General Cricket Thread ...

[prasen9]

And this is linked to our inability to produce left-arm pacers. In the domestics, our batsmen do not face that many left-handers. See Sam Curran. He was bowling like McGrath against India and then was found to be mediocre.

[prasen9]

The SENA country tails are strong. England went from what 114-8 to 204 all out. You are never done especially when the ball gets old and the pitch settles down. It is not only India. West Indies batting is crap but their bowling has been good at home. They too find it difficult to dislodge tails at home. At least our spinners mow down tails better but when we visit abroad, we are more vulnerable to a wagging tail. This is just my perception. Will do the numbers if needed.

[Atithee]

The last two top scored for England. Only once before in 1885 has it happened.

[prasen9]

What is "it"? The last two top scoring for England? Or top-scoring for any team? It certainly is not going to happen with our tail but Shami and Bumrah did wag once.

[PKBasu]

Australia pull off a rare away-series win, after dominating Pakistan in the second and winning the third test (116 runs). Congrats to Cummins and team. Lyon got a 5-for to finish it off today. Swepson, the other spinner, was a complete washout.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Aussies should have won it by 2-0

[PKBasu]

Their second spinner was utterly useless. I wonder what happened to Ashton Agar?

But Usman Khawaja (now aged 35, and only playing his 49th test) had an absolutely spectacular series.

[prasen9]

Why Ussie was dropped for the likes of Handscomb, etc. and the hapless openers they have used was never clear to me. Travis Head? Maybe I can justify because Head is a classy bat and is young and they don't want to replace all their MO batters at once. But the others who were preferred to him? Travesty. And, anyway, if you have to drop him why not move him to the opener's position where other than Pucovski whose head is his problem, there are really no good batters in their land. And, Ussie had played very well as an opener before. Anyway, good that he could tour his ancestral land and played very well there. Happy for him.

Shawn Marsh, Harris, Handscomb, Renshaw come to mind. I do not know if all of them were played when he was kept out but Harris certainly was. And, I think Handscomb was too ... He is certainly better than all of these. Perhaps an all-time Aussie great (won't make the top-10 but the next rung, arguably a top-15 bat) if he is allowed to play a full career.

[prasen9]

And now, the WI tail wags. From 128/7 to 232/8. Of course, WI has capable bats at the end. To be fair, again, the ball got older and the conditions got slightly better and batting got easier. But, this sort of tail wagging happens too often these days because people have figured out with some effort and practice you can get your lower order to bat well. And the ball always gets older. After all these guys are athletes. At one point, we used to have horrible fielders. We would select them based on their bowling and batting skills only. Captains have changed that. Kohli taking it to a world-class level. We need a captain to have a yo-yo test for bowlers' batting and take that part to another level. No longer should we accept just one skill from a bowler. They need to field and bat well. With our population (of people playing cricket) and money, we should be able to find 5 people capable of doing that. The top teams are already doing that.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Its worst to see West Indies have done with talented Roston Chase. He looked so much promishing against Indian bowling, now he got dropped with few failures. No quality replacement of Sarwan, Shiv Chandrapaul, Hooper at the middle order

[prasen9]

lol. Roston Chase. 43 tests, 75 dismissals. Fantastic performer. Drumrolls please. Scores at 26.78 runs/innings. Why is WI not awarding him life membership of the test team. 43 tests is about maybe 30 tests too many for a player who cannot bat at the international level.

WI did the right thing in choosing people who performed for them: Blackwood, Bonner, Brathwaite, Mayers, Da Silva, Holder. They need one more batsman. Or maybe two if they want to stack up the batting. Campbell has been worse than Chase and should be dropped. Brooks also marginally worse. So, I think this is where Rajkumar bhai is coming from. My preference would be to dump all the mediocre batsmen who failed. Dump Hope, Chase, Campbell, and Brooks. Get two of your young prolific domestic bats and give them a run.

Anyway, on another hand, WI won against the hapless England. They should also only perhaps retain Root, Stokes and Lees. Maybe Bairstow. And, get two more bats and a keeper. Dump all of the existing test players who have batted. But, hey, maybe they won't. If that is the case, then they should choose Burns and Buttler and maybe Lawrence, who seemed to be starting to turn it around. Ideally, they should not bring back these three and get young batsmen who are promising. Surely, county cricket is developing some good talent, no? Hope the young Indian bats work hard in English conditions and get us a win to get a much needed series victory abroad. A draw will be a letdown against this weak batting side.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

West Indies haven't won a test series against top test nation except England. England after 2015 WC debacle has completely changed their focus to shorter format cricket as a result their test performance is getting hampered.Beating Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or even Pakistan in test is not such a big deal as West Indies along with these 3 sides have quite similar performance sometime they are up, sometime down.

If we see current West Indies side only few i,e Jason Holder, Blackwood, Chase or Braithwaite have given their best performances againt best test sides rest have been highly average. But its good to see talents like Bonner, Seales, Myers can do good for WI and some good performances expected from them when they faces the best test team.

[prasen9]

Chase is useless. Just look at his record. WI would do better to not accept this sub-standard performance and demand better. They should try their next best young batsman and nurture him.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Brilliant double ton by Pujara for Sussex in County Championship. So after he gets dropped from test squad, he scores 398 runs in 4 FC games with an average of nearly 99

[Atithee]

Andrew Symonds is no more. RIP….
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/andr ... 46-1315023