Bevab
Staff Member
Other than persisting with Crawley and maybe picking Jacks plus Livo for the Pakistani tour, what other decisions have been dodgy from them?
England Team Discussion
- Thread starter MattW
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Other than persisting with Crawley and maybe picking Jacks plus Livo for the Pakistani tour, what other decisions have been dodgy from them?
Bevab
Staff Member
Another issue is them dropping Foakes completely. What happens if someone injured themselves, surely you’d just want to move everyone else up and give Foakes the gloves then? Lawrence has been worse in county this season than Foakes despite the latter keeping.
It seems like they’ve made an indirect admission that they knew this would brew up a storm and are basically saying that Foakes is no longer the first choice keeper moving forward unless circumstances change significantly.
pillowprocter
Panel of Selectors
Handing a debut to Rehan
Some of those fields in the Pak tour
Those declarations in the Pak tour
wasteyouryouth
Verified
If there was an issue with Bairstow, I could see them go Pope keeping and Woakes at 7 to keep Stokes bowling down or go crawling back to Foakes.
Other option, depending on conditions, four seamers with Root/Lawrence bowling a few overs.
beechcroft
Panel of Selectors
To borrow a Trump phrase: Crawley could shoot someone in the middle of the Lords pitch, and he still wouldn't get dropped.
wasteyouryouth
Verified
"Obviously what Zak did wasn't great, but he showed intent and for us that is more important than averages and statistics."
Essexboyinoz
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I don’t understand it, Crawley is averaging 27 whilst Foakes, probably the best keeper in the world is averaging 32, I hope there has been a conversation surrounding Foakes opening? I’m sure he would jump at the chance. He seems to have the right temperament to open.
Fenil
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Opening the batting and to keep wickets for long hours in Test Cricket is too much workload on one's body.
Supreme General
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A better solution for that would be either Bairstow or even stokes opening with Foakes keeping at his usual 7 and the one Bairstow or Stokes who isn’t opening batting at 6
Essexboyinoz
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I agree it’s a big ask, but it’s been done before….Alec Stewart for one.
Fenil
PC Cricket Leagues Legend
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Right. Even he opened the innings for only 7 Test matches (12 innings) out 133 Test matches (235 innings).
That too for 1 match in the entire year in 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997 & 1998 and 2 matches in 1995 which reflects that he did that only when he was forced to do it as a result of injury of nonavailability of other openers or wicket keeper.
Ahmad94
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Also, this new brand of cricket that England is playing isn't really that compatible with the Foakes approach. England would happily sacrifice a genuine wicketkeeper who can bat - for a batman who keeps well enough (Bairstow).
Opening is an entirely different skill set in Test Cricket, arguably why Cook struggled for partners at the top after Strauss left (especially at home with the moving ball). Crawley will give you the 25-40 odd off 40/50 balls at the top (after all he is a specialist opener) and just about see off the ball to let the likes of Root, Pope, and Brook play their natural game.
Bevab
Staff Member
On the contrary Bazball needs a world class keeper more than a batter who can keep adequately. It’s no use piling on runs at a quick rate if you can’t apply pressure with the ball and in the field. Their ability to squeeze teams out under scorecard and rate pressure (a very novel concept in test cricket I must say) and pick up wickets with the ball has been a defining feature of the regime. Foakes was also a more sedate batter by Bazball standards who offered a good counterbalance to the others trying to go ham, it didn’t matter that Stokes would get out trying something crazy in his 20s or 30s as long as that allowed Foakes to build a base at the other end and equally Foakes’ presence meant that Bazball had a form of security in the lower order. Watling was the preferred keeper in Baz’s test side for a reason despite him being the antithesis of his approach in the past.
I assume they’ve observed Bairstow keenly enough in training that he’s impressed them with the gloves to get them enough dismissals that matter whilst offering a significant upside with the bat that other teams can only dream of. I also hope for their sake that Stokes returns to batting in more conventional fashion with Bairstow taking on the crazy role instead especially if the former isn’t going to bowl much. He could offer what Foakes did with the bat easily enough if he puts his mind to it.
Crawley’s seeing off 35 deliveries on average since Bazball began and has scored around 25 runs per innings for them. Your assumptions on his output are mildly exaggerated to say the least. Comparing him to Duckett, the latter sees off 59 deliveries and scores around 58 runs per innings for them. Heck, the other opener they dropped for being useless in Alex Lees saw off ten deliveries more compared to Crawley for the same run output. The much maligned KL Rahul whose highest score is 23 in this time period and could barely score also sees off five more deliveries compared to Crawley.
Let us go even further and compare more. Looking at test openers who did equally bad or worse since Bazball began… Rahul, Joy, Erwee, Young and Lees have all been dropped, a couple of them probably having lost their test careers forever. Tamim and Warner are around because of their past legacy and the latter has already been subjected to loud calls to be dropped. Shanto and Masood have been moved to other positions, Elgar lost his captaincy in a very public manner and is only around because the team direly needs all the experience until he is phased out. The Zimbabwean and Irish openers remain because everyone else is worse in their setup which leaves us with Oshada Fernando whose continued selection is the weirdest consistent thing SLC keeps doing for some reason whilst they experiment with ten other weird ideas elsewhere.
Quite simply put, there is no rational or tactical explanation for Crawley being an England test opener in this day and age under any kind of special role. The only reason he remains is either because the ECB and everyone else is too invested in him at this point and are suffering from sunk cost fallacy effects or because he is the world’s greatest nets batter who hasn’t cracked the code to replicating that on an open field with crowds yet. Or it could just be because of his dad and Rob Key, stranger things have happened.
wasteyouryouth
Verified
I think, in fairness to Bairstow, he's no mug with the gloves. He's kept his whole career, this match was his 50th test as a keeper. It's not as egregious as when they picked Pope ahead of Foakes in Pakistan. I'm not sure where he'd stand in terms of best keepers in England but he's not far off Foakes (Not as far off Crawley is of being one of the best openers).
I think in the past the frustration was Buttler was not as good a keeper and never played like we were told he was going to play. If Bairstow can combine his batting from last year with consistent keeping he could be remembered as one of the greats not just a guy who had a couple of good years.
I've no idea what it'd take to see them drop Crawley. I think Stokes said this week a young Alastair Cook wouldn't get in his side. Someone scoring like Duckett has been, in county cricket and Crawley never passing 10 again, might do it. But they could as easily pick James Vince based on his smashing it about in the Blast.
At least he’ll look good while scoring those 30 odd runs
