The Cricket Thread 2016

[UK Redsox]

So, who misses out? Wood and Rashid ?

[tomd2103]

England squad to face Australia in first Test: Alastair Cook (Essex), Moeen Ali (Wors), James Anderson (Lancs), Gary Balance (York), Ian Bell (Warwickshire), Stuart Broad (Notts), Jos Buttler (Lancs), Steven Finn (Middlesex), Adam Lyth (Yorkshire), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Ben Stokes (Durham), Mark Wood (Durham).

Think the starting team will be: - Cook, Lyth, Ballance, Bell, Root, Stokes, Buttler, Ali, Broad, Wood, Anderson

Rashid's inclusion is an interesting one and might point to him possibly starting.

Aussie line up today:

Rogers, Warner, Clarke (C), Voges, Watson, Marsh, Nevill (W), Siddle, Starc, Hazlewood, Lyon

Haddin, Smith and Johnson to come in for Voges / Marsh, Nevill and Siddle? 

[PaulWinch again]

So, who misses out? Wood and Rashid ?

Wood will play. It'll be Rashid or Moeen I expect.

[Dr Butler]

So, who misses out? Wood and Rashid ?

Wood will play. It'll be Rashid or Moeen I expect.

I think it will depend on the weather conditions and the state of the pitch as to which one will play..

[Chris Jameson]

Mike Selvey reckons that England could play two spinners at Cardiff with Stokes as third seamer.

[taylorsworkrate]

Mike Selvey reckons that England could play two spinners at Cardiff with Stokes as third seamer.

Really hope they don't do that. They tried that in 2009 at the same venue and it just didn't work.

Stokes is an immensely talented cricketer, but at this stage of his progression, his bowling is not yet good enough to be the 3rd seamer

[PaulWinch again]

Hmmm not sure about two spinners. Also I'd want Wood in the side for his extra pace and also on a dry pitch reverse swing could be crucial.

[Chris Jameson]

I doubt Rashid will play but if he doesn't I hope they release him to play at Edgbaston in the County match.

[taylorsworkrate]

If they were to play two spinners then the attack would be:

Anderson
Broad
Stokes
Ali
Rashid

Stokes isn't at the level yet to be considered the 3rd seamer. Ali is yet to prove himself as a frontline international spinner, and hasn't bowled much this summer, and Rashid would be playing in his first test match. That puts an insane amount of pressure on Broad and Anderson.

I really hope they don't go that way.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Yes, apart from Anderson there's no one there to shut an end up on current form. Not sure who that'd be in any case...since Swann swanned off we've rather lacked that.

[passitsideways]

England squad to face Australia in first Test: Alastair Cook (Essex), Moeen Ali (Wors), James Anderson (Lancs), Gary Balance (York), Ian Bell (Warwickshire), Stuart Broad (Notts), Jos Buttler (Lancs), Steven Finn (Middlesex), Adam Lyth (Yorkshire), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Ben Stokes (Durham), Mark Wood (Durham).

Aussie line up today:

Rogers, Warner, Clarke (C), Voges, Watson, Marsh, Nevill (W), Siddle, Starc, Hazlewood, Lyon

Haddin, Smith and Johnson to come in for Voges / Marsh, Nevill and Siddle?

It'll be Marsh to make way, I expect, even with his score today. Everyone in Australia is clamouring for Watson to get dumped for good from the Test side, but I suspect he'll be picked and closely monitored. Haddin isn't all too far away from it either, but his leash is a little longer even though I have limited confidence in his batting these days.

[aj2k77]

Lyon getting some punishment in the warm up game.

[Villan For Life]

I doubt Rashid will play but if he doesn't I hope they release him to play at Edgbaston in the County match.

The county match starts on Sunday. I doubt they will release Rashid three days before the start of the test.

[Villan For Life]

Interesting article by Athers in The Times today. It's an interesting appointment.

It has been a surprise that accompanying photographs of England’s new coach have not included, as yet, one of an ageing fellow with a wind-up radio. After all, Trevor Bayliss (the inventor’s name differs only by the spelling, a single “s”) comes to English cricket as a complete outsider: we know as little about him as he does about us.

Bayliss was presented to the media at Lord’s yesterday for the first time and he came across as pleasingly down to earth — in his own words, “a little rough around the edges.” He did not give in to the corporate demands of the modern ECB, wearing only a Waitrose-emblazoned top, and in his jeans and Dr Martens, with short grey whiskers adorning his chops, he looked like a man determined to stay true to himself. Amen to that.

His coaching philosophy sounded simple and full of common sense too. He believes in players taking responsibility for their performances — “not too far away from Shane Warne’s view of coaching, to be honest”, he said — and that his job is to create an honest, hard-working, relaxed environment in which players feel comfortable about expressing themselves. He sounded like the coach’s anti-coach, which was profoundly reassuring.

He said that he was flattered and honoured to be offered the opportunity to coach England and only the timing gave him cause for thought. His daughter is in her final year at school and will remain with his wife in Australia for the time being. English cricket’s job, he said, is to get up to speed with the rest of the world, citing the influence of 50-over and Twenty20 cricket on Tests, which has bypassed, he thought, England in the past few years. His job is to get up to speed with English cricket.

