I hope not!
100%. It’s like this line up should have played on the wicket for the last game and that line up should have been selected for this one. Appalling.
No matter who you support, no cricket fan can fail to be thrilled by watching Pant in full flow. Hats off to him. Amazing knock.
5 Likes
Best team won. Well done India. They are formidable on home turf and have a depth of talent that other countries can only dream of. England have a lot of problems. An aging seam attack, substandard spinners, very patchy batting. Only Root, Stokes and Anderson would be anywhere near the NZ, Aus or India teams. The backroom staff were found wanting too. A lot to work on with the Ashes looming.
Ps A small silver lining is that Australia won’t be competing for the Test Championship
Yeah, agree re Stokes, Root and Anderson although I’d take Buttler over Watling or Paine. Broad still very good on seaming tracks. Others? Meh. Don’t know what Chris Woakes has done to be constantly overlooked.
Must be the pitch again 
Yep, absolutely the pitch as India batted on a different one.
2 Likes
I hope the sarcasm came across then
1 Like
India are better than England at the moment and were deserved winners. However the pitches were substandard for test cricket. Both of these facts can be true.
1 Like
Which is true, our problem is we only took one proper batsman and no spinners. That’s not to say that we have a phalanx of either in the county game.
I don’t buy into the pitches being substandard idea.
Majority of wickets throughout the series for both teams were balls that went straight on, so that is more of a poor technique/shot selection rather than a pitch issue.
1 Like
India were bowled out for 145 by Leach and Root. I rest my case.
Except the day night match, The other wickets were all fine. And the day night match had one more variable in terms of the ball. The pink ball was an unknown quantity.
Pant’s innings was awesome and Washington was unlucky to not get a deserved 100. But England’s batting was crap.
5 Likes
wouldn’t go as far as to say that. Its a classic case of him getting the yips and forgetting how to bowl the way that got him selected. He shouldn’t have been selected for the final test and Root pretty much pushed him under the bus. Disgraceful leadership and team selection.
They could have interacted with moeen much earlier to ensure that they still had him as a spinner for the last 2 tests. Instead, they waited till Moeen was packed to approach him. By approaching Moeen that late, you’ve pretty much told Bess that you weren’t what we were looking for and thrown him under the bus then too… And Root bowling himself instead of getting the front line spinners doesn’t help matters one bit. Yeah, he took a 5 for , but so did Clarke in Mumbai. Doesn’t make him a better spinner than Bess
Moeen’s a special case though, given his struggles with his mental health. Actually, England handled that situation incredibly badly as well, separate from team selection issues.
Yup , Root going on as saying Moeen was the one who didn’t want to stay etc etc wasn’t great handling.
1 Like
I would have lined up the team a bit differently. There was no reason as to why Bairstow with his patented weaknesses against spin especially early on in his innings needed to be given a game. Liked what i saw of Lawrence. Would have picked Lawrence instead of Bairstow and then taken on either of Stone/Archer as the third bowler. That would have given Anderson and Stokes some much needed rest.
They read the pitch wrong in going for 4 bowlers in this game and packing the side with batsmen. I daresay that’s what cost them the match. Fresher bowlers would have made a difference.
You’d think that they’d have learned by now in English cricket. Trescothick, Harmison, Trott, Panesar and those are just the last few years.
Silence of the Heart was published 20 years ago FFS.
The batting in the final test was terrible, to make barely 200 as your highest score after batting first is appalling.
The pitch may have been poor in the day night but as others have mentioned half the balls went straight.
Mentally they thought pitch is bad and it played on their minds from then on.
1 Like
The pitch can only be termed as poor when there is severe inconsistence in the bounce. None of the pitches so far were really that.
Yes, The third test wicket was below par but that can be explained due to various factors. One of the factors being the pink ball (which is a new variant of the SG ball ) hasn’t had enough experimentation with in domestic cricket across various venues. It’s one thing to do that in Australia where mostly all the wickets are drop in ones and hence the ball can be analyzed and bettered more. And due to Covid, There hasnt been enough domestic cricket played in order for the people to get used to the ball.
What the pitch makers messed up on was trying to make a spinning wicket with an unknown quantity w.r.t the ball. They should have stuck to making it a hard wicket and left some grass on it. I expect they’ll learn from their mistakes and probably with some more knowledge about how the pink SG ball behaves under lights (they’ll make improvements). I for one think that pink ball tests in India should only happen after 2 seasons of pink ball domestic cricket in India.
2 Likes