Evenly poised although I still think the Aussies will get a 1st innings lead. Anything less than 50 then we would have done well. 1st season tomorrow so important.
Need Stokes and Brook to hang around for the majority of the morning. No rash shots getting out in the first couple of overs and see where we are at lunch. Hopefully can get some slender lead if we bat properly and don't fall for the same traps as this afternoon
It's a horrible cliche when players talk about playing their natural game, as if that means they can ignore the match situation or indeed the level of the opponents.
Bide our time against Hazelwood and Cummins. Starc will naturally go for runs so keep doing that. Lyon not likely to bowl and Green being managed. Attack their part time spinners who will have to bowl and wait for their quicks to tire. When they do - go full Bazball.
Well shit. I defended Pope and even Ducketts was excusable (he was set and you have to keep trying to score in that situation) but Roots was poor.
None of them were acceptable. Yes it could have gone for 6, and if there was 1 man back and they bowled a random bouncer then fine.
That was not the case. They had 6 men back for it, bowled consistently short and 3 of our top order batsman (2 of whom were set) fell into the trap.
I was loving the way this England team play, but the second innings at edgbaston and an hour or so this afternoon just makes me think they are braindead at times. It doesn’t matter what brand of cricket you play, when you are on top you need to piledrive it home and this lot seem incapable right now and are making such sloppy mistakes.
I don't think we can complain, it is the way we play now. We are playing the best in the World and nearly won the first test and lets see what the result is in this one. I suspect criticism will not affect this team negatively anyway.
Funny how the main advocate of Bazball was about the only one playing the conditions & binding his time.
Reminded me of 4 years ago at Headingley when he took ages to score a run & blocked an end before close of play. We all know what happened the next day 🙂
Some stupid decision making, amateur, the exact sort of thing that you do when slashing away at a T20 chase where every ball counts. Not in a test when you still need 200 runs to remain in the test. Stokes showed what had to happen, take your medicine and protect your wicket, regardless of what nonsense Pietersen was coming out with about having to score runs off short, bouncy deliveries, you don't. You take your medicine and let the bowlers get tired, dog tired then attack the spinners when they toss up balls demanding to be shown daylight and altitude.
Stokes, Brook and Bairstow can lose us or get us firmly back in the game tomorrow, with poor Nathan Lyon clearly out of the game we won't get a better opportunity, we can equally launch that opportunity away if Brook carries on slashing at everything tomorrow
I don't think we can complain, it is the way we play now. We are playing the best in the World and nearly won the first test and let’s see what the result is in this one. I suspect criticism will not affect this team negatively anyway.
I think you are allowed to enjoy the way we approach the game and ‘bazball’ for want of a better phrase, but also criticise them when they make genuinely sloppy decisions. bazball or normal cricket, the way we batted for an hour today was bonkers.
They’ve got to realise when they are on top of a game and not let that momentum slip like we did so many times in the 1st test and again this afternoon.
Also when you say we nearly won the first test, to be quite honest it’s a travesty we didn’t win it. If we’d batted slightly more sensibly in the second innings we set them 330 and we win. We made all the running and that should go down as a serious missed opportunity.
Do you know what really concerns me about our strategy is that our greatest batsman of all time so easily got sucked into playing as if he was born to bat like Jos Buttler. In the First Test he truly showed his class, took 75 balls to reach 50, played himself in and then launched an assault once he was seeing like a football to score 118 not out off 152 balls. Here, he was given a chance when Green overstepped but still repeated the same error to get out. That isn't his game. Then look what happened when Stokes came in. The very person who has been telling everyone "this is how we play" opted to bat like Dominic Sibley in scoring 17 off 57 - thus probably making Root feel like the fall guy for our tactics.
So after all of that we've ended up scoring at 4.55 runs per over. And we should be at least 5 down too with Brook having been dropped and just the tail to come. Australia lost the toss again, survived the worst of the conditions in making only 39 off their first 17 overs and still managed to score at 4.53 an over for the rest of the innings. And they didn't have to at any time resort to brain dead cricket.
Bide our time against Hazelwood and Cummins. Starc will naturally go for runs so keep doing that. Lyon not likely to bowl and Green being managed. Attack their part time spinners who will have to bowl and wait for their quicks to tire. When they do go full Bazball.
Nah! Strike the ball repeatedly out of the ground, without taking chances.
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Glad he is though.
I partially blame Root, in that he should have been telling Duckett to leave the short balls, at least until he got his ton.
Aussies get quick wickets before lunch tomorrow, it’s their game. If these two and Bairstow put on 150-200 more, we’re in a good position.
Reminded me of 4 years ago at Headingley when he took ages to score a run & blocked an end before close of play. We all know what happened the next day 🙂
Stokes, Brook and Bairstow can lose us or get us firmly back in the game tomorrow, with poor Nathan Lyon clearly out of the game we won't get a better opportunity, we can equally launch that opportunity away if Brook carries on slashing at everything tomorrow
So after all of that we've ended up scoring at 4.55 runs per over. And we should be at least 5 down too with Brook having been dropped and just the tail to come. Australia lost the toss again, survived the worst of the conditions in making only 39 off their first 17 overs and still managed to score at 4.53 an over for the rest of the innings. And they didn't have to at any time resort to brain dead cricket.