The International Cricket Thread

[Meanwood Villa]

Turned on and was pleased with 130-4. Could do with breaking this partnership soon. Hopefully Leach sorts it out

[PaulWinch again]

Pujara being out is great. We need rid of Pant.

[Meanwood Villa]

Should be looking to get them out below 300. Getting ahead of myself maybe but do we enforce the follow on or give the bowlers a breather?

[Lsvilla]

Hopefully bowl them out early-ish tomorrow with a lead of about 200 then bat again. Pitches in the sub-continent deteriorate sometimes quite quickly on day 5 and that’s the time to be chasing 10 wickets with about 400 lead.
On another note - amazing effort by WI to chase 395 batting last in Bangladesh which shows what can be done (and perhaps undermines my theory !!).

[paul_e]

I'd hope the lead is much more than 200 because this pair are the last real batsmen, the bottom 3 are proper tailenders.

[PaulWinch again]

Not really sure why we don’t have more men around the bat. Washington is prodding forward it could easily spit up and flick the glove.

[PaulWinch again]

Excellent day from England

[manic-road]

Game is setting up nicely for what could be a nice finish, Stokes out now. Think we might need a lead of 400.

[Lsvilla]

Game is setting up nicely for what could be a nice finish, Stokes out now. Think we might need a lead of 400.

Yep. Look what happened in Bangladesh and what’s currently happening in Pakistan. India not out of this yet.

[PaulWinch again]

I think this pitch would be very hard to get a big score on. Balls are keeping low a fair bit now.

[paul_e]

I agree, I don’t think this is a wicket that will see a massive 4th innings, it's very dusty now.

I think we'll bat another 8-10 overs and get 400ish on the board, will mean there's still 26-28 overs today.

[paul_e]

Not sure what we're doing here now, they're slowing the game down and we seem to be letting them and just playing safe.

[UK Redsox]

After seeing West Indies successfully chase 395 to beat Bangladesh, England will probably be a bit jittery with a lead of under 400

[paul_e]

Which is fine but why is Bess hogging the strike and defending? Scoring 1-2 an over here isn't much use to us either way unless we have a specific target of how long we want to bowl tonight but even then slightly more runs on the board would be nice.

[taylorsworkrate]

This is the 1st time England can be legitimately criticised this test.

What makes it all the more baffling is that Pope was playing very aggressively after tea. Why has his wicket forced a change of tactic?