The Cricket Thread 2016

[peter w]

I'd go...

Hales
Bell
Root
Ali
Morgan
Taylor
Buttler
Woakes
Jordan
Tredwell
Anderson

[paul_e]

I agree but only if there's a willingness to move people around to fit the match situation, the rigid sticking to the order is the thing I find most annoying with England right now. Well except for the insistence on bowling to a plan even if it's not working.

[PGW]

Hales and Jordan in for Ballance and Finn. Won the toss and will bowl first.

[pooligan]

The so called experts on Cricinfo saying that England should have batted first as it is much harder to chase under lights here.They would have batted first if they had won the toss.Let's hope this is not England's first mistake

[Villan For Life]

6-2.........
99-4.......
261-6.....

Why do I bother setting the alarm to catch up with this abject rubbish?

[JD]

276 to win. Pulled it back a bit (it was looking like a 300+ score at one point), but England do make things difficult for themselves. It's make or break time.

[PaulWinch again]

Moeen what were you doing. Right Hales prove the selectors wrong.

[paul_e]

Ali out for a stupid run out, no idea why we decided to chase and put this extra pressure on ourselves, they just don't seem to trust themselves to set a decent target.

[PaulWinch again]

This should be comfortable really. 275 on this pitch isn't great.

[PaulWinch again]

It's steady at the moment, but I worry that if we don't get well ahead of the rate we'll panic if a couple of wickets fall.

[paul_e]

It's steady at the moment, but I worry that if we don't get well ahead of the rate we'll panic if a couple of wickets fall.

That's what I mean by pressure, we all know England have a habit of being overly cautious against spin, if they can bog us down in the middle overs I can see the target pushing up towards 7 and then I don't trust not to panic in the batting powerplay and make a mess of things.

Hales has disappointed me a little there, I'd much rather he'd come in with the intention of getting quick runs and really putting bangladesh on the defensive, a nice 40-50 from 30-35 balls would have put us in total control here, and that's his natural game, looks like yet another exciting batsman who's been picked for the squad because he can be explosive who is then asked to bat well within himself.

[PaulWinch again]

I don't really blame Hales, he's had absolutely no cricket you can't expect him to come in and just cruise along. Two wickets down now and one of these really needs to accelerate to ease the pressure on the middle order.

[PaulWinch again]

See NZ would be at about 180 by now and be cruising, but we are putting needless pressure on ourselves.

[paul_e]

I don't really blame Hales, he's had absolutely no cricket you can't expect him to come in and just cruise along. Two wickets down now and one of these really needs to accelerate to ease the pressure on the middle order.

I don't blame him at all, I blame the England management entirely.  It doesn't help though that so many people are willing to moan about Moeen being aggressive, as with other sports English teams are just so risk averse, as a fan of football,rugby and cricket it's really frustrating to see the same mistakes being made in all 3 sports where consistent 6-7 out of 10 is prioritised over 5-10 out of 10 every time.  Having a core of consistency is fine but you need someone to stop you being predictable and England just seem frightened of those players, in all 3 sports.

[paul_e]

Bell gone, we're really trying our hardest to fuck this up.