The Cricket Thread 2014

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Bell should be binned. He is quietly failing. He is the epitome of a flat track bully. You can count on him to get you a big score when he comes in an England already have 250+ on the board, but other wise he will look very neat and tidy and get you a 30 before giving his wicket away.

Mentally weak, which is what could be said of a lot of the side.

[Villan For Life]

Bell should be binned. He is quietly failing. He is the epitome of a flat track bully. You can count on him to get you a big score when he comes in an England already have 250+ on the board, but other wise he will look very neat and tidy and get you a 30 before giving his wicket away.

Mentally weak, which is what could be said of a lot of the side.

I think that is really harsh on Bell. He has just enough credit remaining to ensure continued selection, however he does need a score and fast.

The Bell that you're referring to was the player representing England about 5 years ago. He's no flat track bully, without Bell's efforts with the bat we would not have won the Ashes last summer.

[paul_e]

I banged on about this a couple of years ago, we were winning without playing well. Whilst that occurred people were happy to ignore the problems because we still got results. However over time we were getting worse and worse and now we're seeing the results of that legacy.

The thing is, whilst you're winning you can give players time to find form, yes be aware that your captain in't scoring freely and we haven't replaced Strauss but it's not the time to be making big changes. What they did wrong was failing to plan for those dips in form turning in to permanent collapses (such as happened with Prior).  The other thing that did for us was losing Swann.  We had the best spinner in the world who was single-handedly removing the tail and breaking partnerships, him retiring after injuries clearly took their toll for the last 8-10months he played has broken our bowling unit and I'm not sure how we can go about repairing it.

[paul_e]

Bell should be binned. He is quietly failing. He is the epitome of a flat track bully. You can count on him to get you a big score when he comes in an England already have 250+ on the board, but other wise he will look very neat and tidy and get you a 30 before giving his wicket away.

Mentally weak, which is what could be said of a lot of the side.

I think that is really harsh on Bell. He has just enough credit remaining to ensure continued selection, however he does need a score and fast.

The Bell that you're referring to was the player representing England about 5 years ago. He's no flat track bully, without Bell's efforts with the bat we would not have won the Ashes last summer.

I agree, Bell had a bad ashes in the winter and hasn't really recovered but for 2-3 years before that he was consistently brilliant.

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Who do people see/reckon to be the old boys network amongst the side?

Cook, Prior, Anderson, Broad...?

[Dr Butler]

in my opinion I would go with:
1. Cook
2. Robson
3. Ballance
4. Bell
5 .Root
6. Ali
7. Buttler
8. Woakes
9. Jordan
10. Onions
11. Anderson

get Ballance bowling his leg breaks (as he did not look too shabby at Trent Bridge) to help Ali and Root in the spin department, get Woakes in and see what he can do, keep the top order,especially Cook as he needs to bat his way out of this horrendous run of form.
and FFS bowl a good length at the top of off stump !!

[Chris Jameson]

get Ballance bowling his leg breaks (as he did not look too shabby at Trent Bridge) to help Ali and Root in the spin department,

That was a one off, I've seen Ballance play many times for Yorkshire but never seen him bowl a delivery!

[Villan For Life]

Who do people see/reckon to be the old boys network amongst the side?

Cook, Prior, Anderson, Broad...?

Yes and you could add Bresnan, Swann and Strauss to the list too. From the outside looking in that's half the side in a nice little clique. Neither Bell or Trott seemed to be part of it and the clique were all anti KP.

Even though several of the clique have retired, been dropped, stood down because of illness/injury it remains that it could not have been good for harmonious team relations.

This England squad is harder to get out of than get in to and it seems to me that several of them are resting on their laurels.

[Chris Jameson]

With my Yorkshire hat on here I'm slightly baffled as to how Bresnan is part of any 'clique' within an England set up he's been in and out of over the years?

[Villan For Life]

With my Yorkshire hat on here I'm slightly baffled as to how Bresnan is part of any 'clique' within an England set up he's been in and out of over the years?

I think being part of the bowling attack grants automatic membership of the clique.

[ACVilla]

Who do people see/reckon to be the old boys network amongst the side?

Cook, Prior, Anderson, Broad...?

I'd guess Broad is in the middle of all of this, I don't like him, I don't like him one bit.

[Dr Butler]

get Ballance bowling his leg breaks (as he did not look too shabby at Trent Bridge) to help Ali and Root in the spin department,

That was a one off, I've seen Ballance play many times for Yorkshire but never seen him bowl a delivery!

oh right, I thought he was an occasional bowler and I thought he caused the batsman all sorts of problems at Trent Bridge

[Chris Jameson]

get Ballance bowling his leg breaks (as he did not look too shabby at Trent Bridge) to help Ali and Root in the spin department,

That was a one off, I've seen Ballance play many times for Yorkshire but never seen him bowl a delivery!

oh right, I thought he was an occasional bowler and I thought he caused the batsman all sorts of problems at Trent Bridge

I think he's a declaration bowler, not sure what that says about our spin bowling options though!

[PaulWinch again]

Who do people see/reckon to be the old boys network amongst the side?

Cook, Prior, Anderson, Broad...?

I reckon that's probably about it, but I think a bigger problem is that Downton seems to have joined that since he took over. I want the best players playing for England not those who are popular with a few individuals. I think it's probably less of a problem now than it was, but there is still too much of Cook not putting his foot down with the senior bowlers and pulling them out of the attack if they're not performing.

[KevinGage]

Don't think it's Broad - if we're talking about the whole KP fiasco. 

By all accounts, he was against the decision to remove him from the squad.

In fairness to Cook, I believe he was one of the senior players who encouraged Strauss to get KP back in the fold after the textgate too. And did seem to be on his side until that infamous meeting after the third test in Australia. 

But that pair, plus Anderson, Swann and Prior might have done for Compton.