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4th test Manchester

Raffs said:
Disagree strongly with all of this.

In my view both the Aussie batting line up and bowling group are superior to ours, man for man, they weren’t there for the taking at all - they’ve just won the World Test Championship.

The only reason we are still in this series and have made it so wonderfully competitive is the aggressive approach taken by Stokes and the management team which has unsettled the Aussies and given us a fighting chance.
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Is isnt this what makes cricket such a wonderful sport to follow where people can have such differing views with neither you nor me having to be correct
 

essex boy said:
Alternatively a lot of the good work done over the last year has been unpicked. I believe the decision to bring back Ali was purely down to Stokes and follows the same pattern with Silverwood ie, one guy picking the side which has manifested itself in Bairstow and now Jimmy. Some may argue Stokes has earned the right to pick who he wants others may argue we should have learned our lesson from Silverwood. In any level of sport, a captain more often than not will lean towards picking his mates every time. In top level sport that should not be happening but it has and it may prove costly

Lets stop with the boll*cks, Australia have been there for the taking from ball one of the Ashes. Warner is way past his best, Labuschange cant buy a meaningful run and has a poor test record out of Australia, Australia lost their only spinner of any note in the second test, Boland who is tailor made for England has looked poor. They have two class acts in Cummins and Smith who would be in an around any all time Australian side but the rest are no great shakes when compared to Australian sides of the past.

England have been on a roll for the last year, brimming with confidence but are just about still in the test series. Questions should be asked and will be asked specifically about team selection if we do not win this test. We are arguing the likes of Jimmy, Root, Stokes, Broad etc are all time greats yet look like losing at home to a fairly average Aussie side so something is amiss
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On what basis do you consider Aus average? Test World Champions.
 
essex boy said:
Starc is more than decent but an all time Aussie great he is not. Are we playing in an era of high quality test cricket compared to era gone past? I would argue not based on the riches on offer in the short form which were not available in say the 2005 or 2009 Ashes
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Mate haway man he’s their fifth highest wicket taker of all time

You have some mad opinions on bowlers like the wood and Anderson crack now this
 
The cricket section is worse than the football one on here man :eek: :lol: Stokes has to go? FFS he has played on one leg, and done great. Made a few dubious decisions along the way, but so has Cummins, and he has more at his disposal.

He has gone with players he knows and trusts. Bairstow is the obvious controversial one with his wick keeping, but didn't he catch a worldy earlier? I haven't seen it yet. Ali has come in as Leach is out, and the Aussies have just dropped their replacement spinner for Leech to try to be defensive, and protect the draw.

Anderson deserved a crack, and without looking , I don't think his overs have gone for much, but it's the wicket taking element we are missing from him. Remember Wood was injured, Archer is out, and Stokes himself can't bowl as he wants to. Some right fannies on here man. We took a positive risk, it looked dodgy at one stage, but we got back into it again. It's game on as far as I'm concerned. Positive thinking man
 
mackembhoy said:
We ain't going to do that though. Who says we can't score 500 batting the way we have?

I'm saying we've got to try and do that to win, I don't see us winning if we make this a 4 innings game, where it's anything more than 100 chase. As it's debatable we will have the time to achieve more than that.
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Why is the time pressure greater in the one case than the other? Bottom line is we have to take 12 wickets and end up with more runs, quite possibly in not much more than two days. Assuming we get the first two reasonably quickly, you are saying we will have time to get 500 in one innings and take the other ten, but not to split the 500 across the two innings with the wickets in the middle. If anything the opposite must be true. it’s surely easier to score more quickly with 22 batters’ innings to play with than with 11.

Stokes isn’t old enough but some of us are to have seen plenty of three day championship cricket. If this was a late season must win for a county side in England’s position you’d have definitely done the latter back on the day. You’d need their second innings to start tomorrow even if it meant declaring behind. I’m not sure I’d advocate that because I’m not convinced there’ll be as little play as the pessimists think at the weekend, but I’d still be looking to get the runs for (up to) 19 wickets not just ten.
 
Inside Forward said:
Bloke never thinks he’s out. The ball that got him was plumb yet the twat is standing at the side of the stumps gesturing with his arms that it was going wide.

I absolutely hate the ****.

I’m just glad that aside from one decent innings he’s had a bit of a shit series (so far). Same goes for the much vaunted Labuschagne. Another helmet with a high opinion of himself except he has half the talent of Smith.
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I wish I had half the talent of Labuschagne, like...
 
cfg said:
On what basis do you consider Aus average? Test World Champions.
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We are playing in an era when many cricketers are choosing short form over the longer format. As an example, Jason Roy, Moen Ali, Tymal Mills, Joss Buttler, SA keeper/bat and Glenn Maxwell could have been far better test players than what they showed or what we are lead to believe they are. We wont know as they paid scant regard for the longer format

All nations are suffering so the overall standard of test cricket is poor, that is not to say that there are still not very good test players playing just not the depth
Captain Slackbladder said:
Indeed, Aussies are the better team in all departments, always going to be tough ask even with England's recent form. How many England players walk into Australia's side, one or two at best.
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A good question. They rate Wood and Stokes who would get in in a heartbeat, respect Broad, Jimmy, Root and in form Bairstow. None of the rest would get close some may find their way in such as Tongue and Crawley as they have something but have not done enough to date
 
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McGregor said:
So whose day was that ? Extremely tight I think I reckon it's 50/50 and the first 45-60mins tomorrow will determine the outcome.we need to be batting by 12 to stand a chance.
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In a 5 day test it was our day, not so sure if it ends up a 3 day test.
But at least they are not 300 for 5 or 6, game would be over.
Agree about tomorrow, allow these to bat for an hour or two and it may still be over.
 
cfg said:
On what basis do you consider Aus average? Test World Champions.
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Apart from Smith and Cummins not a single player gets close to an all time Aussie side

I have been bought up watching great aussie sides having anything up to 5 all time greats in a side ala Ponting, Mcgrath, Warne, Hayden, Langer et al. This current side is the poorest of the last 30 years
 
zebediah said:
Daft thing is we are hurting ourselves by bowling less overs.
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Absolutely. An extra 5/6 overs today and we could be looking at batting 1st thing in the morning.

And as has been mentioned, we’ve bowled 17 overs of spin too.

Obviously it would need to be properly thought out, taking into account potential injuries, change of innings, weather delays etc but if teams were hit with a penalty of say 3 runs for every over not bowled by 6pm, I’m sure they’d sharp start hurrying up
 
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rentaghost said:
They should do run penalties. I must admit as a paying spectator the overate only bothers me when I’ve seen a shit days cricket. The 80 odd overs we are generally seeing these days are pure entertainment. It doesn’t excuse it though.
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How about working out the run rate of the bowling side when they bat in their first innings then multiply by how many overs short then knock off runs? 10 overs short at 4 an over so 40 runs off first innings

Would this lead to an uptick in the importance placed on spinners with some nations picking two?
 
redandwhiterob said:
I'd imagine the batsmen could start finding ways to slow things down if run penalties are enforced. Whilst of course it's not ideal the overs aren't getting bowled on time it's fairly tricky one to solve imo
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There is that to consider as well, reviews taking time too.

The fining of % of match fee clearly isn’t working.
 
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