Terrible captaincy and field setting at times too. Mark Butcher is nothing but honest at times, when he exclaimed ‘why would you go back to a ball like that!’. Lotty has so much to do, and it can’t be easy when the standards you’ve played to aren’t being replicated in this group of players. They’re either not taking on board all the coaching they’ve had and/or they’re simply not very good.
I’m glad Amy Jones has got runs, as she’s good technically and a very good WK, she’s just not a pinch hitter in the T20 format, where her brain gets scrambled.
It’s difficult to figure out why England are not at the top or near top in the test rankings.
I know school fields have been sold and the game has almost disappeared in state schools but I’ve noticed with my grandson there are now far more opportunities at club level than was ever the case for me in the 60s.
There are leagues starting at under 9 level and onwards with coaching but still we fail to produce hardened/competitive cricketers at test level for both men’s and women’s cricket compared to other countries, notably Australia and South Africa.
England produce very good white ball players. In test matches England have showed they are unwilling or unable to bat for long enough to score enough runs. Even in 50 over cricket England, in recent times, have often not batted the full 50 overs. How fast seems to be more important than how many.
Hopefully that will change starting tomorrow at Edgbaston.
One can but hope the opportunity you identify translates in to talented players, albeit there’s likely to be a significant lag before this emerges. In years gone by, the talented youngsters would already been under the wing of the counties, with (say) 14/15 y/o’s in the men’s game playing in their top county leagues and other representative cricket. But, and here’s the sting, they were often taught technique from Day1, as red-ball cricket was the major game back then.
Interesting to hear the exchanges on Sky a few mins ago that India majors on technique from a very early age, as do the Aussies. The Sky boys reflected on this yesterday, asking why England’s women were so poor at this, and where such traits came from? e.g. too much white ball, too much in the nets, and/or simply they’ve never learned solid technique?
In my mind, it’s interesting that the likes of Knight/Sarah Taylor/Edwards and other good legacy English players, all started playing in boys’ leagues, and had good technique coached in to them early doors.
One can but hope that any new faces which come in fare better than the performances in this game, and that’s across all the disciplines. My first step would be to make Charlie Dean captain.
Yes, a classic! I’ve seen this on YouTube. Another from much later (Oval, 2018) was the one where Aggers persuaded Geoffrey Boycott that his hundredth hundred (E v A, Headingley, 1977) was infact his 99th. as the E v RoW series from 1970 was to be removed from the first class records! (Ah, Boycott’s hundred. On drive off a half volley from Greg Chappell! All on the BBC live for free. Great days, long gone).
Aggressive bowling, Bumrah always a threat but Curran not a good shot.
It is odd, right in the middle of the summer, to see players look rusty and lacking rhythm because they aren’t getting much match practice. It is the modern way.
E v I first ODI. Solid recovery by England after an iffy start. An old fashioned 50 over game. Let’s hope this kind of resilience is transferred into the Test arena rather than the ‘that’s the way we play’ (whatever the situation) approach (with the exception of Root) which is not the way to win Tests or ODIs. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of that. As has been said earlier, great to see Bumrah et Al. in action again. I. T. Botham is on TMS at ‘lunchtime’. Will be interesting to hear his thoughts on the current Test team situation and approach!
I know it’s pyjama cricket, but yesterday’s T20 Blast games produced some very exciting stuff. Somerset were dead & buried until Craig Overton turned up, batting at #9 IIRC - I thought a tad low. Also, the Sky team described Surrey as cruising to victory, and then it all fell apart.
Yes, I watched most of the Somerset innings. They were completely dead and buried. It was extraordinary from Overton.
My wife and I then decided to not watch the football which I think was wise.
Another ODI today at 13.00. I was trying to look up how often England have batted for 50 overs in ODIs recently. It’s rare. Can they give India a game?
Yes, incredible rescue by Craig Overton. T20 is not my favourite but that was quite something. I watch at Taunton very regularly and he has put in some tremendous performances with the bat in the County Championship this year also, and with the ball too of course. He is also an excellent fielder in the slips, reliably snapping up sharp chances.
A nugget for me was seeing (IIRC) Meredith batting at #10 for Somerset pull cum hook Hassan Ali behind square for 4. The latter was not pleased, and I think confused as to how a #10 could do that
I am sure it has been mentioned before but how can England keep up in ODI cricket when most of them don’t play many (any?) domestic 50 Over games any more? The One Day Cup has been downgraded to a development tournament so the top players don’t play or aren’t available anyway as they are involved in The Hundred. No wonder they find batting for 50 Overs difficult.
I was listening to the commentary in the first ODI where they were talking about batting through. Although it’s really annoying to see overs left, I’d have been very interested in hearing Zalts provide an average innings score for the two time periods where he compared number of completed innings against bowled out. It’s runs that count not balls faced.
