West Indies Tour of England - May to June 2012

[Owzat]

Eh? Prior's form with the gloves has been fine.

Edit: That said, be nice to give Davies experience in the longer format.

I said "rest" not drop Prior, we know he is capable so him filling his boots against windies won't achieve a lot whereas blooding a potential successor might - and cover.

I see your reasoning, but I guess that raises the question: what is form?? I would think scoring easy runs is a way of getting back your form because to me form is mostly confidence, and most batsmen get confidence from scoring runs.

Cheap runs against weak bowling isn't "finding form" it is playing at a lower level hoping that confidence can compensate for lack of form. Picking off long hops, wide half volleys and nothing bowling is no kind of preparation for a winter tour.

If batsmen are getting 'false form' early in the summer vs the poor nations, then how does one identify 'true form'?? How does one get 'true form' if there is no good competition around? And if 'false form' is due to preying on poor competition, then how can you judge form from county cricket?? I can see why selectors keep sticking with the same teams now...

I'm not talking about identifying ponces like Bell's "true form", I'm talking about giving younger players or alternates a chance so when we get out on tour we don't end up asking who is there to replace the out of form Bell, KP etc.........................

Maybe "false form" by say Bairstow, Davies and others would prove little, but it's better than letting Bell find "false form" and have no plan B.

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Well I don't foresee our batters "filling their boots" like all the pundits have been saying. I doubt Strauss will even get a 50 in this series.
I'm predicting a 2-0 England win with one test washed out. Victory based on superior bowling resources rather than crushing batting power.

I just think the batting and bowling for windies is below par, too few decent performers so no coherence or ability to create pressure with big scores or excellent bowling. Sure they'll win the odd Test and by default the odd series, but without more players like Chanderpaul they will struggle and they haven't had consistent and good bowlers since Walsh and Ambrose retired.

England beat windies for the first time in a series for a long time back in 2000 when England just batted out Walsh and Ambrose and picked off the rest while the windies batting was blown away by the slightest wind. This series shouldn't be a contest because neither facet of the game, batting or bowling, is strong enough for the windies.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

I said "rest" not drop Prior, we know he is capable so him filling his boots against windies won't achieve a lot whereas blooding a potential successor might - and cover.

don't really see the point in this. blooding a successor? I bet you any money if you were to start blooding davies as a successor now, by the time prior was at the point of retiring, (he's just turned 30 so roughly another 4 or 5 years but could be as many as 7 or 8) people would be complaining that Davies is too old to be the successor and they would be pushing for another younger player.

in all honesty, I'm sceptical wether test experience is really worth that much more than building a solid first class game domestically. there's plenty of examples of players that have came into test sides when they were mature and performed from the off (trott) or ones that played when they were younger then came back into contention much better players (swann, sidebottom, prior), then look at someone like ian bell, what has playing those 70 tests really done for him?

sure guys like maybe Cook it seems to have helped, but it's kinda specious reasoning to say that it's that important with so many contrary examples

 

[sifter132]

^Yah there needs to be a bit more analysis brought into it. I know for Australia, there is a long list of recent batsmen getting picked early, being dropped and then coming back stronger, starting with Steve Waugh and going through to Michael Clarke today. And yet people still call for batsmen to be picked as young as possible eg. Dave Warner, Steve Smith etc. I wonder whether it's just better to pick them later and skip the painful part in their early 20s. I'd love to read some research on it actually.

Anyway...observations from yesterday? I'm glad WI didn't get bowled out. Read a few articles/posts from people expecting them to get hammered and I thought it was unfair. WI did pretty well vs Australia, and England had a poor winter, so it seemed a bit optimistic to mention "English conditions" and suddenly assume WI would fold like a deck of cards.

2nd, yeah I thought England might play Finn over Bresnan, particularly since they don't need Bresnan's batting in that lineup. Bresnan 8, Broad 9, Swann 10 - good grief

3rd, and kinda related to 2: noted both Broad and Anderson were bowling 25 overs on day 1. That strikes me as a lot, and probably not a workload you'd like to see continue. Normally the argument would be that they were just bowling more to clean up the tail, but by around 70 overs when WI were still only 4 down, Broad and Anderson had already bowled almost 20 each. They may not need one here, but it seems England really need to think about a 5th bowler. And worst case, if Broad or Anderson picked up a niggle in a match, it could get ugly pretty fast. On the topic of 5th bowler...where's Ian Bell's bowling at?? Trott seems to be the medium pacer of choice, but I always thought Bell offered a little bit too.

 

[puddleduck]

Bell's bowling was abandoned years ago. When he first broke through he used to bowl a bit of seam up for Warwickshire, but once he was in the test team not scoring runs, the bowling seemed to be ignored.

I think in England in May where it's not going to be too hot and on a first day pitch, Broad and Anderson are always going to bowl between 20-30 overs in a day depending on success.

I think if you'd asked me to pick a potential end of day, around 250-7 with Shiv the only person going past 50 was a fairly good bet

 

[angryangy]

History suggests they might need to keep an eye on Broad, but they weren't bowling fast anyway.

 

[Dare]

Not that the WICB cares but Sarwan scored another century for Leicestershire.

 

[puddleduck]

If Sarwan was coming in at 3 and Gayle opening, this would look a much stronger batting lineup with not quite so much pressure on the likes of Bravo. Will be interesting to see how Windies bowlers do here in England.

 

[swacker]

The brilliant Chanderpaul beaten on 89. West Indies might have taken that if offered at the start of the day although you would hope England should improve on that. They dug in well though in bowler friendly conditions.

 

[angryangy]

I think a lot of their hope rests on Edwards and Sammy. They both swing the ball and have experience, plus they compliment each other.

We don't know much of anything about Gabriel and I suspect Roach, in spite of coming off a good series, is not the most ideal bowler to take to England. I think his best option is to work with the slope.

 

[barmyarmy]

The really sad thing is that you could pick a reasonably strong Windies team if the IPL and ignored players were in. Could be strengthened in at least 5 places.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

We don't know much of anything about Gabriel

we know he's a debutant so if the past 12 months are anything to go by he'll probably run through them taking 5/36.

 

[puddleduck]

England have always shown a great knack to give debutants 5-fers or hundreds so he's got a shot of doing something

 

[puddleduck]

Here we go then. Straussy... What you got lad, because batting will get progressively harder as the year progresses

 

[Owzat]

BBC scorecard has the fall of the last wicket at 486!

 

[puddleduck]

Don't worry Shiv didn't go mental, and England haven't gotten off to quite that much of a flyer

Still perfect morning so far for England. Good solid start with the bat, and no runs added. Broad also on a hatrick. If he strikes with the first ball of the next Windies innings (providing England don't collapse today) could he be the first person to take a hat trick spread over 3 days for each wicket?