The Cricket Thread 2013

[peter w]

He's there with the captain. If his approach was wrong I'm pretty sure Cook would have given him the hurry-up.

[Chris Smith]

Trott and Compton haven't exactly played for the team here.

I'd say they've done exactly that. No point throwing away wickets, we've got a decent lead and a foundation to put the game out of their reach and with it take the series. A win would be a bonus but the important thing is not to lose.

[LamBeast]

For the Ashes i would have Root in as an opener and slot KP in at 5.

[paul_e]

Trott and Compton haven't exactly played for the team here.

I'd say they've done exactly that. No point throwing away wickets, we've got a decent lead and a foundation to put the game out of their reach and with it take the series. A win would be a bonus but the important thing is not to lose.

Compton did throw away his wicket though, by being so negative that he was under insane pressure.  On top of that Trott put a lot of pressure on Cook.  Sensible batting doesn't have to be scoring slowly, you have to take the chances that are presented, which Compton and Trott failed to do.  As was said in the commentary, there are very few opportunities for a top order batsman to play with very little pressure.  a 180 first innings lead against a side who's best bowler is off the field is as good an opportunity as you'll get and we should have seen them play a few shots and try to build a bit of confidence, particularly in a session where the bowlers were getting nothing from the pitch to help them out.

I'm sure the game is safe, we'd need to have been all out for 100ish for the game to still be alive, but the players need to understand the situation better.

[Dave Cooper please]

You make it sound like we're not in control of this match. Trott is playing his usual game, he doesn't do flamboyant!
Compton has probably blown his chance, but that's what pressure does, Cook gave him an ideal opportunity to go out and score some runs but he cracked, a big decision to be made now as to who will open in the Ashes.

As for the game situation, it's in hand, series won already, no need to worry about weather, just play as if there are two full days left. Bat until mid-afternoon tomorrow leaving four and a half sessions to bowl NZ out, if it rains we win 1-0 rather than 2-0, so what.

[paul_e]

You make it sound like we're not in control of this match. Trott is playing his usual game, he doesn't do flamboyant!
Compton has probably blown his chance, but that's what pressure does, Cook gave him an ideal opportunity to go out and score some runs but he cracked, a big decision to be made now as to who will open in the Ashes.

As for the game situation, it's in hand, series won already, no need to worry about weather, just play as if there are two full days left. Bat until mid-afternoon tomorrow leaving four and a half sessions to bowl NZ out, if it rains we win 1-0 rather than 2-0, so what.

Trott isn't playing his usual game, that's why I'm annoyed with it, Trott's strike rate is normally around 50% - yesterday at one point he got 5 from 43 deliveries.

The issue I have is that deciding to not force the follow on was greeted as a negative move but it doesn't have to be.  If we'd come out and gone at 4 an over our lead overnight would've been enough, with a morning session to come out swinging and add some big runs, and send a message out  that we can be ruthless when we want to be.

I don't trust the Yorkshire weather to give 2 full days from here, we won't declare with a lead below 400 and we were always going to bat until Lunch but if we don't pick the rate up we're going to have to carry on into the afternoon session, and there never should've been any need for that.

Every over we're in the middle after lunch is time lost to get them out and I don't want us to get to the end of play tomorrow with them playing all out defence and clinging on for the draw.

[Dave Cooper please]

Alternatively we could have seen NZ batting like madmen, getting a lead of 150 and putting us into bat on a wearing wicket under cloud cover on the last day. They can bowl, we've seen that.

What we have done IS ruthless, we have made sure we can't lose the Test and have therefore won the series, plus we are giving our batsmen time in the middle before The Ashes. Besides, you need to play the match as it stands and not play for the weather report unless you desperately need to win, which we do not.

[Chris Smith]

Alternatively we could have seen NZ batting like madmen, getting a lead of 150 and putting us into bat on a wearing wicket under cloud cover on the last day. They can bowl, we've seen that.

What we have done IS ruthless, we have made sure we can't lose the Test and have therefore won the series, plus we are giving our batsmen time in the middle before The Ashes. Besides, you need to play the match as it stands and not play for the weather report unless you desperately need to win, which we do not.

