Cricket fred

[Galfon]

333 now needed from 48 overs ..another nice challenge is that.
10 wickets in hand though.

[Galfon]

Stokes going berserk now - 10 sixes already.
56 needed from 15 now, just 1 wicket down.
Surely even Eng. can't Farokh a defeat from here ?

u/d: over 6 overs to spare, at a canter.
Livingstone cameo brings the mini-flap to ground.

[Banquo]

Boom. Stokes and Bairstow phenomenal. Our approach to ODI is certainly entertaining.

[Digby]

The fat lady is warming the vocal cords.

Fair play to India who've posted 3 large totals on the bounce, they've just been more consistent

[Galfon]

Just 7 short in the end - good effort but another big ask.
Can't argue with the 1 day format..100 overs, 650 runs, 19 wickets and a result...real bang-for-your-buck.
The fans have missed a belter of a mini-series there.

[Galfon]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

[Puja]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

[Banquo]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

This. Now he has an open ended suspension with an unbounded 'investigation' from the ECB. Seems the ECB are keener to be seen to do the 'right thing', rather than doing the right thing imo. He clearly had behavioural problems until his early 20's, and probably now needs a lot of support. Whether he gets it is questionable, given they've hung him out to dry.

[Puja]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

This. Now he has an open ended suspension with an unbounded 'investigation' from the ECB. Seems the ECB are keener to be seen to do the 'right thing', rather than doing the right thing imo. He clearly had behavioural problems until his early 20's, and probably now needs a lot of support. Whether he gets it is questionable, given they've hung him out to dry.

I've been annoyed by the reporting and rent-a-quotes from people like Vaughan saying things like, "Robinson has made a mistake; he has to go away and educate himself and learn from this." He did make mistakes 8 years ago, apparently did educate himself and learned from it, and is still facing "should have known better" headshaking when clearly 2021!Robinson did and does know better! His only sin in the last couple of days was not setting every social media from his idiotic youth to private/deleted.

Don't get me wrong, the original posts were very shitty and we should look to discourage that kind of behaviour in other people I wouldn't even be averse to a limited, one-match ban, to set the example to any onlookers. However you can do that and still continually mention that it was idiotic schoolboy behaviour and he's now grown up, rather than imply that he's still racist and sexist to a casual reader (which is far worse optics if they plan on using him in the future).

Puja

[Banquo]

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

This. Now he has an open ended suspension with an unbounded 'investigation' from the ECB. Seems the ECB are keener to be seen to do the 'right thing', rather than doing the right thing imo. He clearly had behavioural problems until his early 20's, and probably now needs a lot of support. Whether he gets it is questionable, given they've hung him out to dry.

I've been annoyed by the reporting and rent-a-quotes from people like Vaughan saying things like, "Robinson has made a mistake; he has to go away and educate himself and learn from this." He did make mistakes 8 years ago, apparently did educate himself and learned from it, and is still facing "should have known better" headshaking when clearly 2021!Robinson did and does know better! His only sin in the last couple of days was not setting every social media from his idiotic youth to private/deleted.

Don't get me wrong, the original posts were very shitty and we should look to discourage that kind of behaviour in other people I wouldn't even be averse to a limited, one-match ban, to set the example to any onlookers. However you can do that and still continually mention that it was idiotic schoolboy behaviour and he's now grown up, rather than imply that he's still racist and sexist to a casual reader (which is far worse optics if they plan on using him in the future).

Puja

All this. Vaughan is a nob all the time these days too.

[Which Tyler]

All this. Vaughan is a nob all the time these days too.

There must be something about opening batsmen from Yorkshire who go on to become lead commentators...

[WaspInWales]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

Spot on Puja. They were unacceptable comments that he made but he rightly apologised for them and he came across as genuine and as someone who has grown up since he made them.

Especially agree regarding the mental strength he showed. It was pressure enough making a debut but under that scrutiny too. Well done to him and I hope it rubs off on some of our other players.

I do wonder who found and released the Tweets though. The timing of these things is superb. Do newspapers employ hacks who just spend all day trawling through people's social media? Then does the paper sit on the info for a while waiting for the perfect time to release them for the perfect impact?

