The Cricket Thread 2016

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Pink ball cricket looking good so far - highly visible.

What do they have instead of lunch and tea? Is it tea and supper?

Tea (20 mins), Dinner (40)

[tomd2103]

Boom Boom Afridi nearly won that for Pakistan with 24 off 8 balls. He really blitzed Woakes in his 3rd over, taking 22 off it. Credit to Woakes for holding his nerve in the last over though, he really pulled the game back to England's advantage.

Whisper it quietly, we're starting to look pretty impressive in both forms of limited overs Cricket.

Agree and it is enjoyable to watch England in limited overs games again after years of struggling.  To beat Pakistan over there in both ODI formats is certainly not to be sniffed at and it is encouraging that we seem to also be developing some strength in depth in the shorter formats of the game.  Shame it has come a year too late for the World Cup.

[Villafirst]

England bowling far too many full tosses in this 3rd T20. Just crazy! Pakistan hammering these stupid deliveries. Jordan is the worst for this.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Superover!

[manic-road]

A superb over from Jordan.

[PaulWinch again]

That was a brilliant over from Jordan.

[Villafirst]

Take it all back....Brilliant from Jordan, what an over! Great from England. Win 3-0.

[PaulWinch again]

Jordan is such a funny player. One minute he can look like a park player and the next he's absolutely devestating. If we can just get him to be more consistent I think there's a quality player there. Especially when you take into account his slip fielding and lower order hitting.

[olaftab]

Winning the last two T20s by 3 runs and in an super over shows that this team is mentally strong.

[Richard]

Impressed with Woakes gets a lot of stick from non Bears fans but I think he's definitely good enough to play every limited overs game

[tomd2103]

With England heading off to South Africa next week, what are we expecting the test team to look like?  I think we have decent options through the side, but am a little concerned about number three.  Different format, but I liked the look of Vince in the T20s and he could be an option in the future.  From the squad that is out there, I would go with a team looking something like:

Cook
Compton / Hales
Hales / Ballance
Root
Taylor
Stokes
Buttler
Ali
Woakes / Jordan
Broad
Anderson

[Lsvilla]

I'd have Cook Hales Compton as my top 3. Otherwise agree with you.

[tomd2103]

I'd have Cook Hales Compton as my top 3. Otherwise agree with you.

If the first warm up game is anything to go by, that might well be the top three in the first test, though Hales has had a poor game by the sounds of it. 

[1_Pablo_Angel]

Hales doesn't look a test opener to me. Certainly not against the Saffer attack. Compton and Cook, please.

[paul_e]

Hales doesn't look a test opener to me. Certainly not against the Saffer attack. Compton and Cook, please.

Touch harsh that, he deserves a chance and he's only played short format stuff for a few months, I think we need to give him a chance to find his feet, Compton at 3 gives us someone experienced against the new ball as a backup so I'd give Hales the first 2 tests regardless and then review it and if he's not looking totally out of place I'd probably give him the rest of the series.  He got over a 1000 runs in the championship last year (despite only playing 12 games) so he's earned his chance, writing him off after 1 warm-up game just isn't right.

The advantage of someone like Hales at the top is that it stops teams from being overly aggressive with the new ball, if he can hit a few boundaries and have their openers going at 5-6 an over it changes the gameplan, it's something I'd at least like to see us try.  It's not like we're leaving out a world class top order batsman to give him a chance, there are question marks against Compton (2 centuries in New Zealand make his average look nearly acceptable at 32 but it's still not great), Ballance (who hasn't had much time to resolve a massive technical flaw) and Moeen (who seems certain to go back down to so now is about the best time to give him a shot.