Precisely, they have a couple of destructive hitters in their side and first and foremost we had to put the game out of reach. With that achieved we can now play to give ourselves a chance to win the game. This is not a settled batting line up and there was no need to put them under undue pressure.

[paul_e]

Alternatively we could have seen NZ batting like madmen, getting a lead of 150 and putting us into bat on a wearing wicket under cloud cover on the last day. They can bowl, we've seen that.

What we have done IS ruthless, we have made sure we can't lose the Test and have therefore won the series, plus we are giving our batsmen time in the middle before The Ashes. Besides, you need to play the match as it stands and not play for the weather report unless you desperately need to win, which we do not.

What we did was safe, and we then batted to be safe, I don't think it was the right approach.  Today we've gone out with the attitude I'd have expected yesterday, Trott looks a different player.

As for we can see they can bowl, yes we have, but with Boult out of the game we only need to get at 1 of their seamers and bat him out of the attack and suddenly the game would've been simple, I think we've let them off the hook a little, we could've made this an massive victory, we'll still win, as we should at home to the worst side in test cricket, but it's not been quite as convincing with the bat as I hoped.  Hopefully they free hitting from this morning will carry on until lunch and make it all academic.

As for not playing the weather reports, it's England in May, playing the weather reports is a very important part of the match and there's a very good chance Tuesday will be cut short.  We have no excuse if we don't win this match, a 1st innings lead like we had, with the pitch looking to help Swann at every opportunity should be a banker for 2-0.  My biggest concern is that if we run out of time Cook will be criticised but I think he made the right call, it just needed much more positive batting than we saw.

[paul_e]

To further my argument; from the BBC tracker:

"133 runs in the session, which is exactly how it should be against this attack on this surface at this stage of the match."

If we'd batted this way yesterday as well we'd have been able to declare half an hour ago and give them an awkward 6-7 overs before lunch.  I'm really worried that the weather is against us getting the win we should have here, to walk away from a game where we've been so dominant with a draw would be poor.  Trott has shown this morning that he can bat against this team on this surface, he just didn't try yesterday.

[PaulWinch again]

This is odd, I don't know why we haven't declared. Given the weather forecast, we should really be pushing this game along, we have more than enough runs.

[PaulWinch again]

The pleasing thing was that our middle order of Root, Bairstow and Prior are clearly unselfish team players.

[paul_e]

Declared evetually, with about 60 more than we needed and about 15overs later than it should've been.  Rain predicted for between 5-6pm and tomorrow will be very little play in all likelihood... I'm a bit dumbstruck by the negativity of it, I always thought it was Strauss that made us the "just don't lose" side of test cricket but it's clearly deeper than that.

[Chris Smith]

Declared evetually, with about 60 more than we needed and about 15overs later than it should've been.  Rain predicted for between 5-6pm and tomorrow will be very little play in all likelihood... I'm a bit dumbstruck by the negativity of it, I always thought it was Strauss that made us the "just don't lose" side of test cricket but it's clearly deeper than that.

I think you're being hyper critical. The first thing to do was not lose and thus secure the series. Then to go out and try to win the game. We've shown we can scuttle them out quickly so it's not as though we've no chance of a win but a bit of ruthless pragmatism is not a bad trait.

[Villan For Life]

Declared evetually, with about 60 more than we needed and about 15overs later than it should've been.  Rain predicted for between 5-6pm and tomorrow will be very little play in all likelihood... I'm a bit dumbstruck by the negativity of it, I always thought it was Strauss that made us the "just don't lose" side of test cricket but it's clearly deeper than that.

I think you're being hyper critical. The first thing to do was not lose and thus secure the series. Then to go out and try to win the game. We've shown we can scuttle them out quickly so it's not as though we've no chance of a win but a bit of ruthless pragmatism is not a bad trait.

I agree. We should skittle them out quickly weather permitting. Their last 20 wickets have fallen in something like 60 overs and only the weather will prevent another England win.