Strayan is very weak. The Strayan batting and overall strategy is poor. The bowlers were too often bowling short and wide of the stumps. Up until yesterday no quick bowler had an lbw in the series IIRC and only 7% of deliveries were at the stumps. You are going to struggle to get folk out if they can leave everything dangerous go to the keeper and avoid a run out. Straya appears to have forgotten that bowled and LBW are valid ways of dismissing the opposition batsmen.
Also, the drop-in pitches at Sydney and Melbourne (to an extent) were poor. No swing, minimal spin and very slow. The pace attack is good but was hung out to dry by the tatics, conditions and rubbish batting. The Ashes are likely to be one-sided unless the Strayans pick Smith and Warner, which IMV they should never do again.
Massive year for English cricket starts tomorrow. I think this West Indies team could shock England at home so they had better be on their game. Iām really looking forward to it!
Missed the first 5 balls (walking the dogs) but Jimmy seems to be getting a little bit of swing, not much though. Curran may have gone for 8 in his first over, but encouraging that they were both thick outside edges.
Early days, but looks a fairly decent pitch.
Good to see 2 spinners, but still a little surprised that they left Broad out. Maybe signs that they are planning for the future?
Oh, I think that goes without saying. If Burns, Jennings and Bairstow perform here then all is good. If they donāt, I havenāt a clue who theyāll draft in.
Since the Ashes doesnāt start until August, I very much doubt that is the reason
If Broad hadnāt got hit in the face and lost confidence in his batting I am sure he would be playing. They are just trying to pack as many runs into the low order as possible. Not sure itās right to be honest but the top order is still fragile.
Root lost the toss, which has been important in the last 2 seriesā¦
I can only dip into Cricket Social, where there was an interesting discussion whether winning the toss has skewed Tests in favour of the team batting first.
They were spraffing around the idea of sealed bids from the captains, offering a quantity of runs to the opposition in order to bat first.
