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  4. 67-4 at tea. Sigh. Just a couple of hours to hang on for a draw, it should be quite possible you’d have thought. Root still there thankfully but no chance of chasing the 205 needed to win, presuming that Buttler or Moeen don’t go berserk and chance it.

    India are the world’s best team so struggling against them is not unexpected, but this, after a pretty reasonable first innings, is all fairly limp and predictable.

  7. I was looking at the averages of the England players this weekend. Root averages now exactly 50. No other current batsman is above 34 (Bairstow 33.97), Stokes is at 37. I think 40 plus is considered to be really what a test match batsman should be averaging.

    • I reckon England got too wound up about the barrage Jimmy Anderson got from Bumrah late on Saturday and decided to fight fire with fire, thinking it would be easy to knock the tail over after they got Pant early. Utterly brainless cricket.

      There’s nobody better than Joe Root with the bat, but he’s a pretty hopeless captain. Unfortunately, there’s no viable alternative at present.

      • Oddly enough, we did attend the same school, although years apart!
        It’s hard to say where England are at the moment with a number of key players unavailable, but there needs to be a big step up in mentality and performance before Headingley because whenever the pressure’s on the team crumbles. This team would get eaten alive by the Aussies in the winter where the key is big first innings runs – remember the halcyon days of Strauss, Cooke and Trott and those scores of 400 for 2 and 500 for 3….

        • See my post above about test averages. Only Root is a test class (actually world class) batsman currently, maybe Bairstow could be also, but his defensive technique seems to be lacking at the highest level, same probably applies to Buttler, Rory Burns has potential, but he is already in his 30s.

          Bowling is in better shape probably, but the best of them is nearly 40.

  12. It’s hard to watch England at the moment. They’re without Stokes, Broad, Archer, Woakes and Pope for various reasons but even then it looks like the ones who have got roped into test cricket would rather be playing in The Hundred. They look like they got caught when the music stopped. The long-form game is dying and that’s a shame, but if the players can’t be bothered then neither can I. But it comes to it, I can watch Australia getting rolled over for 61 in a 20/20 against Bangladesh all day.

    • I don’t think that is true. I may be mistaken but I believe for most players at that level, test cricket is still the ultimate form of the game. If England had won I am sure the players would have been very happy to have played a 5 day Lords Test in front of a (mostly) full house.

      • I would love to ask Buttler, Moeen, Bairstow and a few others if they could just choose to play white ball would they? No blame from me if they did. It needs one of them to just say no when asked to play a test match with no preparation, no practice. I genuinely wish Moeen had after the way the test set up has treated him. Id rather have seen him in the latter stages of The Hundred.

        The time will come when the two forms split Test and County or T20 and Hundred. Playing all forms especially during a pandemic is unsustainable. At least then red ball and white ball tournaments can be played at the same time.

        • Yes this is true. Am sure they want to play tests, but preparation is essential. The way the season is setup currently is totally ludicrous with the weeks traditionally used for test cricket now used for the pyjama version (school holidays I guess)

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