The International Cricket Thread

[Steve67]

Well, whatever plan England had has well and truly fallen apart, yet again. Duckett goes too.  When it comes off, which is so seldom it's unbelievable, it's magic, but this isn't proper cricket.  The experiment to 'sex up Test cricket' hasn't worked.  One or two of you think we are not as bad as all that but this is truly wank, we are below Bangladesh in the test rankings.  It's becoming embarrassing.

[taylorsworkrate]

McCullum and Key should have been fucked off after the disgraceful ashes tour.

I suspect they know they will be fucked off after tomorrow, and that batting display was their final "fuck you"

[PaulWinch again]

I was fine with the Stokes stuff. He was in no form, if he got a chunk out of the lead then it makes sense and it could have scrambled NZ. But instead it seemed to scramble us, with the Bethell leave and then the daft Brook innings. No complaints on Duckett, but we’ve just kind of chucked it in.

[TopDeck113]

Any rain forecast for Nottingham?

[UK Redsox]

I've already been called a misery but turning a first class test into a something of a testimonial is a bit disrespectful to the oponents and the game itself.

Stokes has been immense and deserves all the plaudits going, I just don't feel that this has been timed right at all.

Why did he open? Does Emilio have an injury of is it a Stokes arrogant ‘look at me’ move

[PaulWinch again]

I don’t know if it was either. I think given his form it was logically the best way he could make an impact - and it did - the problem was the scrambled thinking of what followed.

[aj2k77]

The run chase is farcical.

[paul_e]

I don’t know if it was either. I think given his form it was logically the best way he could make an impact - and it did - the problem was the scrambled thinking of what followed.

Yep, I have no complaints about Stokes getting the big send off out of the way with the hope of him getting a quick 50 or so to kick things off. In the circumstances it's probably a better use of him than having him come in down the order and have to sit and stew in the changing room.

I can just about forgive Bethell as well, it was a really poor decision but was clearly just a misjudgement and for the few shots before that he seemed to have decided his job was to be sensible again and Duckett was pretty unlucky I thought. I have no idea why Brook put in the innings he did though, it was a perfect little cameo to show why he's an awful choice to be the next captain.

Even Root got dragged along with a few pretty reckless shots and we've pretty much gifted the series to them.

All I can think is that the emotion of it has got to them a bit, but that's bizarre really.

[Holte132]

Maybe I'm reading something into all this that isn't there, but I'm wondering whether Stokes was told to retire and he is taking his revenge on the authorities with this team performance.

Well I agree with me even if none of the rest of you do!!