Squad for First Test against Sri Lanka

To be fair it's not like the Sri Lanka are also-rans; they're a very good team who've won more international trophies than we ever have and who have beaten us as often as we've beaten them in Test Series over the years.  It's not like we were playing Bangladesh or the current Windies.  They have 2 of the 4 best batsman in the World (Jayawardene and Sangakarra) one of whom is in the form of his life.  They also have a granite like Captain in Mathews who is a very impressive figure who seems to thrive under pressure.  They had the best spinner in this series as well in Herath.  I don't think there's that much between these sides really. We have more depth on paper but they have the better high end talent.  I think that was played out in 2 very competitive, close matches with fantastic finishes.

Having said that. you're right that we should always be looking to beat them at home. We used home advantage to get ourselves in a match winning position on the first day and then blew it twice; firstly by failing to bat them out of the game in the first innings and secondly by not taking advantage of a favourable bowling track in the second.  On the flip side we nearly turned a draw into a win at Lords.

I didn't think it was that bad a performance and there were lots of promising individual efforts.  Major hats off to Moeen for that rearguard action.  What discipline, because on no level is he that kind of player.  I'm not sure he's ever played an innings like that before but he reigned in his attacking instincts and was 2 balls from being an England legend only to have it taken away from him at the last through no fault of his own; cruel.  I think he's done enough to win over England fans though, which is good because he's an exciting player who deserves a good run in the side.  Jordan was also a positive I think and Robson and Ballance did well.  Plunkett's performance at Headingly was good.  Question marks really are over Jimmy and Broad's failure to win this game for us with the ball; it was set up for them and basically they were outbowled by an inexperienced Sri Lankan attack. Along with Cook's awful run, these are the questions that need asking.  India series will be good I think - both us and India are in a similar rebuilding stage.

But Sri Lanka have given as good as they've got in tests against us for at least 15 years now.  There's arguably no team with which we consistently match up as evenly with.  Test Match series between England and Sri Lanka are nearly always tight.  If you take away the games in the 80s where they were just starting out the all time record in England stands at 4 wins to us and 3 to the Sri Lankans with an awful lot of draws.  There's no sense at which we should expect to turn up and beat Sri Lanka - you have to work for it.  The press, the fans, the players to an extent consistently underrate them.  They've always been as tough as hell, greater than the sum of their parts and with some absolute quality match winners in there.  In general they've competed much better against us in England over that time than India, Pakistan (who tend to either thrash us or get thrashed), the West Indies or New Zealand have over that time.  They're a good team - we're about at that level right now as the series kind of proved.  1-1 would have been fair probably but we lost the key moments and they won them.

I think if they replace Cook then they'll probably feel they have to replace Moores as well and it would give the appearance of chaos so I can't really see it happening.  You're right though, the main reason they won't sack him is that there's no obvious replacement.  I agree that we need Cook the batsman and can do without Cook the Captain. Cook is pretty average as Captain but is getting far too much flack for this series failure.  We didn't lose because the Captain got it wrong.  We lost because our senior bowlers didn't get the job done in the second innings on a pretty favourable English bowling track - for some reason Anderson particularly struggles at Headingley.  The main case against Cook is that we need his batting back and captaincy seems to have got in his head.  The problem is there are still question marks over some of the senior players.  In the long run I think Root will be Captain but not for a few years.

Bang on about Moeen in relation to Pieterson's attitude. 

I think it just might be time to accept that Jimmy isn't going to be able to win us game forever.  I think he's still a very good test bowler but he might not be that consistent match winning strike bowler he has been for the last 5 years.  Broad's always frustrated the hell out of me - never seems to sling together 2 good performances in a row but is capable of winning games no one else could.  Hard to see how you could drop either as the cupboard is a bit bare but perhaps we need to rethink strategy a bit around who does the bulk of the bowling; reducing Anderson's workload might not be the worst idea at his age.

Not sure how desperate they are to work Stokes back in.  Undoubtedly a quality player but upset a few people with his attitude I think and people have done well in his absence so I think making him work for it is good.  Also he's struggled with fitness for a lot of thus season.  There may be a case to look at Finn again.  As for spinners - all of those are potentially interesting but none have really made the clear case yet with consistent match winning performances.  As you say the balance of the attack is a problem and with Monty out of the equation they'll have to take a punt on someone for August tests.  No one clearly stands massively out really.

Well I dispute that - as a lifelong left arm (non) spinner I have absolutely nothing between the ears.....But it's definitely true that at whatever level you play it's a lot easier if your Captain backs you as a spinner.  The last thing you need to be thinking is 'if I concede one more boundary I'm off' etc.  Completely detrimental that's bang on.  There's definitely an art to managing spinners, particularly less impressive ones or ones that are new to Tests (not so difficult with someone like Swann - 'there's your end Swanny and you can just bowl from there all afternoon!') and Cook may need to think about that.  I think he did Kerrigan quite a lot of damage actually.  Moeen seems a stronger personality.  The problem of who to pick maybe that none of them may be in form of course!  I like your shout of Dockerell by the way but I don't see that happening really.

Interesting insight into Finn, I was just going by the stats that give the impression he's done quite well but that certainly isn't everything so I defer to you on that if you don't think he's ready.  I saw Woakes take 5 wickets in a game early this season yet he wasn't even one of the top 3 bowlers in the Warwicks attack that day.  You're certainly right that Plunkett doing well decreases the temptation to rush Finn back. 

I'm not sure Prior has completely answered critics either.  He had a pretty poor game in all departments at Headingley but again there's not a clear standout competitor.  Buttler's had a middling season at Lancs - he's done OK but is not screaming out to be picked in Tests and has done little to challenge the idea that the long format is comfortably his weakest area.