The Cricket Thread 2016

[PaulWinch again]

Excellent 100 Root, now go on.

[Villan For Life]

Off for bad light.

It's a good recovery from 40-odd for 3 and shows the emergence of Root and Stokes as senior players.

I reckon we will need a lead of 150 on that pitch to be in any chance of winning. Batting 4th on that pitch will be difficult.

[Dr Butler]

be nice to get a lead of anything near a 100 and then we can rout them out for 150 all out and then a gentle knock to win the series

UTV
The Doc

[taylorsworkrate]

I think SA may rue their lack of spinner later on.

[Proposition Joe]

Superb stuff from Root, that's exactly what sets the top, top batsmen apart: the ability to almost single handedly change the tide of a match.

Too soon to talk of leads though. This is England, 5 down and 80 odd behind. Collapse and deficit of 60 just as likely as a lead!

[Dave Cooper please]

Brilliant Test Match so far, a pitch that you can bat on if you can get yourself in (or in the case of Stokes - fuck it, go for it) but which also has something for the bowlers. That and two teams who still seem to care about the long game.
Both teams could have been out for less than 200 but alternatively have found a way to get competitive totals, give me this over T20 any day.

[paul_e]

Brilliant Test Match so far, a pitch that you can bat on if you can get yourself in (or in the case of Stokes - fuck it, go for it) but which also has something for the bowlers. That and two teams who still seem to care about the long game.
Both teams could have been out for less than 200 but alternatively have found a way to get competitive totals, give me this over T20 any day.

Stokes doesn't need to get himself in right now, that's the joy of it.  As they covered with Rob Key the main part of that is his trigger movements, rather than moving his feet he stands still and 'triggers' with his hands instead, it means that when he's seeing the ball well (i.e. in form) he doesn't need to do anything to adjust to the pace, he can just react because he's taken a big part of the timing out of it by his natural stance at the crease.  You still have to watch what the pitch is doing but he's getting that in 2-3 balls and then the bowler needs to do something special to catch him out.  It's incredibly impressive to watch but I still think we need to be patient because as good as he's looked in the last couple of tests it's only been 3 innings of genuine brilliance, how he keeps this going is the key for him, last time he showed flashes it got to his head and he fell apart for a couple of years so he should have learned from that.

[Dave Cooper please]

I think he has learned, and you cannot take that exuberance out of his game because without it he's not the same player. He also seems to have added some zip to his bowling, he's a genuine all rounder now, the likes of which we haven't had since Flintoff.

[PaulWinch again]

Shame Root got out so quickly this morning, he seems to struggle coming back after batting through a day. This match is really in the balance.

[PaulWinch again]

Basically level then. Broad and Anderson need to bowl a lot better.

[Villafirst]

Silly shot from Bairstow - no real need for that. Could've done with another 30 runs.

[Villan For Life]

Basically level then. Broad and Anderson need to bowl a lot better.

The twenty minutes or so before lunch are going to be testing for their batsmen if we get the ball in the right places.

[Villan For Life]

Silly shot from Bairstow - no real need for that. Could've done with another 30 runs.

I don't think you can blame Bairstow for trying to move the scoreboard along, especially when he's batting with the number 11.

[PaulWinch again]

Pretty poor over from Anderson.

[Chris Jameson]

Silly shot from Bairstow - no real need for that. Could've done with another 30 runs.

I don't think you can blame Bairstow for trying to move the scoreboard along, especially when he's batting with the number 11.

Exactly, not sure what else he was supposed to do.