The Cricket Thread 2016

[Villan For Life]

Miracles do happen, that's our first stumping in over 3 years.

[PaulWinch again]

Well done Bairstow. Moeen really does take a lot of wickets, well done Mo.

[tomd2103]

What a start!!  I'm at work so only following feeds, but it sounds like Ali is causing their tail enders all kinds of problems.

[Villan For Life]

A wonderful mornings cricket for England, win by 241 runs.

[tomd2103]

Fantastic win.  Great to start an away series strongly for a change!

[PaulWinch again]

Great all round team performance where about 7/8 of the team made signficant contributions to the win.

[olaftab]

They,once again, let me down
Great all round team performance.

Complete control I would say. Expect them to finish it half way through the second session tomorrow.

[tomd2103]

Great all round team performance where about 7/8 of the team made signficant contributions to the win.

Yep and it will be interesting going forward.  SA are now likely to be without two of their main strike bowlers (Steyn and Philander) for the next test at least and their batting line up looks very fragile since the likes of Smith and Kallis departed.   

[Dave Cooper please]

Are South Africa, like the Windies, another team suffering from a lack of Test talent coming through due to too much emphasis on ODIs and the baseball? It seems only us and the Aussies are finding a balance at the moment.

[cdbearsfan]

They're ranked number one in the World in tests so, no.

[Dave Cooper please]

They're ranked number one in the World in tests so, no.

Yes but look at their team. An aging bowling attack with no back up for the fragile Steyn, a supposedly deeper batting line up that got blown away by England even without Anderson and a proper spinner, if that's the number one Test side then I do start to worry about Test cricket.

[PaulWinch again]

In fairness to the 'proper spinner' bit, Moeen bowled excellently and I think most would have struggled against him bowling like that.

But there are issues with South Africa's first class system, and apparently the quota system isn't allowing the right balance for talent to flourish.

[paul_e]

I'm with PWA on this and I do find myself wondering what exactly Moeen needs to do before England fans take him seriously, he has a lot of work to do still (he needs to become harder to face in the sessions where it's not working for him) but he's got 61 test wickets in 20 matches and is improving quickly.

[tomd2103]

They're ranked number one in the World in tests so, no.

Yes but look at their team. An aging bowling attack with no back up for the fragile Steyn, a supposedly deeper batting line up that got blown away by England even without Anderson and a proper spinner, if that's the number one Test side then I do start to worry about Test cricket.

You also have to look at who has retired recently from their batting line up and who they have played in tests recently.  They got to number one with Smith, Kallis and few others who have now departed in the side and they probably were the best side in the world.  Since July 2014, they have played test series against Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, West Indies and Bangladesh which has helped them keep their number one spot even though some of their mainstays have moved on.  They got beaten pretty badly in India and if we beat them as well, they probably will not be number one any more. 

[Dave Cooper please]

In fairness to the 'proper spinner' bit, Moeen bowled excellently and I think most would have struggled against him bowling like that.

The problem he has is that he struggles to hold an end up and keep things tight on pitches that don't suit him. He may get there but we need someone we can rely on to give the seamers a break on good batting wickets.