England tours of Bangladesh and India

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

E10 Rifle wrote: A big worry appears to be the seam attack. Broad and Anderson are coming towards the end of their formidability as an opening pair, and they don't – yet – have natural successors, though there are a fair few with promise. Stokes is an impact bowler, but as a second change, and Woakes has improved a lot but isn't going to strike the fear of God into the very best.

For all the agonising about spin, India's seamers have been a cut above in this series.

longeared wrote: Now they're ending up flailing round going "erm, shall we bring someone else from the Lions?" And they're not obviously leaving good players at home, no-one is seriously suggesting we should have picked Hales or Bell or Jordan or Plunkett.

The overly aggressive style of play is clearly flawed in India, but England have only won four out of their last eleven Test series (starting with the last Ashes debacle under Flower) which suggests deeper problems.

What's happened with Finn? Did well against SA last year and SL in the earlier series this year. Then a bit mixed against Pakistan, and hardly seen since?

And Plunkett might be suggesting we should have picked Plunkett. He said in an interview recently he still wants to be playing Test cricket when he's 38.

[diggedy derek]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

The enigma about Finn just seems to be that he's a bit of an enigma – his form is completely unpredictable, he seems to have no real sense of when he's good and when he's not, he is rarely in rhythm, and seems to have no 'stock game' let alone stock balls. He may well be past it already.

I can't take seriously anyone who thinks we should have taken Ian Bell. And I adore Ian Bell. But that ship has sailed.

I reckon the decisive factors in this series, in order, were:

England's batters not cashing in when they had the opportunity to make big score
Virat Kholi's form, on a different level to all others
England's perplexing inability to read pitches in the subcontinent (something has gone badly wrong here, suspect they do not have enough contacts in that part of the world)
India's seamers better than England's, and the latter's lack of reverse swing
England's spin bowlers are average at best

Still love watching this team, but it's been a bit frustrating

[Satchmo Distel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

England are also playing too many Tests and ODIs so burnout is an issue. This series has started to look like a rotation policy by default among the seamers, and I worry about Root, who is perhaps the best England batsman I have seen (starting from 1976), coping with three formats (plus presumably IPL?).

South Africa at home will tell us if England's seam attack is now on the wane, given how SAF tore apart Australia.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

On the topic of the future of the seam attack - R. Topley b. D. Topley.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Had hoped Root would see the day out there. Bugger

[ad hoc]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Most test runs for England in a calendar year (table as at 12.00 noon Romania time, 16/12/2016

M P Vaughan 2002 1481 runs
JE Root 2016* 1471
JM Bairstow 2016* 1463

(Root won;t be adding to his total in the first innings, Bairstow currently is still batting)

That's not only very very close and exciting a race (for a prize that nobody knew existed), but it also, obviously, shows that Yorkshire are fucking ace

[ad hoc]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Damn. Bairstow out for 49, 2 short of Root, 12 short of Vaughan.

[ad hoc]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Ali has just gone over 1000 for 2016 as well, though (a) he is not from Yorkshire; and (b) 1000? Piffling.

[Satchmo Distel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Yeah but these four Englishmen have each played 17 Tests in 2016, in which they usually batted twice.

How often does anyone play 17 Tests in a year? The only other examples I can find are India in 1979 and 1983 (18 Tests).

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/284248.html

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/229904.html

Tellingly, although England are playing their 17th Test, no England bowler has yet taken 50 wickets (although Broad 'only' needs 4 in this current one to do so):

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/records/bowling/most_wickets_career.html?class=1;id=2016;type=year

[ad hoc]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Four? I've only mentioned 3.

Root managed to get 1385 in 2015 as well playing only 14 tests, so poo-poo his achievement all you like, but he's obviously doing something right.

[Satchmo Distel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

I stated upthread that I think Root is the best England batsman I have seen, and I fully agree that you have to go back to the pre-1945 era to find an England batsman in the form Root showed in 2015-2016. He's in the world Top 4 for these last two years (with Smith, Williamson, Kohli)

[SouthdownRebel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Moeen now has more runs in the 1st innings of tests (977) than he does in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th innings combined (880) in fewer than half the number of innings (18 vs 43). A curious stat which suggests he's a bit of a flat track bully.

[Hot Pepsi]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

What does that mean?

[San Bernardhinault]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

A flat track is a cricket pitch that doesn't take spin, or seam, or swing - basically one where there's no lateral movement of the ball so it's easy to hit.

A "flat track bully" therefore, is someone who scores a lot of runs in the easiest conditions, artificially inflating his totals and averages. It's now also come to mean someone who scores a lot against weak opponents.

I imagine a baseball equivalent would be someone who scores a ton of home runs, and therefore looks good. But in fact they play for the Rockies, and score their runs against bad relief pitchers.

The term now has been extended to other sports - if someone has scored hat-tricks against Sunderland, West Ham and Hull, they'll appear as if they're one of the best strikers in the country, but in fact can't score against even moderate defences. And they'll be called a flat track bully.

[Etienne]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

If his runs were scored in the second innings as well, I'd say that it is likely to be due to conditions. That it is just the first innings might suggest it is dealing with a match situation that he finds challenging.

[SouthdownRebel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Interesting point, Etienne. Of course, in the first innings the pattern of the match isn't set, so it's a different sort of pressure to set a target rather than chase one. The fact that his average in the 3rd innings is better than the 2nd does support this - it's not much higher, but given that conditions usually start to deteriorate about then you'd expect it to be lower.

So he performs better when England are making the running by batting first than when they are responding to another team's total.

[San Bernardhinault]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

I agree with this. It looks as much as if the problem is mental as technical. In theory, batting on Day 1 is meant to be slightly harder than batting on Days 2 and 3, so most peoples' first innings averages may be worse than their second and third innings averages.

[GCostanza]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Reckon his Kashmiri heritage might just be a motivating factor too. Against these opponents.

[Satchmo Distel]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

759-7d, highest total England has ever conceded in Tests. England in danger of losing by an innings after scoring 477, the highest 1st innings score to lead to an innings defeat (current record is 405). It would only be the 4th time a team has lost by an innings after scoring 400+ in the first innings of the match, yet the 2nd match in a row.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

We reach tea with Moeen and Stokes batting and six wickets in hand. Just need one more good session to save this Test...

[longeared]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

They just need to bat for another 50 minutes or so, then they can shake hands at the start of the final hour. No doubt that won't happen and England will end up grimly hanging on eight down in the last over.

Root and Bairstow both got out cheaply, neither overtook Vaughan's 2002 run total.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

I wonder if there will be criticism of India making "too late" a declaration for winning this match? Given the celebration of Karun Nair's triple century, I would hope not.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Oops.

[Kevin S]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Bugger.

[longeared]

England tours of Bangladesh and India

Roobish.