WI v Eng 1st test

may as well use this forum....!

Straussy wins toss and England bat first.

Freddie plays....well starts at least.

31/2

jeeez....

It wouldn't be England without a crap start.

England are slowly wriggling off the hook, the Windies have switched off and we could still potently build a match winning innings.

of the batting order, who are certainties for the ashes?

imo, cook, bell and collingwood should all be worried about their england future.

Stumps Day 1

England 236-5

England are slowly wriggling off the hook, the Windies have switched off and we could still potently build a match winning innings.

 

of the batting order, who are certainties for the ashes?

 

imo, cook, bell and collingwood should all be worried about their england future.

Interesting on Talksport, some moaning about Pietersen giving his wicket away but not much condemnation for Cook, Bell Strauss and Collingwood. What would they say without his runs.

Interesting on Talksport, some moaning about Pietersen giving his wicket away but not much condemnation for Cook, Bell Strauss and Collingwood. What would they say without his runs.

It sickens me, KP carries the top 6 at the moment although Strauss has had a far better last 6 months and 2 100s in India. Bell is a tart, hits 3 or 4 boundaries and then gets out like he always does as he's too lazy to move his feet. Bell is too weak mentally for international cricket, hitting meaningless double-hundreds off medium pace and part-time spin for Warwickshire is his level. If you could marry Bell's talent and Colly's attitude, you'd have a world-beater but sadly, Colly is not a Test no.5.

Cook is a good long-term prospect but does need to raise his game a few levels now after a great start to his career. I'm confident that he will.

3 wickets lost this morning, freddie for 43, prior for 64 (good knock) and broadie for 4

currently 304/8 sidebottom 17, harmi 5 batsmen not out

anything on top of what we got now considered bonus runs in my humble

Interesting on Talksport, some moaning about Pietersen giving his wicket away but not much condemnation for Cook, Bell Strauss and Collingwood. What would they say without his runs.

What do you expect from TalkSport - most of it is total drivel. i am more cocnerend about Agnew's completely unjustified criticisms - frankly KP is carrying the entire England side and should be applauded for his efforts. He turned the innings round so we reached a respectable total.

What do you expect from TalkSport - most of it is total drivel. i am more cocnerend about Agnew's completely unjustified criticisms - frankly KP is carrying the entire England side and should be applauded for his efforts. He turned the innings round so we reached a respectable total.

Agnew is a nomark - he was an average seamer and is a pretty average commentator. He even threatened to quit playing for Leics unless England picked him again in the mid-late 80s.

23-5 in the second innings. Woops.

omg we r ****

sack the coach oh wait

oh dear 6 down

26/7

i'm sure they will get a rollicking from the coach.......... oh hang on we hav'nt got one..

In a strange way this might be a good thing in the long term as too many of these players have been under performing for some time with no threat of them losing their places or central contracts. Hopefully some changes will be made before this years Ashes series.

51 all out, an innings defeat in what should have been a draw

so all the sports teams i follow are sh1t, really really sh1t

at least the skates lost

my sports following sucks

Beyond abject; they are pathetic.

As far as i can see we need some radical changes - probably Strauss, Cook, Bell and Colly should go but we only have Shah available.

Am i the only one that thinks the England team set up is run by half-wits and the ECB should be sacked? They all appear to be a bunch of bankers.

well they aint gonna sack the captain are they so Strauss will have to stay.

cook - i believe in him, he has great natural talent and generally very good application. his form as of late hasnt been awesome but bell has been given enough chances so why not him...which brings me to

bell - yep, time to go. had a very good crack at the whip. get back to scoring county runs

colly - on the fence. there's decent arguements for both keeping and dropping, mayb 60-40 in favour of dropping...

bring in

shah. bopara. maybe even a shot at chubby Key...

well they aint gonna sack the captain are they so Strauss will have to stay.

 

cook - i believe in him, he has great natural talent and generally very good application. his form as of late hasnt been awesome but bell has been given enough chances so why not him...which brings me to

 

bell - yep, time to go. had a very good crack at the whip. get back to scoring county runs

 

colly - on the fence. there's decent arguements for both keeping and dropping, mayb 60-40 in favour of dropping...

 

bring in

 

shah. bopara. maybe even a shot at chubby Key...

Agree.

Problem right now is going on tour with only one back up batsmen which smacks of complacency IMO.

It's all very well pointing the finger at individual performances, but as far as I can tell there is no real quality test batsmen coming through the ranks. Are Shah or Bopara better than what's there already? They probably deserve a chance to cement themselves a place in the team, but what's beyond that? Key isn't really looking to the future, though may be needed this summer!!

Also the old cliche still stands, you have to take 20 wickets to win a match. How come the WI bowlers seemed to get so much more out of the pitch than ours? Was Anderson injured, or just randomly dropped? and why is Sidebottom in the team?

Sadly I think England's troubles stem from the obsession with the shorter forms of the game which produces too many slow/medium one day bowlers and big hitting slogging batsmen with no real technique. It's all very well using Twenty20 to get more people interested in cricket, but it needs to go beyond the gravy train that it is and support the development of players at the highest form of the game - test cricket.

I'll shut up and go away now.

It's all very well pointing the finger at individual performances, but as far as I can tell there is no real quality test batsmen coming through the ranks. Are Shah or Bopara better than what's there already? They probably deserve a chance to cement themselves a place in the team, but what's beyond that? Key isn't really looking to the future, though may be needed this summer!!

 

Also the old cliche still stands, you have to take 20 wickets to win a match. How come the WI bowlers seemed to get so much more out of the pitch than ours? Was Anderson injured, or just randomly dropped? and why is Sidebottom in the team?

 

Sadly I think England's troubles stem from the obsession with the shorter forms of the game which produces too many slow/medium one day bowlers and big hitting slogging batsmen with no real technique. It's all very well using Twenty20 to get more people interested in cricket, but it needs to go beyond the gravy train that it is and support the development of players at the highest form of the game - test cricket.

 

I'll shut up and go away now.

I very much agree with your first 2 paragraphs Barfy. Shah and Bopara deserve a run but I'm not sure they will go any better than Bellend, Cook or Collingwood. What disturbs me and it's a bad legacy Moores left is how players like Cook and Panesar who enjoyed sparkling starts to their England careers have stood still and then gone into sharp decline. Sidebottom's little slow left-arm seamers were tidy but he never looked like taking a wicket unless a WI inside-edged it and has lost his nip. Harmy hasn't been the same since Cooley left but again, he's better than what's out there. Only Broad, KP, Freddie and Prior are international standard at present. Swann is no great shakes but can at least hold a bat.

Your last paragraph is where I agree with the gist of your statemen but actually, we've been abysmal in 20/20 and ODIs and need to play more of it. The problem lies in the counties relying on the national team to recruit Kolpak players and bring through **** poor medium pace rubbish and batters that can't play straight. Too many counties are full-time, make it 3 divisions with 2 full-time and the best prospect of playing for England means you need to be in Div 1. Division 3 would be the likes of Leics and Derbyshire going part-time like the Australian state system. Ideally, I'd like to merge most of the midland counties - we only need Warwickshire and Notts. Look at the area Durham cover and they'e got a catchment area that covers the Midlands counties and they get good gates.