Cricket: General Chat

[Milfner]

38 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Root is 23 runs away from being the fourteenth batsman in history to score 10,000 test runs.

He's also 23 away from a century.

That would be nice.

If he gets there, he’ll be the exact same age to the day(!) as Alistair Cook was when he made it to 10,000!

[KentVillan]

14 minutes ago, Milfner said:

If he gets there, he’ll be the exact same age to the day(!) as Alistair Cook was when he made it to 10,000!

Makes you realise how good Cook was. His career average was massively affected by being an opener, playing half his games in England, the stress of captaincy, and a poor finish to his career knocking a couple of runs off it. Did it all with only a handful of shots in his locker as well.

[sidcow]

3 hours ago, Rodders said:

Beautiful day of cricket. I mean Root and Stokes aside we are woeful, but you can also say the same about New Zealands batting. All on Root and Foakes to get us mostly there you'd think. 

60/40 to us. Instantly flip that if we lose a wicket very early tomorrow. 

That's the amazing thing about the game. 

We were utterly on the rocks, totally beaten, wickets falling like ninepins when Stokes was given out. The reprieve completely turned the game on it's head.  He and Root instead turned a certain loss into a probable win. 

It's impossible to lose from here as long as someone stays with Root.  But you just know that Root can be out in the first couple of overs tomorrow, or a succession of other batters come and go quickly. 

There is no truer expression in all sport as wickets change games. 

[sharkyvilla]

Weather forecast looks a bit shit, batting in between showers can be a bit tricky and it's a long tail we've got.  I'm not sure whether Parkinson could concuss himself to get Leach back in the team.  I'm hoping it's not just a damp squid and it goes all the way.

[bannedfromHandV]

Squeaky bum time

[Guest av1]

Absolutely brilliant from Root. 

[robby b]

Finally ! 

I'm always happy for Villa and the England cricket team to prove me wrong.  : >

So calm from Root, superb! And superb from Foakes too with his three boundaries, a big contribution. Can the confidence this gives them help them to win the next test, like London buses? ...

We still need an innings without a batting collapse, I can't remember the last time we didn't have one. (In this one we went from 31 for 0 to 69 for 4).

Edited June 5, 2022 by robby b

[chappy]

Joe Root, what a great! Great player, great man. 

[robby b]

We were on a 9 (nine) test match winless run! So we've avoided that extending into double figures (which looked very unlikely yesterday when we were four down and still way off the target).

[rjw63]

England win, you say?

[sharkyvilla]

Thank God for Joe Root.  Brilliant performance.

[Xela]

Fair play, didn't expect that. Well played Root and Foakes. 

Good to see Broad and Anderson both playing well. The decision to rest/rotate them in previous games was a mistake. 

 

[PaulC]

Think Williamson will wish he never changed the ball last night. The replacement did nothing. Root is a true great. 

[Guest av1]

Root comes across as such a great bloke to. Top man 

[bannedfromHandV]

Fanbloodytastic 

[theunderstudy]

That flurry from Broad on day 3, knocking over Mitchell and Jamieson and the bizarre De Grandhomme run out. The no ball wicket of Stokes. Then De Grandhomme getting injured and Stokes brutally knocking Ajaz Patel out of the attack in an over to the point Williamson didn't go back to him even down his fourth seamer. Root, Foakes and Stokes both batting with discipline and not flailing at anything coming down to them helped too. Pope and Lees (I think?) Both missed straight ones earlier in the innings. Lot of work to do but **** me it's nice to see a win even if it takes a catastrophically poor performance from New Zealand to do it

[Rodders]

that's a bit of an unfair way of viewing it. Both teams were poor with the bat and required a big partnership to in the middle of the innings. They had a near 200 run partnership in the middle and then we had Stokes and Root ( and Foakes ) stepping up. Amid good bowling too from both sides it seems a bit harsh to say NZ were catastrophically bad. No worse than us. They might have done things differently, and de Grandhomme had a day to forget but it was a pretty even test. 

 

That said, we obviously still have work to do as it was the same quartet of stars that brought us the victory. ( plus a bit of Potts and Foakes ). There won't be any changes for the second test, but Lees, Crawley, Pope and Bairstow remain concerns. 

[theunderstudy]

Latham, Conway, Williamson and Young won't be that awful again. Lees, Crawley, Bairstow and Pope will almost certainly be, and that's the difference for me. We also lack a decent spinner, Leach got knocked out of the test but he's average at best and Parkinson looked worse. We had them 45-7 first innings and let them add another 100 on. We collapsed from around 90-2 to 140-odd all out then had them 3 down early again only to let them get away from us in the last two sessions. 

Our bowling is largely good but we need a bit more in the reserves to skittle out the tails and press home our advantage. Ironically that's what ultimately cost NZ in the 4th innings because they were trying to bowl us out using 3 seamers for 25 overs each 

[Rodders]

I think our bowling injury list is pretty remarkable at the moment, Wood, Woakes, Archer, Stone, Mahmood and one or two others I think ( Stone feels like a technicality, I assume he's unlikely to ever play for England again, poor sod ) . As for Parky, in his defence on his first test, he never got to bowl on a day 4 or 5 pitch. I suspect he might retain his place for the 2nd test and hopefully we'll get a chance to see him being given a decent go this summer ( though I also suspect Leach will be back in as soon as he is fully fit ).  

As for the batters, you are very probably right, and the selectors have made a rod for their back, as it's also somewhat unfair on players to keep dropping and bringing them back regularly without a slot. Pope at 3 was harsh.  Bairstow's form for England in the winter was good enough to justify his retention, but Bairstow only warming up in the IPL is something I can't help but feel brought about his problems in the test. If he's going to choose the short form, then give the slot to either Pope at 5 or Brook instead.  But again neither will be dropped for this series. Brook is only starting if there's an injury I suspect. 

Lees - I'm willing to give a little more slack even if that dismissal when he left the ball was horrendous. His 20 was proactive and fluent before then. I mean, there's obviously only so long you can give a batter to find his feet as an opener, but he gets the summer for me. Crawley can piss off though. He's had series after series of doing the same thing, the James Vince approach of looking very tidy, hitting some pleasing drives and then nicking behind. That 200* is such an outlier on his stats it's ridiculous. 

 

[bannedfromHandV]

Good opportunity for the new regime to start with a series win, fingers crossed for a good start today whether with the bat or ball.

England usually do well at Trent Bridge, Broad and Anderson usually bowl well there and NZ will be missing Williamson as well as De Grandhomme now.