England Cricket - Spring 2015 (matches against WI, IRE & NZ)

The_President said:

cantersaddick said:

dickplumb said:

Addick Addict said:

Addickforlife said:

Addict addict, you seem to give a lot of cricket chat on here, but don't actually seem to know an awful lot.

Constantly criticising out batsman seems to be a favourite topic of yours.

Ballance has proved himself to be a quite wonderful test player so far in His short career. He is a run machine. He scores slowly to start with and then purs on the accelerators when needed. He has now scored something like 8 scores of over 50 in his 10 test match innings.

You also seem to have a real thing for hating cook. He is our most successful batsman ever in terms of hundreds scored and has now got 4 50's in his last 7 innings. Yes he's not on form, but he's at least scratching around for some important runs while getting that form back. It seems some people would prefer the bloke to fail, when for those that actually recognise quite how good he is, if he can get back to where we know he can be, he is our match winner.

This pitch in the Caribbean is quite dreadful for fluid batting so I suggest you get behind the boys while they go searching for the win. If you want to carry on criticising go and each Kevin Peterson scratch around for 50 against Glamorgan or stick the IPL on TV.

Ballance - there is a place for him but not for Cook, Trott and Ballance. But he also has to learn about tempo because, frankly, Boycott could bat now as he is doing. And he got dropped in his pomp for batting slow. The lad even lets log hops go down the leg side. And I do really hope he does well against NZ and the Aussies but I fear that, if I can work him out without knowing an awful lot about cricket, it won't take them too long either.

Cook hasn't scored a hundred for England in 62 innings and two years now and has been riding on the back of past glories for a long time now. How long would you like to give him? Perhaps we should count his hundred against the school boys of St Kitts and you could then call it 26 hundreds?

For a wicket that is so "dreadful for batting" how exactly do you explain Root's innings? He gets his hundred at more the twice the rate of the other three and with such ease too. Where have I criticised him or any of the later batsmen. I haven't. I also recognise that, when you get out your stats and tell us how poor Ali and Stokes' average is when compared to Ballance, you won't take into account circumstance.

Test cricket has moved on in the same way as one day cricket has and we have to have some (not all) players who can score at a tempo that will give us a winning opportunity. You simply can't have your top three batsmen scoring at 38 for over a day. The wicket is slow but anything but unplayable.

In fact, the pitch was constantly being described as a "featherbed". Now, as my knowledge of cricket is clearly not as great as yours I thought I would look up its definition and this is what I found:

A pitch that is slow and soft and has a predictable bounce is termed as a Featherbed. Such a pitch is very easy for batting and very tough for bowling as the bowler does not get any assistance from the surface.

And I do much prefer to watch England playing Test cricket. But that doesn't mean I have to accept our performance against what is one of the worst Test playing and especially bowling sides of all time. Only Roach has an average of less than 37 with Bishoo and Samuels, who have bowled 62 overs in this innings between them having averages 40 and 57 respectively. Warne and Murali they ain't.

I'm really pleased that you are enjoying it so much though.

Best post I have read in this thread, I agree with every word. The benchmark for Test Cricket at the moment is Australia. They bat with intent from the beginning of the innings to the end. This puts pressure on the opposition bowlers and they score quickly enough to set themselves up with the chance to win. They are also blessed with having a raft of top class bowlers in Harris, Starc, Johnson, Siddle, Hazlewood, Cummins, Coulter- Nile, Pattinson etc. Our top three batsmen are too slow.Also our seamers are too similar, oh for a left arm fast bowler who can bowl at 90 MPH.

Absolutely! But for me all this could be remedied by doing a few basic things... For example rotating the strike! Sure, if you get a good ball block, and you don't want to be wafting at balls outside off stump, but if there is a ball that your playing at you need to know where the gaps on the field are, (there are always gaps in test cricket) and hit them, run a single! If you do this 2/3 times an over, as well as hitting the bad balls you can have a run rate of 4/5 an over instead of 2 and with very little extra risk!

And then you start dictating to the bowlers, you get on top and they start moving the field around which creates more gaps and suddenly scoring is easier! There is nothing to be gained by letting bowlers dominate! It's even better when you have that left right combination at the top of the order as it upsets bowlers lines...

Easier said than done ! - I think when Johnson is bowling at your bonce at 95mph, the last thing on your mind is going to be lets nudge him for a single! If it were me, my first thought would be to get head out of the way, then get my bat out of the way- and play as little as possible.