The International Cricket Thread

[Gareth]

Missed everything today due to work, but heard a bit in the car and the Talksport reporter was getting really excited as the wickets tumbled. He handed back to the studio and Danny Murphy with no emotion whatsoever said "you do know we've lost the ashes?". I'm pleased to report that the reporter took the ignorant prick to task at length.

Anyway, up the fucking England!

It was Danny Murphy…guy is an utter plank who thinks he’s intelligent.  But then he is employed by Talksport who have a handful of good presenters and the likes of Murphy / O’Hara / Gabby

[Steve67]

On to other things, where are the bowlers going to come from.  Stone seems to be permanently injured, as does Archer.  I hadn't realised that Villa's Chris Woakes is 34 either.  Wood is 32.  Potts hasn't had a look in this summer.  Is Tongue going to make the grade?

[Risso]

Yes I don't think anybody for one second was questioning Bazball as a concept, just that even allowing for the increase in excitement and positive way of going about matches, there was still room for better decision making at certain times.

[Gareth]

On to other things, where are the bowlers going to come from.  Stone seems to be permanently injured, as does Archer.  I hadn't realised that Villa's Chris Woakes is 34 either.  Wood is 32.  Potts hasn't had a look in this summer.  Is Tongue going to make the grade?

That’s a biggie, presume there are winter tours both main team and Lions….be v interesting who is picked both pace and spin bowlers.

[Villan For Life]

There are a few bowlers in the pipeline, Tongue looks a real find, Brydon Carse bowls with real zip and Henry Brookes generates serious pace. If Olly Stone can stay fit and even Jofra Archer, who probably needs Lazarus to help him but can use Mark Wood as inspiration.

Add Robinson to the mix and we seem to be pretty well stocked.

[Gareth]

I like Bamber at Middlesex too, looks a talent

[Villan For Life]

On to other things, where are the bowlers going to come from.  Stone seems to be permanently injured, as does Archer.  I hadn't realised that Villa's Chris Woakes is 34 either.  Wood is 32.  Potts hasn't had a look in this summer.  Is Tongue going to make the grade?

That’s a biggie, presume there are winter tours both main team and Lions….be v interesting who is picked both pace and spin bowlers.

The winter tour for the test squad is to India so Woakes, Anderson - I’m not totally convinced that he’s about to retire - and Wood won’t go but someone like Sam Curran will.

[Gareth]

Guess they will have a decision to make on Stokes too, is there anything they can do to get him bowling again? Heard on TMS the other day that he was sending down some off spin in the nets….

Presume Leach will be fit for the tour, Root will get a good few overs and guess Ahmed will get another chance

[Villan For Life]

Guess they will have a decision to make on Stokes too, is there anything they can do to get him bowling again? Heard on TMS the other day that he was sending down some off spin in the nets….

Presume Leach will be fit for the tour, Root will get a good few overs and guess Ahmed will get another chance

I think Stokes will now have an operation on his dodgy knee, hopefully he’s not done yet.

[Gareth]

Hopefully, need the balance of him bowling - get a bowling quota out of him and Root

[tomd2103]

Guess they will have a decision to make on Stokes too, is there anything they can do to get him bowling again? Heard on TMS the other day that he was sending down some off spin in the nets….

Presume Leach will be fit for the tour, Root will get a good few overs and guess Ahmed will get another chance

He mentioned bowling off spin in the post match interview as well.  Would tick a big box (especially for the next series in India) if he can become a test level spin option. 

[tomd2103]

It's been a fantastic Ashes series.  Plenty of ups and downs, drama right into the last session and some controversy to boot.  Looking back, if anything the Bairstow incident probably sparked some life into the series as it could have been pretty much over at 2-0 after 2.  It fired England up though and the introduction of Wood and Woakes turned the tide.  Special mention to Moeen Ali as well who made some very hand contributions throughout the series.

Woakes deservedly England's player of the series (though Wood must have been close), but was surprised at Starc being Australia's as I thought Pat Cummins had a better series. 

The debrief will now begin about the merits of 'Bazball' and how England move forward. 

[KevinGage]

Hopefully, need the balance of him bowling - get a bowling quota out of him and Root

Heavy duty surgery on the knee at that age prob means he's done as a pace bowler.

Better that he lightens the workload to ensure he's not done as a cricketer. Pope may make a decent England captain in time. But Bazball without Stokes in the middle will be harder to perpetuate.

[olaftab]

So happy with that win, think 2-2 is fair -

For me it all turned on Lyon getting injured.

No, honestly 2-2 is NOT fair. Their only fair win was at Lords.
And I think Lyon injury was not that big a factor. He wasn’t exactly prime Warne before his injury. Just a slightly above average player, nothing more.

[paul_e]

Sorry for quoting you bother here chaps.  Paul-e, you're still thinking the reckless declaration didn't cost us?  I think it did but having said that, what followed was excellent from Stokes and I genuinely think that, looking back, deep down, he wouldn't do it again if he had the choice, not against Australia.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing but against the so called best in the world, experimenting is not a time for experimenting.  I guess we will never know.  I think England played much more sensibly after the first test and had it not been for the rain in Manchester, we would be holding the urn and not those scabby, cheats.

I'm sorry this is going to be a long one.

It wasn't the problem and I don't think Stokes (or McCullum) will have any regrets about it. 393 on the first day at Edgbaston is a very good score, in fact it's the 9th highest first innings score by England in a home ashes match since the turn of the century and the 2nd highest at Edgbaston specifically. If we'd been all out for 393 not a single person would've been complaining about us being below par.

For me the problems in that test were, in order:
Anderson getting 1/109 across 2 innings.
Moeen getting 3/204 across 2 innings and showing he was physically unprepared (which is to be expected) for a test match.
A few very good chances being put down in both Aussie innings.
Root, Brook and Stokes all holing out in their 40s in our 2nd innings when just one of them going on to a big score would've made all the difference.
Neither Crawley or Duckett got us off to a strong start in the 2nd innings.

In a similar vein we lost the 2nd test because we put them in to bat and let them score 416, winning from there was always going to be hard work and we'd have made that call in the expectation of them being bowled out for at least 100 less than that. Again poor bowling at times and some awful fielding was the bigger problem, the aggressive batting from Duckett, Crawley and Stokes was actually the only reason we gave ourselves an outside chance of winning, which I think may well have happened if we'd kept the Stokes/Bairstow partnership going for another 10-15 overs.

Once we sorted the bowling out they got nowhere near 400 again (they only passed 300 twice in the next 6 innings) and it's no surprise that once we started bowling with threat we blew them away. There's a reason Woakes got man of the series and it's because his bowling made us much more competitive, with Wood also making a massive contribution.