The England Cricket Thread

Leech getting another 5, good to see, just comes across as a likeable bloke who has had some horrible press directed toward him.
 
Crawley is absolutely shot, he looks like he's never held a cricket bat before. It's a horrible sport when you're out of nick, you question every movement and it just gets worse and worse. Only way through it is to battle and get a bit of luck, try to get to 30 and start to recover some confidence
 
manic111 said:
Crawley is absolutely shot, he looks like he's never held a cricket bat before. It's a horrible sport when you're out of nick, you question every movement and it just gets worse and worse. Only way through it is to battle and get a bit of luck, try to get to 30 and start to recover some confidence
Click to expand...
Thought he was looking ok when he got those couple of boundaries. Good that popes got an innings in today. Going well here, hopefully be sensible and get the win without losing any or many wickets. Give them the confidence they don't need to go smash it around the park to be successful
 
SoliD said:
Thought he was looking ok when he got those couple of boundaries. Good that popes got an innings in today. Going well here, hopefully be sensible and get the win without losing any or many wickets. Give them the confidence they don't need to go smash it around the park to be successful
Click to expand...
A lot of them were still streaky. One nice drive in there. I thought that he'd kick on from that, and he started moving his feet a bit better, but I just think his head has gone at the moment. There's very much a test batsman there, but I think he should go back to county cricket for the season and get some confidence back
 
Bairstow is in the form of his life, it's outrageous. I've always been of the opinion that the primary skill for a test batsman is to be able to defend the good balls and to keep the scoreboard ticking, but when you're playing like Johnny is you can frankly do what you want
 
Feels a little like if we can continue to transfer our white ball dominance to tests, we could be seeing a change in the way test cricket is played. If the batsmen can play with this confidence and just smash the bowlers into dust relentlessly, but cut out the poor shot choices that have got them out previously it'll be very hard to beat.

Zak Crawley needs to go back to the county game for a while mind, he's not delivered at test level at all.
 
mid_gen said:
Feels a little like if we can continue to transfer our white ball dominance to tests, we could be seeing a change in the way test cricket is played. If the batsmen can play with this confidence and just smash the bowlers into dust relentlessly, but cut out the poor shot choices that have got them out previously it'll be very hard to beat.

Zak Crawley needs to go back to the county game for a while mind, he's not delivered at test level at all.
Click to expand...
That simply doesn't work in the long run in test cricket, though. It will do for a very small number of batsmen (Smith, Kohli etc), but even they go through patches of form. The best Test batsmen always have the ability to stick around or to open up - look at Tendulkar, Lara, Jayawardene, Smith, Kohli, Root, Williamson etc. Bairstow is currently in a huge purple patch, but it was only a month ago that people were saying that he should be out of the team, and he's never going to be a batsman to dig in.

I'm chuffed for Johnny that he's doing well and never agreed with calls for him to be dropped, and every test side needs a couple of big strikers, but it can't form the spine of a team.

McCullum's cricket isn't senseless attacking, but to play positively given the situation. There will be matches where the bowlers are plainly on top and our batsmen have no option but to dig in and milk singles where they can.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom