England Cricket 2022

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

With the exception of Root, I wonder who was the last English batsman before Bairstow to hit three hundreds and two unbeaten 50s in five consecutive Test innings (which might become four hundreds and one unbeaten 50)?

Has Root done it?  I don't know if he has or not.

The ones that came to mind were Cook and Vaughan in Australia but don't think they did. Cook had the horror of the WACA right in the middle. 

This really is a remarkable run of form. 

The summer of Pudsey! 

I thought Root must have done so but the nearest he's got is 64-109-180*-33-121. Cook once achieved in six consecutive innings 82-189-133-96-106-55. Vaughan's best run from five innings was 100-197-61-15-195.

Sorry I probably could look it up myself but when was Cook and Vaughan's best streaks? 

Cook's run started with the last two innings of the 2010-11 Ashes series in Australia (although his actual scores in that series were 67-235*-148-32-13-82-189) and concluded with his four innings in the home series against Sri Lanka later in 2011 (he then had a somewhat inconsistent series that summer against India with scores of 12-1-2-5-294-34).

Vaughan's run took place in the 2002 home series against India where he started with a duck followed by those five scores above and ended it with 47*.

Dave Rudd said:

kentaddick said:

SoundAsa£ said:

Just popping in to say how well Crawley (Creepy as I call him), was playing until he got an absolute snorter which would have bowled many a top player from any era ……but did he do enough to satisfy his detractors?
I hope so.

the third man from hussain just after he got out was fantastic. Showing all the deliveries crawley left perfectly, that before this match he would have gone after. Forced the bowlers to bowl straighter, which he loves and then when the ball got old he could go after the wider ones. Form is temporary but showing you're adapting your game when you get found out is the key attribute for a great test batsman. I agree, it was an absolute jaffer to get him out. 

I'm delighted with the improvement too, but the approach that Hussain describes is Opening Batsman 101.  Why wasn't Crawley and others already aware of the need to leave the wide ball?  How do you get to that level without understanding that?

Boycott, Atherton, Cook etc would roll their collective eyes after Nasser's 'third man'.

Test cricket is a five-day game.  A dot ball, lots of dot balls are OK if it means that you survive until conditions are more in the batman's favour.  You don't have to chase everything outside the off stump.

Crawley and others suffer from the white-ball mentality ... looking to score off the majority of the deliveries faced.  This is high-risk at Test level.  It's coming off at the moment, but it's high-risk, so don't be surprised if it goes wrong too.

Now ... on to this morning.

COYE

I've explained for years the reasons why we don't produce Test openers and that is because of the insistence of Strauss back in 2015 that not just England but County age group teams concentrate on white ball. From that point onwards all the emphasis of training changed from knowing where your off stump is to how many runs can I score off this ball - the starting point being six, then four etc etc.

I just checked and this is the breakdown on games scheduled and played by Kent U18s last season:

Red ball 4 day games - 7
White ball 50 over games - 7
White ball T20 matches - 24

I know I am like a warped record here but that is what makes Ben Compton so different - getting his first meaningful contract at this year at 28 (and spending a lot of time in South Africa too) meant that he avoided all of this. I watched him score a ton on Saturday at Club level and he made everything look so simple and easy. Yes that was a club game but it's only what he's been doing for Kent - over 1,000 runs while Crawley has struggled to average 30 at the other end. I spoke to someone in the Kent set up who trains and has played with him and he says he practises relentlessly against 90mph bowling but within the confines of those three or four run scoring shots. The rest of the time it is block or leave.