New Zealand tour of England - May/June 2015

[Dutch]

Getting carried away by what? We were told that New Zealand would beat us and after shipping 500+ and being 30/4 we were out of the game (twice!). It's been a brilliant effort by all involved and one that as fans, we should all be very proud of. They've been superb.

Yep, exactly. really gutsy performance. yes there are questions but this was the kind of match we really needed from England: if you are winning everyone gets behind you and gives you momentum. Strauss said to them: get them talking about you and not KP. They did that....brilliant.

 

[blockerdave]

Have been very down on England recently so would be churlish not to recognise that was a fantastic comeback. Stokes arguably turned the match in 3 out of 4 innings - a wonderful performance. And a stunning catch from Ali to finish it.

Some concerns still - Bell must be finished soon, Lyth didn't look convincing in either innings, and Cook is still a shocking captain - but with Root, Stokes and Cook all in form with the bat, Broad getting back there with the ball and the emergence of Wood, not to mention the pure spirit to have come back from a couple of very dicey positions, there are more positives coming out of that game than there have been for a LONG time.

 

[MUFC1987]

I think it'll be interesting to see how a new Coach affects Cook captaincy wise. I stand by what I've said before, in that he's still the same stats driven Captain that Strauss was, just with a worse bowling attack. Hopefully the new Coach can come in and give him a bit of freedom, to see if that improves his Captaincy.

On the rest of the side, I don't think Ali works at 8 that well, but I wouldn't change it at the moment. If he finds form with the ball, then it just gives us an even stronger batting line up, so he's worth sticking with for me. Hopefully Lyth finds some runs in the next Test, or else that could be an issue come the Ashes.

 

[blockerdave]

I think Bayliss, for all his record, is a depressing choice. They've gone with the guy who accepts having his number 2 already picked (ok they worked together before), his captains picked, and his selection parameters worked. Feels as though, having missed out on the England & Aus jobs before he's said whatever necessary to get his shot this time.

Basically, any coach prepared to work under the existing parameters, sharing Strauss' philosophy, is the wrong man for the job.

Cook is a terrible, defensive, tactically illiterate captain. Look at the penultimate over today when Jimmy was bowling - 10 overs left, a wicket to get, hundred and fifty to play with... Edge goes and there's a gap in the slips. He plugs the gap not by adding a catcher, but by moving one of the existing ones... Sure enough next ball goes right where the guy he just moved was stood.

WTF. Why were there gaps in catching positions in that context? Should have been an umbrella of slips and gullies.

He'll never be a decent captain as long as he's got a hole in his arse...

 

[_Sam_]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't everyone already in a 'catching' position other than the elusive third man that Botham moaned about throughout the innings, who just happened to take the final wicket, and a mid on and mid off where Boult had quite constantly tried to biff it and just missed on a few occasions?

 

[bigred]

What a performance from the lads today. Very pleasing.

I was actually at the ground, and Farbrace moved Ali to the position he eventually stood in to take the final catch. Hence why Ali gave the balcony the thumbs up.

Mark Wood didn't have a great day, but I think he's got something about him. Seems like a character.

 

[Chewie]

Ab kept cause De Kock was injured... Also for me de Kock < Watling. De Kock has that match winning ability and I dont think Watling looks the guy to score 6000 runs but he is certainly batting well right now.

Watling's scored 1440 runs at 46.45 as wicket keeper, he's currently the best test wicketkeeper playing

Definitely was an interesting day's cricket though

 

[War]

ENGLAND

With all the doom going around with the KP saga and all the external bullshit the ECB doing to English, it was great to see the team play with such attacking flair. Easily the most fluent England test win since the Kolkotta 2012.

Stokes was always the real deal & its too bad the selectors didn't back him through his form slump last real, because its crazy to think he wasn't at the world cup. What is even more exciting about Stokes is that, if you compare him to where Flintoff was at this stage of his career, Stokes is clearly better already.

Keeps this up, we might be speaking of him being comparable to other great English test-all-rounders of past i.e Botham, Greig, Rhodes

The flair shown by Stokes, makes you think whether the selectors should have gone for Hales to open in test instead of Lyth.

I heard Nasser Hussain state regularly on commentary that by stop playing ODI cricket, Cook has been able to in his last two hundreds to deal with his outside-off stump issues that we thought he had eradicated during his peak run years of Ashes 2010-Ashes 2013. I reckon Hussain is right because considering his personal circumstances and the state of English cricket - that IMO was the best of his 27 test hundreds.

ENG have a little dilemma with Moeen Ali. He could end up being a good spin-bowling all-rounder like Sakib Al-Hasan, but more & more its looking like his bowling versus India last summer was a bit of a one-off fluke for the time being. But the thing is there is no spinner in FC cricket that is demanding to play.

Rashid around of course - but is he really the answer? As things stand i see AUS batsmen really going after Moeen and putting added pressure on the seamers.

NEW ZEALAND

Thought they were brilliant, as they have been in most test matches in the last two years. They wont score 500 & loose too many more tests that's for sure.

They have a slight issue also with spinner and the fact that Anderson didn't bowl his quota of overs. I might have suggested dropping Craig for Neesham if he was fit at a headingley ground that traditionally don't help spinners much anyway.

But the option to bring in Bracewell for Craig is strong i think.

 

[blockerdave]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't everyone already in a 'catching' position other than the elusive third man that Botham moaned about throughout the innings, who just happened to take the final wicket, and a mid on and mid off where Boult had quite constantly tried to biff it and just missed on a few occasions?

i'll correct you - you're wrong.

 

[grkrama]

Good win by eng..stokes certainly has the making of Flintoff. NZ just lost it on the final day.

 

[LiveLoveABD]

Joe shows England winning 'Roots' as Lord's crowd is left 'Stoked' by Ben.

 

[_Sam_]

i'll correct you - you're wrong.

Think you need to get off the 'lets blame Cook for everything' train mate.

I'll correct myself, there was no third man or conventional mid on. The remaining fielder was at mid off where Boult had chipped it over a couple of times.

 

[blockerdave]

I'll correct myself, there was no third man or conventional mid off.

So you were wrong... but somehow I'm still wrong? I see how it works.

 

[swacker]

Never realised Bayliss had such a good record in white ball cricket. I'd imagine that's why he's got the nod.

 

[cooks1st100]

@War you have posted up something very similar to what I was going to. Obviously a load of positives to take from that test but there are a few negatives. My main concern is Moeen, okay he took 4 wickets, a couple of great catches and added some very useful runs but as a front-line spinner I fear he is just not good enough and once again we had a situation where Cook appeared to have no confidence in bowling him in a situation which required a spinner with fielders surrounding the batsman. On this occasion we got away with it, that certainly won't always be the case.

Our pace attack looks to be a better unit, with all of them having good spells and some not so good but they each offer something a bit different. England seem to have this uncanny ability to not bowl full enough in the first innings they bowl. This isn't a new phenomenon, we seem to have suffered from this for years. I also feel that they could have attacked the stumps more.

England gave away 67 extras in the first innings (26 byes, 34 leg byes), that really is poor and cannot all be blamed on Jos or the wicket. It was much improved on in the second innings but I feel that there were far too many balls bowled down the legside in general.

Ballance, if he keeps staying back in the crease he's going to be be a walking (rooted) wicket, Starc will have a field day with him. In my opinion it shouldn't take much to get him out of the habit and to start getting forward but can he sort this flaw out before Friday?

I don't want to sound so negative because it was a fantastic test match played in a great spirit and the positives have been mentioned by yourself and others. That last session for me was up there with the last session of the second test of the 2005 Ashes series. This is why test match cricket is my favourite sport of all.