******Cricket Thread******

[BLUEMATT23]

Sibley and Crawley both made ducks in their only 4 day game in months. I agree it doesn’t make sense to pick them.

Pope and Foulkes could have come in though. Burns is never going to be a test batsman, so I’d have given Pope the nod.

Harder to pick another player to drop. Buttler maybe, but if we were doing that, I’d pick Sam Curran to bat at 7 and give us a left arm option.

Denly will open again, so can’t drop him.

Sadly I think we will be in decline for a few years. Broad and Anderson coming to an end and a dearth of batsman coming through.
But Australia have simply been better and sometimes you have to just hold your hands up.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Sadly I think we will be in decline for a few years. Broad and Anderson coming to an end and a dearth of batsman coming through.
But Australia have simply been better and sometimes you have to just hold your hands up.

We’ve put all our eggs in the one day basket since Bayliss took charge. Hopefully we will invest a lot more in the longer format with whoever takes over.

As you say though, there is a dearth of talent around at the moment. Perhaps we need to have national academies for fast bowling like the Aussies and India have done. It’s worked well for them.

 

[The Stockport Iniesta]

Best test team ever? Windies late 70's and 80's or Aus mid 90's for the next 10 or 12 years?

Aus just edge it for me overall.

 

[blue moony]

Cummins would have bench-warmed for Lee in competition with Tait, Hazlewood would have replaced Gillespie mid-way through as he's an English wicket bowler.

I would struggle to put many current England players in the 05 team on this year's form, maybe Stokes at 5 but with KP and Freddie already in it would have been a big choice and Buttler would replace Jones. That 4 man seam attack was too good even for Jimmy so none of the others would get in.

Buttler over Jones !! Never in a million years !

 

[Ban-jani]

Buttler over Jones !! Never in a million years !

Buttler wouldn’t even be considered.

Nowhere near good enough as a test batsman. He doesn’t have it mentally to play test cricket.

 

[waspish]

Buttler wouldn’t even be considered.

Nowhere near good enough as a test batsman. He doesn’t have it mentally to play test cricket.

Disagree Buttler is fantastic player and you could see he was starting ti adapt to test match cricket Id stick with him.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

Buttler over Jones !! Never in a million years !

Haha, Jones was one of the most disrespected players back then. Test average of 23 so no loss putting Buttler.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Seems we are moving towards naming an all time best XI team worldwide.

I’ll go with

Gavaskar
Greenwich
Dravid
Tendulkar
Lara
Kallis
Sangakkara
Warne
Marshall
Muralitharan
McGrath

It’s hard though with so many amazing players over the years.
Edit: Missed out Bradman and IVA Richards, but not sure who to drop!

 

[Gabriel]

Looking forward to TMS from the Oval. Will Aggers be a little deferential to Sir Geoffrey?

 

[Pubteam Lomas]

Disagree Buttler is fantastic player and you could see he was starting ti adapt to test match cricket Id stick with him.

Totally agree.
If England had a decent top order Buttler would be perfect at No7. You look at someone like Gilchrist (no I'm not comparing Buttler to him) but when he came to the crease the Aussies were invariably 350-4 or 5 not 150, so was allowed to play with freedom.
If England ever find themselves in the same position then Jos is perfect. However the more we fail the more we'll have to find another batsman to go in at 7.
As they used to say, 'if six of 'em can't get 'em, then a seventh (batsman) aint gonna make a difference'.