*Official* Pakistan in England 2020

[91Jmay]

Really good session of cricket that. Fairly even, Pakistan poor first hour good second hour.

 

[91Jmay]

Root has to be the dumbest high class batsman in world cricket.

He's never truly in because of his propensity to do dumb ****

 

[Howe_zat]

I'll say that's just about England's session , though I'm including the toss in that.

The line for England runs right now is 363.5 which I'd take in a heartbeat

 

[honestbharani]

300 is a good score against this Pak side. 350 will make England favorites in my view. 250 is even and 200 is advantage Pak.

 

[trundler]

Crawley ain't crawling this morning.

Endorse this pun

 

[91Jmay]

Cricinfo ball by ball has been wrong from the first ball after lunch. They seem to massively struggle to correct errors on it.

 

[Prince EWS]

Strauss reckons Yasir Shah is going to be needed 'to tie up an end'. Bloke takes more wickets a test than Dennis Lillee

He's no Peter Siddle though.

 

[Prince EWS]

No idea what Strauss is wobbling on about competition for places at the top of the order. Sibley is about the firmest in position and hardly sure about him.

That's why the competition is so fierce; several players are equally shite.

 

[ImpatientLime]

This is a constant surprise for me. How English cricket is always struggling for batsmen. Even when picking players who aren't doing great or don't look great, the reply is "well actually we have nobody better?" And that is baffling for me.

its a minority sport and we prioritise white ball cricket now over red.

remember the days when people used to moan about bell when all of englands top 7 averaged 40+? lol grand days

 

[Prince EWS]

its a minority sport and we prioritise white ball cricket now over red.

remember the days when people used to moan about bell when all of englands top 7 averaged 40+? lol grand days

I was thinking about the almost career-long moaning about Bell being in the team a couple of weeks ago when reading a Cricinfo article about Pope.

The crux of the article was that Pope was similar in both style and ability to Bell, and that this meant he was a total godsend to the side. Times have definitely changed.

 

[Howe_zat]

I was thinking about the almost career-long moaning about Bell being in the team a couple of weeks ago when reading a Cricinfo article about Pope.

The crux of the article was that Pope was similar in both style and ability to Bell, and that this meant he was a total godsend to the side. Times have definitely changed.

Tbf most of the moaning was before Bell became a really good player. Say 2006-9 when we had Strauss, Cook, Vaughan, KP, Collingwood and Bell all averaging 40+ but we didn't really win any series. Part of that was Vaughan being past it and the bowling being crap, but a lot was that Bell never seemed to make enough runs compared to the opposition. Matches were a lot higher scoring at that time and we had guys like Dravid and Kallis coming over to show us how to bat in England.

We definately underrated him post 2012-ish when Test cricket in general reverted away from being the high scoring 2000s and people didn't really adjust quickly enough.

 

[91Jmay]

Great ball that, he deserved that bowled really nicely without luck.

 

[Uppercut]

Tbf most of the moaning was before Bell became a really good player. Say 2006-9 when we had Strauss, Cook, Vaughan, KP, Collingwood and Bell all averaging 40+ but we didn't really win any series. Part of that was Vaughan being past it and the bowling being crap, but a lot was that Bell never seemed to make enough runs compared to the opposition. Matches were a lot higher scoring at that time and we had guys like Dravid and Kallis coming over to show us how to bat in England.

We definately underrated him post 2012-ish when Test cricket in general reverted away from being the high scoring 2000s and people didn't really adjust quickly enough.

I posted somewhere else about how it's completely forgotten that Bell successfully overcame his tendency to only make easy runs to become a genuinely top-tier batsman for a while. He's just remembered as an easy runs guy, which is strange and unfair. It would be like if Mitchell Johnson was now remembered as a scattergun disappointment.

That's a great ball. Needed it too.

 

[Starfighter]

Decent ball that.

 

[trundler]

Stellar catch. Classic Root dismissal.

 

[nightprowler10]

Ooh I actually caught an out live for once. Great stuff.

 

[trundler]

That's quite impressive deviation

 

[Howe_zat]

Naseem has done almost nothing in this series other than produce jaffas to dismiss Root.

Rizwan is top class.

 

[chris.hinton]

Crawley showing that maybe he shouldnt have been dropped in the first place

Root needs a big score.

 

[trundler]

Crawley is gonna be the English Labu