England in Sri Lanka March-April 2011/12

[puddleduck]

Oh dear Monty... been absolutely useless today. Not threatened at any point with the ball, then just started dropping short, and now a dropped catch.

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Oh for christ sake. He is still useless. Get rid of him please

 

[Haarithan]

All hail Monty - quite the extreme opposite of Jonty.

 

[puddleduck]

Didn't even get his hands close to taking either of those, and they're both dollies by international standard.

If he was Shane Warne or Murali, fair enough, but he really isn't and his bowling is still identical despite what everyone keeps saying. Same ball, every ball.

 

[barmyarmy]

Andy Flower places a high premium on fielding and those drops will seriously diminish his chances of displacing Swann if England play only one spinner in the summer.

 

[Adarsh]

Monty's such a deer in the headlights when it comes to those high catches. I remember him being totally confused by one that Dhoni hit a few years ago and Monty totally lost it. Again, he was totally unsure whether to go with fingers pointing up or down. He needs to decide on one of those techniques and stick to it for every high catch.

 

[puddleduck]

End of the day he got wickets in a series where spinners got a lot of wickets against a fairly weak batting lineup that he's had success against before.

I stick with my assessment halfway through that series, Monty is still the very limited cricketer he has always been.

Let's not forget he also can't bat.

We keep getting told how much he's improved, how hard he works etc... He is still the same player.

 

[Adarsh]

He may still be the same player, but that same player may now be better than Swann, especially against sides not full with left handed batsmen. Swann against Left Handers = world class bowler.
Swann against right handers = Below mediocre.

Haha, read this on Twitter "Apparently Monty got confused between taking those catches Australian or English style, so he simply dropped both village style. "

 

[Rohit Doshi]

Well thats class from Jaya. No one supporting yet scoring 170 odd runs when your team is 15/3 or to say the least 60/4. Well done

Anything around 300-340 would keep Sri Lanka safe. They just need 3 English wickets (Prior,Strauss and Cook) rest will be gifted to them

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

I thought sri lanka were in trouble but jaya has turned it around, they could have made way more than 300 but it's going to be difficult for england to make a score that's going to exert a lot of pressure.

 

[barmyarmy]

Very frustrating day for England. Dropping Jayawardene 3 (4) times is simple unacceptable.
Hasn't been much movement once the new ball has gone soft and not a huge amount of turn either so England really have no excuses when it comes to batting themselves. Normally I would back England to score 400+ on this kind of pitch but confidence is going to be low coming off the Pakistan series and, as Rohit says, it only takes a few players to fail and the whole edifice can crumble.

 

[Haarithan]

England really ought to amass 500 on this surface. Looks an absolute belter of a wicket. Also given this rather mediocre Sri Lankan bowling attack, it only makes that task further doable.

That said, after the Pakistan series, they most probably won't.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

they've at least avoided having sri lanka leave them cooking in the field for 2 days, which is their usual method of grinding teams in these conditions.

I'm duobtful england will pile on 500 though, they'll need to attack the spinners, they'll bowl huge spells at each end and this has always bogged england down and caused them to misjudge.

course these days cook's capable of anything so if he gets going it's a possibility.

 

[Dipak]

Mahela ruined a great day for England. Panesar drop could be costly.

 

[barmyarmy]

Mahela ruined a great day for England. Panesar drop could be costly.

Two drops. The first was bad and the second was worse.

 

[swacker]

I can tell that Jayawardene is going to be an utter pain for us to get out in this series.