England Cricket 2024

fenaddick said:

MarcusH26 said:

This upcoming Australia Vs India series could be an absolute trainwreck. Australia can't decide on a top order and India look miles out of form. 

Don’t think you need a decent pair of openers if 3-6 can put on 150 against this team. Their inability to play spin is incredible, Lyon will be licking his lips

The question is this - why did we lose 4-1 (and that one win was by just 28 runs and was purely down to one person's innings on our side) to them because they clearly do have issues playing spin. Almost certainly, in hindsight, because our bowlers overall (and I include our seamers here) weren't anywhere near as threatening as that of India despite the relative illusion of the success of our rookie spinners.

It is absolutely astonishing to think that our main wicket takers on that tour, namely Hartley (22), Bashir (17) and Rehan (11) took 50 wickets between them and yet only managed 24 during the whole of the County Championship season with Hartley and Bashir struggling to even been picked for their counties. 

On that basis alone, it will be interesting to see who we match up against Lyon in the Ashes. 
  

England 14-3 (5.1) in the third and deciding ODI. Jacks, Cox and Bethell all out.

Jacks was caught behind off Forde for 5 (10).

Then Alzarri Joseph bowled one of the most bemusing overs I have ever seen. He virtually refused to bowl because he didn't like the field set by his captain, Hope. Eventually he did do so but was seen moaning and pointing between balls. He then bowled a 148KPh short ball that Cox gloves, doesn't appeal and returns to his mark with the batsman walking off for 1 (6). Then, at the end of the over, he storms off the pitch and returns an over later but cannot carry on bowing because of the time spent off the pitch. 

Shepherd, who had to come on to replace Joseph, then had Bethell caught at backward point for 0 (3).

golfaddick said:

We are really crap at the moment. Too many inexperienced & inferior players. 

We've got to try these out, especially in an inconsequential series such as this. The concern is Cox because he has now been done twice for the pace. Batting in T20s he can throw his bat at anything and as long as he comes off, say one in three, then that is good enough. He has looked bereft of ideas as to how to rotate but the real worry is that he is our keeper/bat understudy in Tests. I have doubts about his concentration levels when keeping but more of a concern is that vulnerability against real pace from a red ball that is moving left, right and centre. As well as he has done in the CC, how many real quicks does he face? Two of his hundreds last season came against the express battalions of the Kent attack!!! We'll see in the upcoming NZ series albeit that it will help that he will be shielded, to a degree, at 7.  

Make that 24-4 (9.5)

Livingstone caught behind off Shepherd for 6 (14)

golfaddick said:

Addick Addict said:

blackpool72 said:

All this thinking outside the box when it comes to selection is bollox. 
Bethell should not be anyway near the England team.

For years, we had Moeen to share sixth bowler duties with Livingstone and also Stokes as the fourth seamer. Now we have neither and forced to experiment which means youngsters and fitting square pegs in round holes. Our best ODI team would, in my opinion, look something like this and totally different in appearance to this one:

Buttler (injured)
Duckett (Test squad)
Root (Test squad)
Brook (Test squad)
Livingstone
Smith (WK) (Test squad)
Curran/a spinning all rounder of some description  
Carse (Test squad)
Rashid
Archer/Wood (injured)
Topley/Atkinson (Test squad)

Can you not play Test cricket AND ODI's  ?? I'm sure plenty of the 2019 WC winning squad were playing test cricket at the time.

And I know what you going to say......that those players have just played 3 Tests in Pakistan. And my reply will be.....

1) they spent less than a month in Pakistan

2) dont schedule matches so close together if you actually want to win games and get momentum. 

They used to bolt ODIs and T20s before or on to the end of Test series. That doesn't happen so much now, principally because the international cricket calendar is now so crowded with so many franchise tournaments. Look at what happens now in England -  the whole of August is written off for international cricket to accommodate the Hundred and to ensure the England players take part in that (meaning that they also don't play any domestic 50 over cricket) so we end up having to play Australia in September in white ball matches.  

The ECB have now said that centrally contracted players will only be allowed to play in the IPL although the irony is that any players that put themselves up for auction and then pull out will face a two year ban from the taking part. 

Todds_right_hook said:

Addick Addict said:

blackpool72 said:

All this thinking outside the box when it comes to selection is bollox. 
Bethell should not be anyway near the England team.

For years, we had Moeen to share sixth bowler duties with Livingstone and also Stokes as the fourth seamer. Now we have neither so we forced to experiment which means playing youngsters and fitting square pegs in round holes. Our best ODI team would, in my opinion, look something like this and totally different in appearance to this one:

Buttler (injured)
Duckett (Test squad)
Root (Test squad)
Brook (Test squad)
Livingstone
Smith (WK) (Test squad)
Curran/a spinning all rounder of some description  
Carse (Test squad)
Rashid
Archer/Wood (injured)
Topley/Atkinson (Test squad)

There’s no reason why duckett, root, brook, smith or even Crawley are not in this squad

Smith has gone home for the birth of his first child and isn't going to NZ. Duckett, for example, has been on the go virtually non-stop since the start of July and because of the Australia white ball series not ending 'til 29th September, he then had to fly out for the first Test in Pakistan a week later. The Pakistan series wasn't scheduled to finish until 28th October with the first West Indies ODI starting three days later. The final T20 match in the Windies is on 17th November with the New Zealand Test series commencing ten days later. That finishes on 17th December and then, come January, England play five T20s and three ODIs in India.

I'm the first to criticise players for finding excuses not to play but I would defy anyone these days to be able to perform, given all that travelling and acclimitisation, to the best of their ability being on the go from the beginning of July all the way through to the middle of December with barely a break of more than ten days or so. This is a series very much for experimenting and I would expect the team to look somewhat different come the tour of India.  

MarcusH26 said:

I just checked - Bethell , Duckett and Pope all also have BBL deals too so they'll have a stint in Oz before Christmas too. 

Which I suspect that the ECB will try and prevent them from doing next year unless they feel it is in their interests to do so. The other thing we have to consider is that those centrally contracted are not on anything like the same money with probably the lowest of them on something like £200K and the likes of Root/ Buttler/Stokes on over £1m. It's very difficult to dictate to those at the bottom end that they can't go and earn money elsewhere especially when one hears that Liam Dawson (not that he had a central contract), for example, was being paid £150K just to play in the SAT20. 

An incredible onslaught from Archer with 38 off 17 balls to take us to 263-8 (50)