The England Cricket Thread

Fair play to Cummins, amazing innings in the circumstance. On another day we wrap it up to win by 30. Just needed one of those half chances (Stokes, Root catches) to stick or any of those numerous play and misses to nick off, but it wasn't England's day.

Anyone bemoaning the approach can bore off tbh.
 
I can't understand why anyone would take a boring win over an exciting loss. That was great cricket and a stonking end to the test. I wasn't even annoyed when Australia won. Cummins played a blinder and hit some lovely shot to win it. England could have easily won it with a little more luck or better fielding but hey ho, thats the nature of cricket.

Would happily lose all 5 if they were all like that.
 
fez said:
I can't understand why anyone would take a boring win over an exciting loss. That was great cricket and a stonking end to the test. I wasn't even annoyed when Australia won. Cummins played a blinder and hit some lovely shot to win it. England could have easily won it with a little more luck or better fielding but hey ho, thats the nature of cricket.

Would happily lose all 5 if they were all like that.
Click to expand...
Having literally just said that anyone bemoaning the approach can bore off, I like the approach because I think it's our best chance to win, not just for the spectacle.

I would easily take a 1-0 series win of boring tests over losing all 5 in that fashion. Easily.
 
Was thinking earlier, I wonder if the fact Australia won could be bad for them as they may think if we play "negatively" we have a chance of winning or drawing each test against Bazball, end up losing the next two and having to change approach for the last 2 when it's potentially too late.

Whatever happens next we're in for a great series.
 
manic111 said:
We lost with about 10 balls remaining. Had we not declared it would have been a draw with no shot at winning. We're an aggressive team and play to win.

If anything, they timed the declaration perfectly. A few dropped catches and Broads no ball is what cost us.
Click to expand...
I'm not so sure. The amount of time left in the game was influenced by a few factors e.g. rain delays, plus there will be an element of pacing oneself (a run chase that is losing wickets will naturally adjust itself based on how many overs are remaining). In the end there was less than 360 overs (4 full days) bowled. You can't tell me Stokes knew how much time would be lost to the weather days in advance, we could easily have batted 4 overs longer on day 1 and had 10 overs more on day 5 or whatever, it's just based on luck.
Or if I'm a bit facetious I would argue if it got down to 10 balls remaining that Stokes plan of playing to win still nearly resulted in a draw, had Australia scored fewer runs and batted an extra couple of overs. Maybe he needed to declare earlier to really take the draw out of the equation?

My initial feeling (not hindsight) was that the declaration was a mistake because:
  • It's day 1 of test 1. If we were behind in the series say 1-2 then sure, you absolutely need to go for the win and take the draw out of the equation.
  • Joe Root, arguably (and statistically) the best batsman in the world the past couple of years is at the crease fully in with a big ton under his belt. Why would you want to give up the most valuable wicket in the entire world for free? He shouldn't be that fatigued as he's batted less than a day. He also had a partner who'd got his eye in, it wasn't like we had numbers 9 and 10 freshly to the middle.
  • Another 20-30 runs with say 4 overs taken out of the game could have made all the difference in the end. Obviously at the time you have no idea how many runs / overs would make a difference so my view is plunder what you can.
  • The argument of "ah, but if we took a wicket on day 1..." doesn't hold much muster for me because it isn't a free wicket. In order to get that wicket, we have to give up however many runs the last two wickets would have got. To my earlier point, with Root at the crease, that would have been an expensive wicket. Having the opponent 20/1 at stumps isn't necessarily better than having another 40 runs on the board (delta of 60) when you still have 4 days play left.
  • Real Bazball innovation for me would be doing away with declarations almost entirely, and just instruct the batters to attempt to hit every single ball to the boundary regardless of what is bowled. If you get out it makes no difference from a team perspective compared to if you declared. Maybe you get 0 runs maybe you get 30 runs who knows, but however many you get it takes very little time at all.
I do agree however that there were several mistakes made that could have made a difference. Bairstow's keeping was poor and it seemed odd to me not to take the new ball when Root was removed from the attack.

I do understand where people are coming from in terms of wanting to see exciting cricket but for me cricket can still be exciting without declaring on day 1 when the best batsman in the world is at the crease.

I find myself wondering how I would feel if England had won. Whilst I'd still feel the decision was a mistake the outcome would have papered over that a lot. I know we declared on day 1 a few months ago and it worked out OK that time.
 
