Cricket fred

[Lizard]

Stop your pommy whinging. “Oh it’s such a tewwibly awful pitch. It’s unplayable!”

Except that India scored 615 runs on it. And their no 8 (8!) scored 106 at a SR of over 71 in the 3rd innings.

Yes, it tends to turn a bit in India. It’s called home advantage. Your lads just need to bat better. Although I’d prefer it if you don’t. I think the conditions at Lord’s would favour NZ most if we played India in the WTC Final

[Puja]

Stop your pommy whinging. “Oh it’s such a tewwibly awful pitch. It’s unplayable!”

Except that India scored 615 runs on it. And their no 8 (8!) scored 106 at a SR of over 71 in the 3rd innings.

Yes, it tends to turn a bit in India. It’s called home advantage. Your lads just need to bat better. Although I’d prefer it if you don’t. I think the conditions at Lord’s would favour NZ most if we played India in the WTC Final

You're missing the point - it was pretty much unplayable at points when Ashwin was bowling. The fact that India scored 615 runs on it says terrible things about our bowling attack without Anderson on a turning pitch, not great things about the pitch.

Puja

[Galfon]

The selection policy is odd.
For a series like this I would prefer to see the best XI out there, every game. (Moeen's packed his bags and is offski now too..)

[Digby]

Some rotation of the bowlers makes sense to me. Anderson playing test matches with a 3 or 4 day break doesn't look sensible as a for instance.

And fair play to India for playing much better, I don't mind the home conditions. You might argue winning the toss has proved overly influential in both games so far, but the side batting 2nd in both matches haven't helped themselves as much as they could have done so sympathy will be short on the ground.

[Big D]

The selection policy is odd.
For a series like this I would prefer to see the best XI out there, every game. (Moeen's packed his bags and is offski now too..)

I don't think it is that odd really. There have been some injuries (Burns, Crawley and Pope) so that is players off the bat. England have rotated the seamers regularly during Covid and Archer is injured and Wood is a big injury risk. Vaughan and the media love Bairstow but he has been pretty average for a long time and Pope and Crawley are ahead of him now.

At the moment, there are only 2 definitely missing from what England would normally do in these conditions; Ali and Buttler (Curran v the other seamers is a toss up). And even then it is questionable whether Buttler is that much better (if at all) than Foakes in sub continent conditions IMO.

[Galfon]

I would have thought pulling out all the stops to stop India clawing back in the series was worth a go - Bairstow can play spin and is in good nick, Bess worth a gamble for attacking spin ( like Ali in the team but he needed match time after Covid imo, his economy not for the first time made things more difficult) and Anderson is bowling supremely, and could gave been used sparingly.

[Big D]

I would have thought pulling out all the stops to stop India clawing back in the series was worth a go - Bairstow can play spin and is in good nick, Bess worth a gamble for attacking spin ( like Ali in the team but he needed match time after Covid imo, his economy not for the first time made things more difficult) and Anderson is bowling supremely, and could gave been used sparingly.

I think resting Jimmy with the D/N game coming up rather than bowling on a dust bowl isn't an unusual step though.

This is the thing with Bairstow, scores of 47*, 35, 28 and 29 in SL isn't that good a set of numbers. It is sort of what Bairstow does now, he might be better against spin than Crawley and Pope but both the latter are the future and the present on non spinning pitches. I'd say the younger guys are more likely to score lower but also more likely to go big.

Vaughan bangs on about trying to win the ashes and should be playing their best team in India. The team to do both may be different. Bairstow shouldn't be near the ashes squad never mind team.

So the conundrum is, do England pick these younger guys knowing they will be the team for the summer and beyond or throw in a Bairstow who is better at spin but can pencil in 20's and 30's with the odd score 40 and rarer 50 for limited gains. For me I'd stick with the younger guys as I don't think Bairstow will or can play a match winning innings so I'd persevere.

I would caveat that with if Crawley can't replace Lawrence then I'd play Bairstow.

[Digby]

So there we have it, Moeen is worth nearly 5x Malan, and nobody even wanted Roy and Rashid. Do people not watch players before bidding on them?

[Big D]

Name 3 seamers and 1 spinner, win the toss and bat first. Interesting strategy there Joe.

Need to go big.

[Galfon]

Pitch dry / weather hot & humid.Hoping for big score then ball to swing for the lofties.
Farewell Motera, hello Narendra Modi! ..110 k capacity is monstrous for creekit.

[Big D]

Another poor outing for Sibley, think he is worth persevering with for now but he does need to improve.

[Big D]

Christ, Bairstow totally misjudges a straight one then wastes a review. He just isn't a test match player anymore.

[fivepointer]

Bizarre wasnt it. I thought he must have nicked it when he reviewed but no, he just played down the wrong line and missed a straight ball.

[Big D]

Bizarre wasnt it. I thought he must have nicked it when he reviewed but no, he just played down the wrong line and missed a straight ball.

I don't know what he and Crawley were thinking with the review. It was plumb.

[Big D]

Always a good sign being spun out on session 1 when you have picked 3 seamers and a spinner...

[Digby]

About the only possible defence is the players are struggling with time away from home in their hotel rooms. Which isn't a great defence for the money they're taking to be there, better to have refused to go up front.

The other defence is they're not very good and/or they can't be bothered just because they can't be bothered and not for any real reason. Hardly the only team to land with a bump in India and realise their skills just aren't up to it

[Galfon]

Horses for courses, ours are not up to the mark on this one.
I suspect their's will be more competitive on our green-tops later in the year.
Cripes - all gone now (112), won the toss too..

[Digby]

The pitch isn't that bad, 74-2 shouldn't be getting converted to 112 and done

Telling is not only did we lose wickets to the spinners we had not idea how to score runs off the spinners

[Galfon]

Telling is not only did we lose wickets to the spinners we had not idea how to score runs off the spinners

That was the courses thing - 3 good spinners on a wicket doing enough, just not able to adapt...(today, good job matches have 2 innings eh lads)

[Digby]

Telling is not only did we lose wickets to the spinners we had not idea how to score runs off the spinners

That was the courses thing - 3 good spinners on a wicket doing enough, just not able to adapt...(today, good job matches have 2 innings eh lads)

Seems more they had in mind previous failures and reacted to a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't happening. Ashwin in the last match was a real handful, this was just daft

[fivepointer]

Pretty awful batting. Its not a flat wicket but we shouldnt have been bowled out inside 2 sessions. Al to do tomorrow.

[Galfon]

A fifth of the way, and we're still ahead at this point ( 13 ).

[Digby]

Pretty awful batting. Its not a flat wicket but we shouldnt have been bowled out inside 2 sessions. Al to do tomorrow.

AI couldn't do much worse, though it might be a little illegal

[Which Tyler]

We learned 20+ years ago that spinners hunt best as a pack.
India, and now England are proving this once again.

Will England learn this time?

[Stom]

golden arm, I found his weakness
golden arm, he'll do as I please
golden arm, no time for sweetness
but a bitter kiss will bring him to his knees