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1st TEST - England v Sri Lanka

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mackembhoy said:
Exactly sentiment and collecting baubles got in the way of the team

johnson

bumble knows nothing about cricket

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: It was a classic. in at it's very best...”Sadly 'Englishness' crept in . Should have bowled last night

neither does shane warne


England would have won that test match with time to spare, if they declared last night & everyone knows it. 390 runs off 90 overs, please !
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In fairness how do they know that declaring earlier wouldn't have caused England to loose Sri Lanka have some good bats. There's some unbelievable captains in that sky commentary box constantly planning the perfect victory.
 

The Sheepfolds End said:
I think back to Headingley 01. Gilchrist declared leaving England 315 to win on the last day. He backed his bowlers to do the job and gave England a sniff. Ultimately Australia lost and missed out on a whitewash. However, it was an outstanding final day, one of the greatest, and despite losing Gilchrist received a lot of praise for it.
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Easy to be brave when you're 3-0 up with 2 to play though and a whole lot different when you've come off a 0-5 series defeat
 
plunkett got into the team, as it was said he was bowling 90 mph and troubling everyone. he has not done that but this was the usual crap lords pitch. cant see them changing the team for friday, so his new home ground, he should be able to some pace, bounce and wickets
 
If Cook wasnt so negative (in his fields at time and when he declared) we would probably have won. People are making some valid points about coming off the back of a crushing winter and the pitch doing nothing, but surely he could have just thought 'there's 340/350 to chase, and if you can get that, well we will just have to say well done'?.

Saying that you could also point out the over rate didnt help us ultimately, probably partly down to the fact we didnt have a main spinner at one end whilst the seamers were at the other.
 
dangermows said:
If Cook wasnt so negative (in his fields at time and when he declared) we would probably have won. People are making some valid points about coming off the back of a crushing winter and the pitch doing nothing, but surely he could have just thought 'there's 340/350 to chase, and if you can get that, well we will just have to say well done'?.

Saying that you could also point out the over rate didnt help us ultimately, probably partly down to the fact we didnt have a main spinner at one end whilst the seamers were at the other.
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I think Mike Selvey made the point earlier on twitter - had Cook given them 8 overs, taking into account the innings break the target would have been 313 in 98 overs which, whilst difficult was very gettable.

Where England lost the game was the ridiculously slow over rate - think we lost 17 overs across the first 4 days (I know SRL contributed too) but even 5 more overs would have given us time to get the 10th wicket
 
TopCat said:
I think Mike Selvey made the point earlier on twitter - had Cook given them 8 overs, taking into account the innings break the target would have been 313 in 98 overs which, whilst difficult was very gettable.

Where England lost the game was the ridiculously slow over rate - think we lost 17 overs across the first 4 days (I know SRL contributed too) but even 5 more overs would have given us time to get the 10th wicket
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aye, but were they really going for it when they didnt lose any wickets? if they had been scoring quicker maybe the wickets would have dropped sooner. no way of knowing now but we can safely say that both ballance and cook were overly cautious and cost us a better shot at winning, if not an actual win, we will never know.
 
Twisted said:
aye, but were they really going for it when they didnt lose any wickets? if they had been scoring quicker maybe the wickets would have dropped sooner. no way of knowing now but we can safely say that both ballance and cook were overly cautious and cost us a better shot at winning, if not an actual win, we will never know.
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Well yes, you can't predict how the game would have gone if they had been given an achievable target, but the fact we came so damn close to bowling them out in 90 overs suggests Cook wasn't far wrong in his declaration. Maybe, if he had instructed Balance to speed up and get to 350+ ahead with 10 overs left we might have nipped a couple out. On the other hand, they might have been 50-0 at the close.....it's all ifs and maybes
 
TopCat said:
Well yes, you can't predict how the game would have gone if they had been given an achievable target, but the fact we came so damn close to bowling them out in 90 overs suggests Cook wasn't far wrong in his declaration. Maybe, if he had instructed Balance to speed up and get to 350+ ahead with 10 overs left we might have nipped a couple out. On the other hand, they might have been 50-0 at the close.....it's all ifs and maybes
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agreed. just seemed fantastically ego driven batting from ballance, crawls along to get to his hundred, and then gets his ton with a 6. why not play a few of those shots earlier?
 
TopCat said:
To be fair, he went from 67 to 104 in 18 balls
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Exactly mate, people are criticising Cook badly for letting Ballance get his hundred but he did it very quickly

Giving them 8 overs, with the change over, they would of been chasing a very gettable total, especially having 3 batsmen bang in form

There is no problem hefd, just a few looking to kick Cook while he is down. There may be merit in the argument that Cook is too defensive of course, but for this match, after that winter and with these players, it is totally understandable and isn't a big issue.

Plenty of positives here, Ballance getting a 100 from 3, Root finally playing where he should always of been playing and getting 200 and Anderson looking brilliant with the ball.

Ali looks a decent player but for me he has to score big runs, as we can't pick him on his spin bowling. Morgan got 190 this week, I am always tempted to get him in at 6, and give the bowling to Root if we refuse to pick a spinner.
 
TopCat said:
To be fair, he went from 67 to 104 in 18 balls
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He did, so why couldn't he have done that at 5.45 instead of 6.15? I think England should have shown more intent in the last hour to get them over 350 and have time for a few overs on Sunday night but in reality they did really well to take 9 wickets yesterday without a spinner (I'm not counting Ali, didn't look any better than Root to me).

And both teams/captains should be hammered for the lost overs, there's just no excuse for it.
 
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