[Puja]

Eng should avoid defeat after the lost day. A good toss to win for NZ tbf.Robinson has gone well but his possible future exclusion for past twitter-bad-boy-isms is not a good start to the summer tests.
Burns rode his luck but applied himself well and justified his recall.

I have a lot of sympathy for Robinson - few amongst us can say that we weren't a twat at 17-18 years old and he appears to have gone 9 years without being a shitposting edgelord which suggests that he's grown up. Doesn't obviate the initial posts and he absolutely needed to apologise and disown them and be on a final warning, but I don't think he should face further consequences.

Plus, his response on the pitch has shown a degree of mental strength that's rare amongst English cricketers.

Puja

Spot on Puja. They were unacceptable comments that he made but he rightly apologised for them and he came across as genuine and as someone who has grown up since he made them.

Especially agree regarding the mental strength he showed. It was pressure enough making a debut but under that scrutiny too. Well done to him and I hope it rubs off on some of our other players.

I do wonder who found and released the Tweets though. The timing of these things is superb. Do newspapers employ hacks who just spend all day trawling through people's social media? Then does the paper sit on the info for a while waiting for the perfect time to release them for the perfect impact?

I'd suspect the Mail, as it's their kind of shithousery, but there doesn't appear to be any kind of "Exclusive - shock as cricketer who participated in wokeist anti-racism gesture turns out to have been racist all along!" story to back it up.

Puja

[Digby]

The 'shock' was merely keeping it until the day of the test for his debut. The action of the ECB does seem a little odd, you'd think if they cared this much they'd have checked to begin with

[WaspInWales]

Hmmm so another player is now in the spotlight for posting offensive tweet when they were under 16.

Apparently, Wisden found the tweet.

[Digby]

And the ECB have cunningly made a rod for their own back unless they can take action on both rather quickly

[Puja]

NGL, went through yesterday to make sure that all my teenage blogs have been set to user-read only so no-one else can see them. Not that anyone cares rn what I say, but I'd imagine a few of these cricketers thought that a while back.

Puja

[Puja]

Could be a much easier game for New Zealand next week - the 15 year old previously mentioned is allegedly in England's matchday squad and Jimmy Anderson's got a skeleton as well: https://inews.co.uk/sport/cricket/james ... ed-1042390. Bet it would've been less of a deal had they realised that it wasn't just one relatively unimportant seamer.

I will note that it's good that we are calling out these tweets because they are pretty shitty behaviour. However, punishing someone today for what they said 10 years ago as if they'd said it 5 minutes ago doesn't seem right. They should absolutely disavow the tweets, they should absolutely apologise, they should absolutely be made to wear sackcloth and ashes and be paraded as "this is not acceptable" so that no-one gets the wrong idea what the message is here. But banning them isn't right.

Puja

[Digby]

In our defence it couldn't get much easier for NZ

[Banquo]

won toss and batting. Bit of a worry under cloud at Edgbaston tbh, though Southee rested, along with other kiwis, saving themselves for the India game . Anderson plays- no spinner and a long tail (suspect Bess and Overton are 'tweeted' out)

England: 1 Rory Burns, 2 Dom Sibley, 3 Zak Crawley, 4 Joe Root (captain), 5 Ollie Pope, 6 Dan Lawrence, 7 James Bracey (wk), 8 Mark Wood, 9 Olly Stone, 10 Stuart Broad, 11 James Anderson

New Zealand: 1 Tom Latham (captain), 2 Devon Conway, 3 Will Young, 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Henry Nicholls, 6 Tom Blundell (wk), 7 Daryl Mitchell, 8 Neil Wagner, 9 Matt Henry, 10 Ajaz Patel, 11 Trent Boult

[Banquo]

Ffs

[Banquo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/57432180

This has not been handled well. Shame if his career is derailed- fingers crossed he bounced back

[Digby]

Are they setting out why he's been the only player picked on for historic comments?

[Digby]

It wasn't even stupid batting this time, the ball started to do a bit and we just couldn't defend it, and tbf it's not the strongest batting lineup seen in test cricket

[Stom]

God we're crap without Stokes, aren't we?

We'll be lucky to get 250 at this rate. And then they'll punish us for 350+, probably...whereby Sibley will ride in on his white horse and block a nice 50 off 300 balls to "save" the series.