No England coach, after all, has come to the job with so little knowledge of our game. Similarities with Duncan Fletcher have been cited in this regard, because Alastair Cook and Bayliss, Fletcher and the England captain, Nasser Hussain, had never met before they were partnered.

Fletcher, though, had coached Glamorgan to the County Championship title and knew enough of players he had seen and the system they played in to be able to promote players such as Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick, despite their modest first-class records.

Other England coaches have been immersed in the English game. Micky Stewart, England’s first professional coach, spent a lifetime playing county cricket with Surrey; Keith Fletcher, likewise with Essex, was a distinguished former England captain and player; David Lloyd was a former player, umpire, administrator and county coach, a jack of all trades and master too. Then Fletcher. Peter Moores had played and coached county cricket and run the national academy and Andy Flower, possibly the best of them all, had spent years with Essex as a player beyond his international commitments.

Bayliss is a complete outsider. His extensive CV includes associations with the cricket of many nations, including his native Australia, as well as Sri Lanka and Indian domestic cricket, but not England. He has had involvement with the odd England player — Eoin Morgan, for example, with whom he will form a one-day partnership, and Sam Billings, who played grade cricket with Bayliss’s son, Adam — but that is about it.

For Andrew Strauss, who picked him, that was part of the attraction. How far his distance from the English game will be an advantage will be fascinating to see. As an outsider, he comes with no baggage. Although English cricket seems to have moved on finally from the ruinous events of 2014, Bayliss has an advantage that he has not been involved at all with the decision-making that almost brought England cricket to its knees. His only comment about Kevin Pietersen has indicated that the batsman remains unavailable for selection, a decision, as is known, that did not involve him at all.

He will also be able to make decisions on players based on the here and now. Although he will be aware of the wonderful records of, say, Stuart Broad and Ian Bell, he will not be bound by loyalty to them as coaches and captains can be who feel a debt of gratitude to long-serving players. He will be able to assess their effectiveness and make decisions accordingly. That confers a double advantage: senior players touched with complacency must know the need to impress the new coach all over again. That will do wonders for their motivation.

While lending a sense of impartiality and distance, his lack of knowledge must hinder him to some extent. Bayliss knows next to nothing of the level below the international team, so will be reliant on the good judgment of others. But whose judgment to trust? Bayliss cannot know the selectors very well, or county coaches or captains. It would be hard to envisage a situation where, as Tony Greig did in 1975, Bayliss rings around the county set to find the best player of fast bowling and come up with a hidden gem such as David Steele. Or as Fletcher did with Trescothick and Vaughan.

It is a very modern appointment, reflecting the transnational, professional nature of the game. A Sri Lankan is coaching Bangladesh; a Zimbabwean recently coached India and England, of course, have been powered by two foreign coaches until Paul Downton decided that an Englishman was a must. Strauss has turned away from that, desiring simply the best man for the job, and Bayliss was regarded the strongest candidate by those close to the process when Moores was appointed for the second time.

For Bayliss, the job, as Michael Clarke said on arrival in England, is “where business is at”. Australians have been closely involved with English cricket before — Rod Marsh, now chief selector for Australia, ran the academy for a while, and county coaches such as Jason Gillespie have done well here — but none so intimately involved as Bayliss.

Times have changed, then: when, as captain in 1993, I asked Ian Chappell to dinner to discuss captaincy, he did so reluctantly, saying initially that he would not do anything to help English cricket, although in the end he took pity on a young captain struggling with the demands of the job.

For Bayliss, there have been no such misgivings. As he said yesterday, he has coached Sri Lanka against Australia and with some success too. “I’m also old enough to have sung God Save the Queen as a schoolboy in Australia, so I reckon I know most of the words,” he says. His intimate knowledge of Australia’s cricketers may be more significant in the short term and he promised that his team would “not take a backward step” and would “fight fire with fire”. “You cannot beat Australia by playing anything other than bright, aggressive cricket,” he said.

As an indication as to how quickly things can change, Bayliss’s arrival is not anticipated with the same urgency as when he was appointed. Since then, England’s one-day fortunes have changed the mood.

Paul Farbrace, who demurred when asked if he wanted to throw his hat in the ring, has been in charge while this transformation has taken shape and, now, Bayliss’s most important contribution would seem to be encouraging a similar path that the one-day team have just taken.

Farbrace, immersed in the English game and close to Bayliss, will be a critical sounding board for the new man. “Paul Farbrace is my eyes and ears right now,” Bayliss said.

Farbrace’s biggest achievement in the interim was to shift attention from coach (Strauss correctly identified that the problem with Moores was that every game became a referendum on his coaching ability) to players. Bayliss’s reputation is of someone who believes in a player-led environment. “The best players in the game have all been self-reliant and single-minded,” he said. “They know what to do to prepare and they are able to make decisions for themselves on the field, rather than look to the coaching staff for an answer.”

Bayliss’s greatest achievement in time may be if he produces a team who do not need babysitting, and if he leaves the job with us knowing as little about him as the day he arrived

[LeeB]

Really enjoyed listening to the Aussies get smashed all over Essex this afternoon.