Last edited:
just reminds me of my school days

25 years ago my maths teacher used to scream at me, "You rmeing me of the England cricjet team!!! An expert at snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory!"
 
@HangTime based on the forecast on Day 1 for the coming days, I actually think there was more play than many expected only losing a few hours on Day 3 and 5, Sunday was expected by many to be a washout and only lost a few hours in the end, if Day 5 had lost an extra hour to the showers expected it would have been a draw. The only reason that was off the table in the end was due to the run rate the Australians got in at the end of Day 4 when they got in.
 
Barry Weiss said:
anyone watching the ladies?
Click to expand...
I'd class it as a good result if England win more than two of the games in the series. They've got a very inexperienced team, and you could make the case that the Australian Women's team is the best sports team in the world based on their results in the last 5-10 years. If I look at the two teams, I could only see Sophie Ecclestone getting into the Australia side.

On the Test today, the rain came at a good time, and let's hope Sophie Ecclestone doesn't suffer from bowling 31 overs. Not sure why Nat Sciver-Brunt only got 5 overs, did anythihg get said on the commentary? Lauren Filer looks to have something about her, albeit from a small sample size. Lauren Bell needs to find a tactic when there's no swing otherwise I can't see her taking too many wickets, but as with most of the attack, she's young so will hopefully develop a few more variations.

The Australian conveyor belt continues to churn out good players though. Phoebe Litchfield looked pretty decent.
 
resurgam said:
The Australian conveyor belt continues to churn out good players though. Phoebe Litchfield looked pretty decent.
Click to expand...
Given the population discrepancy between the countries you'd think it was a miracle however cricket is engrained in the culture in all parts of the country in a way it simply isn't in England. The weather is a massive factor you can't ignore but everyone plays it. Families on the beach and kids in the backyards. There are council provided cricket nets set up in local parks. I feel education in general is better funded here and a big part of that is school sport. Some of the pitches they have at the inner city private schools are stunning but even the gov run schools are superb compared to the dog muck infested mud baths we used to play in. At a professional level, the stadiums (which the Aussie Rules Football teams use during the winter) are so much bigger and better than English grounds too. The differing climates in each state means the pitches play so differently which I also think improves the players. I also like their home summer series, 5 tests at 5 grounds in 5 different states at more or less the same dates each year including the showpiece Boxing day in Melbourne. I feel it builds a bit of a tradition.

Anyhoo, both teams been fined and penalised for a slow over rate. Harsh I feel after serving up a game like that. Imo the two sides are literally propping up test cricket these days.
www.bbc.com

The Ashes 2023: Australia and England players fined for slow over rates during first Test

Australia and England are both fined and have two World Test Championship points deducted for slow over rates during the first Ashes Test.
www.bbc.com
 
Vandle said:
Given the population discrepancy between the countries you'd think it was a miracle however cricket is engrained in the culture in all parts of the country in a way it simply isn't in England. The weather is a massive factor you can't ignore but everyone plays it. Families on the beach and kids in the backyards. There are council provided cricket nets set up in local parks. I feel education in general is better funded here and a big part of that is school sport. Some of the pitches they have at the inner city private schools are stunning but even the gov run schools are superb compared to the dog muck infested mud baths we used to play in. At a professional level, the stadiums (which the Aussie Rules Football teams use during the winter) are so much bigger and better than English grounds too. The differing climates in each state means the pitches play so differently which I also think improves the players. I also like their home summer series, 5 tests at 5 grounds in 5 different states at more or less the same dates each year including the showpiece Boxing day in Melbourne. I feel it builds a bit of a tradition.

Anyhoo, both teams been fined and penalised for a slow over rate. Harsh I feel after serving up a game like that. Imo the two sides are literally propping up test cricket these days.
www.bbc.com

The Ashes 2023: Australia and England players fined for slow over rates during first Test

Australia and England are both fined and have two World Test Championship points deducted for slow over rates during the first Ashes Test.
www.bbc.com
Click to expand...
It's kinda amazing that India aren't more dominant in that regard. In India *everybody* plays cricket, on any spare patch of ground. The open spaces in Mumbai are absolutely insane, literally thousands of people playing cricket with improvised wickets and all overlapping boundaries.
 
Moeen out for Lord's. Pitch looks feisty.

26-Lords-Pitch-Monday.jpg
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom