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Post by The Concept on Feb 2, 2021 23:51:27 GMT
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warehamgas
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Post by warehamgas on Feb 7, 2021 23:31:15 GMT
Wonderful watching Joe Root batting over last two days. He’s having a run of good form similar to that if Alistair Cook in Australia in 2011. Being such a great player of spin he should do well in India. As long as he doesn’t underestimate Bumrah and get caught out like some others! Well done the batters all supported and fought their way to a score which will ensure they don’t get beaten.
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eppinggas
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Ian Alexander
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Post by eppinggas on Feb 8, 2021 17:22:55 GMT
Wonderful watching Joe Root batting over last two days. He’s having a run of good form similar to that if Alistair Cook in Australia in 2011. Being such a great player of spin he should do well in India. As long as he doesn’t underestimate Bumrah and get caught out like some others! Well done the batters all supported and fought their way to a score which will ensure they don’t get beaten. I'm finding the cricket infinitely more interesting than premier league football. Early alarm set for tomorrow. And looks like it's catching on: "As revealed by Telegraph Sport, Channel 4's coverage of India v England on Friday attracted a peak audience of 1.1 million, 18.4 per cent of all those watching television at that time". I stuck £20 on England at Evens to win this morning (a little too early, you can get 6-4 now). Hopefully that pitch continues to deteriorate. My logic is that should India win, it will be a fantastic 4th innings and hats off to them. A draw is likely to be a tense affair and worth watching to the bitter end. So at the very worst it's £20 spent watching a days good quality sport! In the warm. |
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Post by lostinspace on Feb 8, 2021 21:40:11 GMT
shame that the commentary team are... well [imo] not up to the job,..... too many periods of quiet ......lack of info.......Butcher is awful i think,... credit to Cook for trying to explain the rationale of todays "go slow" albiet i did think it odd!! Personally think that it will be a slow the game as much as possible day for the India team, much like they did with the ball late today, Think that the off field camera work[Third umpire review system] is very slow , .........and again here no thoughts from the commentators with their views as they are waiting for the verdict
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eppinggas
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Post by eppinggas on Feb 9, 2021 8:12:34 GMT
My bank balance is a little better, but I feel robbed of a few hours decent cricket! Fantastic from Anderson and aided by Leach. Happy days.
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bluetornados
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Post by bluetornados on Feb 9, 2021 13:09:58 GMT
My bank balance is a little better, but I feel robbed of a few hours decent cricket! Fantastic from Anderson and aided by Leach. Happy days. Yes, i have been catching the 4am starts (sleeping on the sofa for the duration of the tests) nice to then have all morning watching an engrossing cricket battle. At 7am this morning we needed 4 more wkts, by the time i put it back on at 8.15 it was all over, ah well, seen all the highlights, shame they couldn't last a bit longer. Well done to all the lads and looking forward to friday and the 2nd of the 4 tests matches. |
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eppinggas
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Post by eppinggas on Feb 9, 2021 14:59:36 GMT
My bank balance is a little better, but I feel robbed of a few hours decent cricket! Fantastic from Anderson and aided by Leach. Happy days. Yes, i have been catching the 4am starts (sleeping on the sofa for the duration of the tests) nice to then have all morning watching an engrossing cricket battle. At 7am this morning we needed 4 more wkts, by the time i put it back on at 8.15 it was all over, ah well, seen all the highlights, shame they couldn't last a bit longer. Well done to all the lads and looking forward to friday and the 2nd of the 4 tests matches. Apparently the last two tests are day/night affairs - 9am (UK start). Which is a bit more of a civilised time to start... |
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bluetornados
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Post by bluetornados on Feb 9, 2021 17:34:26 GMT
Yes, i have been catching the 4am starts (sleeping on the sofa for the duration of the tests) nice to then have all morning watching an engrossing cricket battle. At 7am this morning we needed 4 more wkts, by the time i put it back on at 8.15 it was all over, ah well, seen all the highlights, shame they couldn't last a bit longer. Well done to all the lads and looking forward to friday and the 2nd of the 4 tests matches. Apparently the last two tests are day/night affairs - 9am (UK start). Which is a bit more of a civilised time to start... Hi, Looked up the times and 2nd test is 4am, 3rd is 9am and 4th is back to 4am. |
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eppinggas
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Post by eppinggas on Feb 9, 2021 17:58:07 GMT
Yup - I stand corrected... thanks
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warehamgas
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Post by warehamgas on Feb 12, 2021 13:54:17 GMT
Looking forward to the 2nd test tomorrow. Pretty strange decision to “drop” Dom Bess. He took 4 wickets in the Indian first innings at under 3 per over, very economic. The most economic of the bowlers yet he gets dropped. I can understand him not playing and being rotated for Moeen Ali but to be dropped and England making it clear he was dropped is pretty strange even unfair. Anderson is being rotated, Wood is waiting for the 3rd Test yet Bess is “dropped”. Did anything else happen? Did I miss it?
UTG!
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absent
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Post by absent on Feb 12, 2021 14:16:08 GMT
I agree it seems odd to 'drop' Bess. I'm also surprised they haven't just brought in Broad for Archer. Anderson seems as fit as a fiddle and Stokes could pick up a lot of his overs if tiredness became an issue.
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irishrover
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Post by irishrover on Feb 12, 2021 20:25:51 GMT
Looking forward to the 2nd test tomorrow. Pretty strange decision to “drop” Dom Bess. He took 4 wickets in the Indian first innings at under 3 per over, very economic. The most economic of the bowlers yet he gets dropped. I can understand him not playing and being rotated for Moeen Ali but to be dropped and England making it clear he was dropped is pretty strange even unfair. Anderson is being rotated, Wood is waiting for the 3rd Test yet Bess is “dropped”. Did anything else happen? Did I miss it? UTG! I finally caught up with the cricket yesterday! Am in the process of trying to buy a flat/house in Manchester so weekends are a bit busy right now and I lost the run of the Test on Days 3-5 which is a shame as it looks like it was one of the better England overseas performance in many years. Caught the highlights yesterday and while I'm happy that it's back on Channel 4 I was a bit dissapointed that you only get 25 minutes a day for the highlight. Here are some thoughts.
-Joe Root is imperious. I'm not sure I've seen a better run of form from an English batsman in my lifetime. Possibly Gooch in the early 90s but I was very young then and so it could be rose tinted specs talking. I honestly think having a bit of space to think about his game has helped. He's had that captaincy effect many of them seem to go through where it's impacted his form. My view is that with Root it was all psychological. That he was trying to dictate the tempo he wanted for his team instead of batting at his own natural pace. For me, Root is the kind of steady natural accumulator where you look up after he's been in for half an hour and you're amazed has 30 odd on the board already because you can't think where they came from. But he had increasingly gotten away from that in recent years and had a tendency to get stuck in 2 modes either a)very stoic and bogged down or b)utterly manic (which seemed to happen in the Ashes last year). He seems to have gone back to his natural game and is once again looking like he belongs in the 'best batsman in the World' conversaiton which he hasn't been in the last couple of years. Joy to watch - I love the technical stuff. He picks length from the spinners as quickly as any batsman you'll see and movement is decisive, smooth and positive. Just has all the time in World.
-What more can you say about Anderson? Everytime a consensus starts to build that he is getting past it or he can't do it in certain places or conditions he makes it look silly. I think his athleticism is very underrated. To be able to do what he does at his age is amazing and probably epitomised by that great catch he took (he's a great fielder too - another underrated aspect of his game). In the T20 age where the game is increasingly (and depressingly) more and more reliant on pace and power than ever it is great to see someone remind you that cricket is primarily the game of the artisan technician and he really has become a master. Magnificent to watch - I'd put him with Malcolm Marshall and Wasim Akram now as someone who knew his craft inside out. You can watch his brain tick -it's fantastics. I'm with astafjevs on this - I'd have liked to have seen him play. I guess with the number of back to back tests they need to manage the seam attack which is actually a bit thin with Archer injured and not neccessarily easy to call up replacements in Covid times I suppose. So maybe that's the caution.
-You've got to admire Jack Leach. That's some serious guts to come back after getting smashed around by Pant. As a left-arm spinner I know the feeling of thinking you haven't done much wrong yet got clobbered out the attack. I think he might even have been able to get into the Indian batsmen's heads a bit.
-On the negative side, there's still issues over the batting around Root. Good to have Stokes back but you'd like 1 more reliable experienced player in there I think. Just a lot of inexperience in the conditions - over the course of a 4 Test series you'd expect that to manifest itself in a couple of collapses at some point. Although in fairness, even when they didn't get the big scores you couldn't how hard our batsmen fought for their wicket. I really do think Silverwood has changed the approach in that regard - much steelier and it makes me happier! I worry a little bit about the thinness of our seam attack above. Archer and Anderson both bowled really well - hard not to see Broad and Stone as a potential downgrade on that for the 2nd Test. Not so worried about Foakes in for Buttler though - he's proven he can bat against spin so might actually be a decent bet to go well.
-On the main point of Bess; I know it sounds daft but I actually don't think he bowled particularly well. A lot of those wickets came with bad balls and in the 2nd innings he was quite ineffective. Plus I think the England management team is keen to give Moeen a go. Partly because of fairness (he would have played in SL if not for Covid so it seems a bit unfair that he might not get a look), partly because they want a left handed batting option in there and it should strengthen the batting (without Buttler they might have wanted an additional aggressive option as well) and partly because he probably is still a potential final day innings winner in a way that the jury is still out on for Bess. But then I'm a massive fan of Moeen so I'm biased!
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bluetornados
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Post by bluetornados on Feb 12, 2021 20:25:57 GMT
James Anderson, Jofra Archer and Dom Bess will miss the second Test for England against India starting on Saturday in Chennai.
Anderson is being rested after inspiring England to a 227-run first Test victory, taking five wickets.
It was confirmed on Thursday that Archer will miss out because of an elbow injury, while Bess is dropped.
Moeen Ali, Stuart Broad, Ben Foakes, Olly Stone and Chris Woakes come into the 12-man squad.
Jos Buttler, who kept wicket in the first Test, is rested for the remainder of the Test series but will return for the Twenty20 matches that follow.
Explaining the decision to drop 23-year-old Bess, whose performances have been inconsistent this year, captain Joe Root said: "I'm sure he'll come back with questions and I'm sure he will be disappointed, but that's what you expect from guys that really care and want to be out there all the time, performing for their country.
"He's got a very good attitude. He's still very much at the start of his career and he'll use this as an opportunity to get better."
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warehamgas
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Post by warehamgas on Feb 12, 2021 23:09:21 GMT
Looking forward to the 2nd test tomorrow. Pretty strange decision to “drop” Dom Bess. He took 4 wickets in the Indian first innings at under 3 per over, very economic. The most economic of the bowlers yet he gets dropped. I can understand him not playing and being rotated for Moeen Ali but to be dropped and England making it clear he was dropped is pretty strange even unfair. Anderson is being rotated, Wood is waiting for the 3rd Test yet Bess is “dropped”. Did anything else happen? Did I miss it? UTG! I finally caught up with the cricket yesterday! Am in the process of trying to buy a flat/house in Manchester so weekends are a bit busy right now and I lost the run of the Test on Days 3-5 which is a shame as it looks like it was one of the better England overseas performance in many years. Caught the highlights yesterday and while I'm happy that it's back on Channel 4 I was a bit dissapointed that you only get 25 minutes a day for the highlight. Here are some thoughts.
-Joe Root is imperious. I'm not sure I've seen a better run of form from an English batsman in my lifetime. Possibly Gooch in the early 90s but I was very young then and so it could be rose tinted specs talking. I honestly think having a bit of space to think about his game has helped. He's had that captaincy effect many of them seem to go through where it's impacted his form. My view is that with Root it was all psychological. That he was trying to dictate the tempo he wanted for his team instead of batting at his own natural pace. For me, Root is the kind of steady natural accumulator where you look up after he's been in for half an hour and you're amazed has 30 odd on the board already because you can't think where they came from. But he had increasingly gotten away from that in recent years and had a tendency to get stuck in 2 modes either a)very stoic and bogged down or b)utterly manic (which seemed to happen in the Ashes last year). He seems to have gone back to his natural game and is once again looking like he belongs in the 'best batsman in the World' conversaiton which he hasn't been in the last couple of years. Joy to watch - I love the technical stuff. He picks length from the spinners as quickly as any batsman you'll see and movement is decisive, smooth and positive. Just has all the time in World.
-What more can you say about Anderson? Everytime a consensus starts to build that he is getting past it or he can't do it in certain places or conditions he makes it look silly. I think his athleticism is very underrated. To be able to do what he does at his age is amazing and probably epitomised by that great catch he took (he's a great fielder too - another underrated aspect of his game). In the T20 age where the game is increasingly (and depressingly) more and more reliant on pace and power than ever it is great to see someone remind you that cricket is primarily the game of the artisan technician and he really has become a master. Magnificent to watch - I'd put him with Malcolm Marshall and Wasim Akram now as someone who knew his craft inside out. You can watch his brain tick -it's fantastics. I'm with astafjevs on this - I'd have liked to have seen him play. I guess with the number of back to back tests they need to manage the seam attack which is actually a bit thin with Archer injured and not neccessarily easy to call up replacements in Covid times I suppose. So maybe that's the caution.
-You've got to admire Jack Leach. That's some serious guts to come back after getting smashed around by Pant. As a left-arm spinner I know the feeling of thinking you haven't done much wrong yet got clobbered out the attack. I think he might even have been able to get into the Indian batsmen's heads a bit.
-On the negative side, there's still issues over the batting around Root. Good to have Stokes back but you'd like 1 more reliable experienced player in there I think. Just a lot of inexperience in the conditions - over the course of a 4 Test series you'd expect that to manifest itself in a couple of collapses at some point. Although in fairness, even when they didn't get the big scores you couldn't how hard our batsmen fought for their wicket. I really do think Silverwood has changed the approach in that regard - much steelier and it makes me happier! I worry a little bit about the thinness of our seam attack above. Archer and Anderson both bowled really well - hard not to see Broad and Stone as a potential downgrade on that for the 2nd Test. Not so worried about Foakes in for Buttler though - he's proven he can bat against spin so might actually be a decent bet to go well.
-On the main point of Bess; I know it sounds daft but I actually don't think he bowled particularly well. A lot of those wickets came with bad balls and in the 2nd innings he was quite ineffective. Plus I think the England management team is keen to give Moeen a go. Partly because of fairness (he would have played in SL if not for Covid so it seems a bit unfair that he might not get a look), partly because they want a left handed batting option in there and it should strengthen the batting (without Buttler they might have wanted an additional aggressive option as well) and partly because he probably is still a potential final day innings winner in a way that the jury is still out on for Bess. But then I'm a massive fan of Moeen so I'm biased!
Yes, Root is as you say. I think Alistair Cook in Australia in 2011 reminds me of the form of Root now. He really took the Aussies apart in that series. Mind you Mitchell Johnson got his revenge a year or so later. With him in this form it allows a few failures around him but if the Indians get him out cheaply they will be all over England. Bess did not bowl well in the second innings, too many loose balls which in other circumstances could prove match-changing but here he got away with it. Leach is the better bowler and I was pleased to see him come back from Pant’s onslaught. But I’m still surprised that the PR side of it called it “being dropped” instead of just rotating him with Moeen. And of course Moeen gives a better balance to the batting and rarely lets England down with his bowling. Perhaps the England team were just being straight and let Bess know he has to do better so they just “dropped” him. |
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eppinggas
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Post by eppinggas on Feb 14, 2021 9:35:48 GMT
Oops. I'm definitely no expert, but we're getting walloped here. England respond with 134 all out. I think it was Michael Vaughan who said half way through the Indian 1st innings... England are doomed on this pitch!
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Post by lostinspace on Feb 14, 2021 10:55:02 GMT
Would say that this pitch is certainly sub standard for a test match, along with some rather dubious umpire decisions, game may be finished before lunch on day3
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Post by lostinspace on Feb 14, 2021 17:02:22 GMT
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irishrover
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Post by irishrover on Feb 14, 2021 20:10:50 GMT
Not sure we have too much to complain about - teams prepare wickets to suit their attack at home. That's home advantage - it's not supposed to be fair. We do it all the time, we always leave the grass longer when we play Asian teams etc, - the only reason we don't do it even more is that the ECB want 4 days gate receipts. The Indian BoC aren't so bothered about that. India needed a result and so they prepared a wicket that would be guaranteed to produce a result - home teams have done that since the dawn of Test cricket. It was still no guarantee -could have backfired if we'd won the toss.
We were always going to get pegged at some point by their spinners in this series. It's not like we were never in this game. The 1st day was terrific to and fro cricket. We had a couple of chances but their batsman dug in well and fought back. Ashwin was always going to be bloody hard to play on that pitch and he delivered.
It will be a good learning experience for our young players in the end and the series is very much on here. I'd like to see us put up a good fight 2nd innings as it would lay down a marker that we're not just going to be easily swept aside even in a game we're almost certainly destined to lose.
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warehamgas
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Post by warehamgas on Feb 14, 2021 20:48:36 GMT
Yes it’s not been good today but India are a top side so it was unlikely that the first test would be repeated. Our batsmen will learn, I hope, from this experience. India, probably the best test team in the world after winning in Australia without Kohli. I know NZ are officially number 1 but to play India in India is very hard. Yes it’s a prepared pitch for India and their players but I presume we were expecting that to be the case. As irish has said we do it and any team playing test cricket in England in Mayor early June low the pitches will be hard for them. It’s why the better teams usually come in the second half of the summer. But it’s not all bad news, I thought Moeen has come back into contention which has to be good and Ben Foakes rarely lets England down. Burns could do with a big score, even a 30 with some minutes at the crease would be something. And England have gone into this match without Buttler, Bairstow, Anderson all out of choice so I’m not sure this tour is thathigh onthe priority list which is a shame I think. Perhaps it was the wrong match to drop Bess!
I’m not too down about today, there’s room for some real heroes to emerge but with all these changes it does make me wonder about the attitude of the tour management towards this series. Perhaps they are seeing it as good preparation for something later on this year. I hope not but I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon.
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irishrover
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Post by irishrover on Feb 15, 2021 10:39:55 GMT
Yes it’s not been good today but India are a top side so it was unlikely that the first test would be repeated. Our batsmen will learn, I hope, from this experience. India, probably the best test team in the world after winning in Australia without Kohli. I know NZ are officially number 1 but to play India in India is very hard. Yes it’s a prepared pitch for India and their players but I presume we were expecting that to be the case. As irish has said we do it and any team playing test cricket in England in Mayor early June low the pitches will be hard for them. It’s why the better teams usually come in the second half of the summer. But it’s not all bad news, I thought Moeen has come back into contention which has to be good and Ben Foakes rarely lets England down. Burns could do with a big score, even a 30 with some minutes at the crease would be something. And England have gone into this match without Buttler, Bairstow, Anderson all out of choice so I’m not sure this tour is thathigh onthe priority list which is a shame I think. Perhaps it was the wrong match to drop Bess! I’m not too down about today, there’s room for some real heroes to emerge but with all these changes it does make me wonder about the attitude of the tour management towards this series. Perhaps they are seeing it as good preparation for something later on this year. I hope not but I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon. I think today put to bed the pitch debate. I don't think we'll here a word of England on that and nor should we. If both teams fold and the game is over on Day 3 then it's reasonable to ask questions about the pitch but that isn't what's happened here. India have batted have twice batted over a day so it's not as though the conditions are unplayable - they just favour the home team which is normal in Test cricket and this game will go well into Day 4 which is also pretty normal for modern Test cricket. I'm sure we'll retaliate with a couple of green tops when India come over here in the summer. But, ultimately, if the opposition bat fine and you fail twice you've simply been outplayed and so far we have been comprehensively outplayed for 3 days here. They've been the better team in this game by a mile and we just need to take it on the chin and move on.
I'm also not too down. This Test is a reminder of what a tough task this is. We will learn from this and improve here. Certainly Moeen coming back as an option is good and Leach has continued to be very consistent - he should be aiming to cement his place as England's number 1 spinner by the end of the series and I think he is doing that. Next Test is Day/Night by the way and that may give us some advantage in the conditions if Jimmy can get it swinging round corners.
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