#3792

This is a real low.

#3793

that’s a truly dreadful shot.

#3794

Root taking a single first ball leaving the tail ender to face 5 would certainly suggest so.

#3795

I take it all back. Fetch my pitchfork.

#3796

At what point do you take the captaincy off Root and just let him bat?

Does require picking someone else with some experience. Buttler would have been the most likely person but the tweets are pretty shitty so I’m not a fan of that anymore.

The really damning thing here being that even had the batting not been an uttter shit show and we’d somehow forced them to bat last for a day with 250 needed, we chose to bat first without a front line spinner, so Root would be leading the bowling charge.

#3797

if he still wants it then I’d back him to keep it.

are this side really underperforming that much given the lack of talent we have had in the batting lineup? this new zealand team (squad really) seem very very good, and it’s not like the home advantage really applies that much with the pitches.

burns is well regarded as a county captain isn’t he?

#3798

You always want to take the captaincy off root but IMO it’s nothing to do with root’s captaincy. He hasn’t captained Crawley, Sibley, pope and braceys batting form, or injured Ben stokes, or caused buttler and Woakes to be unavailable. He dropped a vital catch but it’s a stretch to out it down to being captain, and the non-captains still drop plenty.

There’s also no one to replace him right now. You’ve explained why buttler is out, can’t pick a fast bowler as they get rotated and other than stokes, no batsman’s place is safe.

Stokes is the only other candidate, maybe they might consider him if they decide to change it, but we’ve never lost a home series under root until now.

The biggest problem is the first class system which is producing loads of good fast bowlers due to the pitches, very few test ready batsmen and almost no spinners. We could field two teams of fast bowlers which would be a match for anyone in the world, but we have one test class batsman at the moment, with stokes to come back. And none ready to step in now when there’s potentially three places available. What our batsman are practiced in at first class level is being bowled out for less than 200, and they carry it into the test arena.

One of the major disappointments is that we are at home where our batsmen should at least know the conditions. We handily beat SL recently in SL, getting thrashed in India is forgiveable, it’s just a bit gutting to see us crumble so badly here.

NZ are also really good which we should remember.

9 Likes
#3799

Aye, same problem you had way back with the Pietersen era WRT captaincy.

What a fabulous fabulous day of cricket though

#3800

What did people make of Nasser’s comments afterwards? Seemed to be suggesting the players are being coached bad technique rather than it being an issue with players not being available.

#3801

Is this about players have started taking an off stump guard? I saw him, Atherton and Butcher talking about this after one of the county matches sky was showing. I thought what they were saying made sense, you’re more liking to follow one you should be leaving alone especially early in your innings and if you miss one on your pads you’re almost certainly lbw

#3802

England managing to be all out before play was scheduled to start there.

1 Like
#3803

Can’t believe all these Negative Normans out there saying this is done and we can’t knock them over for thirty-odd.

#3804

This one’s going to be Evergreen I feel

1 Like
#3805

Ah balls. Missed it!

1 Like
#3806

Great bunch of lads, aren’t they, tbh, tbf.

#3807

George Dobell pretty much always gets it.

3 Likes
#3808

Been looking at potential batting replacements. People quite often use averaging 40 as a batting benchmark, especially in tests. Ignoring the freak year (2020), if you looked at 2019 (both divisions) and 2021 to date in the CC, how many England eligible batsmen do you think managed to average over 40 in either of those years and also have a career FC average of over 40? For the purposes of this we will discount those already in the team, having retired (Cook) or have been discarded already, the only person this last one actually removes is Gary Balance and… no.

So… FC average over 40 in either of the last two proper seasons, overall career average over 40.

  • Oh God it’s… it’s zero, isn’t it?
  • Surely someone has done that? One person?
  • More than one person

0 voters

#3809

The answer is in fact one person. Step forward: Lancashire’s Josh Bohannon.

Averaging 52.33 this year, and 44.09 for his career.

For reference, Cook, Ballance and Pope met the benchmarks. Next closest was Ricardo Vasconcelos who averaged over 40 both years but only has a career average of 39 - going the right way though. No-one else is even close.

#3810

Ooo and some right arm medium pace to fill in the Trott overs before the new ball! Get him in the side!

1 Like
#3811

I was thinking Malan maybe