duly lost the series for our cowardice.

I mean, everyone knows he is The Answer.

 

[honestbharani]

I think Xix is just being a sore victor or whatever you wanna call that. England have been excellent and we have had to dig deep to win in conditions that are our own and all this inspite of them bringing over kids who are hardly used to bowling more than 10 overs a day, talented as they definitely are. It shows Stokes and Baz have a great management culture in the side that enables youngsters and generally most players to play at their best.

Now, a few of them do seem to let it get to their heads and it goes back to my old position that the biggest enemy of Bazball is Bazball itself and if they take themselves too seriously instead of looking at it as a pragmatic approach to try and win cricket games. But I dont think either Baz or Stokes have such delusions. And they have been excellent in coaxing out such a good performance from this side.

India have been their weakest in the last 1.5 years in tests IMO since sometime in the early 00s. It is definitely something both Aus and Eng will regret that they were not able to do better and get a series win done in India as I feel the next time, India will actually be stronger. But it does not mean they have not played well.

 

[Sunil1z]

Replace Dhruv Jurel with KS Bharat and series is 2-2 draw and we would be praising England’s management.

 

[Xix2565]

I think Xix is just being a sore victor or whatever you wanna call that.

How is it sore to point out that England could've tried more? I mean come on, it's not like they were forced to play this way.

 

[Arachnodouche]

England simply haven't scored enough runs. This Indian batting's weak/untested enough to be subjected to extreme pressure * if * you can regularly post scores in excess of 400, even if you're playing just the four bowlers and Root. Everyone's ridiculing Root the bowler now but he looked legitimately the greater threat over the rookies at times during the first two Tests. He only faded away once he picked up that finger niggle and the overs caught up.

 

[Sunil1z]

Last test they put a very healthy first innings score considering the pitch . Dhruv Jurel did a Gilchrist and bailed us out from very difficult situation twice .

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

I like Dhruv...

Name sounds like a Formula One driver.

 

[Daemon]

England took the cowardly decision to not pick or call up more bowlers for the tour and paid for it. Brilliant way to change Test cricket, just decide to lose in advance to get the excuses ready.

Who would you have picked? Dawson and Jacks weren’t available from my understanding.

 

[Arachnodouche]

Last test they put a very healthy first innings score considering the pitch . Dhruv Jurel did a Gilchrist and bailed us out from very difficult situation twice .

Consistency being the working context over a five-Test series in India. 246, 253, 319, 353...well, at least it's an upward trend due to crest in Dharamshala. They should've looked at the template the last time they won in India (slightly more batting-friendly pitches but really the current ones haven't been all bad either). Mammoth totals to brush off the inevitable lower-order rearguard is the way to go in India. Maybe the next iteration of Bazball will be a little more dynamic in appraising conditions and game situations.