England must be the only side obsessed with the keeper, the rest keep the same one for long long periods, we've had FOUR since (and including) the Ashes of 2006/7
Both Collingwood and Vaughan are in poor form with the bat, certainly Shah deserves more chance than he's had or likely to get. I think it is too soon for Bopara.
The balance is good, I hate people harping on about five bowlers as if more bowlers equals more wickets - it doesn't. You need your best bowlers and England have picked their best two seamers in Anderson and Sidebottom who've picked up 91 wickets between them at under 30 apiece in their respective last 10 Tests. Panesar is seen as our best spinner, we should play him if conditions help, although his last 10 Tests have yielded 29 wickets at 36.52. And while I have reservations about Flintoff, he does average around 33 with bat and ball, while the majority of other contenders can't bat to that level and only take wickets at 31+.
I certainly wouldn't reshuffle too much, Collingwood is obviously one of the boys and Vaughan is still given way too much credit for his captaincy. Perhaps when more people realise his captaincy is massively over-rated, then his position will become much weaker and we can bring in a better runscorer and give the captaincy to Strauss.
England batsmen/keeper - last 10 Tests
732 runs : Pietersen (around 1/5 came in his 152)
720 runs : Cook (laughably someone compared persisting with Broad to him)
708 runs : Strauss (around 1/4 came in his 177)
633 runs : Bell (around 1/3 came in his 199)
519 runs : Collingwood (HS 66)
448 runs : Vaughan (around 1/4 came in his 106)
326 runs : Ambrose (has played only 12 innings to everyone else's 17, 1/3 came in his 102)
Broad has 371 runs in 11 inns, but no hundreds so what choice did the selectors have but to drop him? Flintoff has scored 456 runs @ 28.50 (HS 89 vs AUS) and taken 27 wkts @ 34.33 in his last 10 Tests. That puts him ahead of Vaughan in the above order, Vaughan's average for those 448 runs is a mere 30.53
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