0Cook ubonisa ukholo yakhe yokusebenza Ballanced

Wenze kakuhle Alistair Cook. Kulungile, ke waphulukana nokwenza ikhulu leminyaka, nje, kodwa ukuba amanqaku 95 xa iichips zisezantsi ngokwenene zathatha isimilo esingakholeleki. Inye kuphela indlela awayezothula ngayo abagxeki yayikukubaleka okuthile kwaye ngethemba amanqaku namhlanje abuyiselwe ngokupheleleyo kwifom. Ukusabela kwesi sihlwele xa wayenika inkulungwane yakhe kunye nokunyuka xa wayephuma ebaleni xa wayethetha ivolumu ngenkxaso yakhe phakathi kweqela lekhilikithi elibukele esidlangalaleni. Yena umntu olungileyo kwaye engafanele ezinye diatribe ngamalahle indlela yakhe.

UGeoffrey Boycott uxele kwangaphambili umzobo-kwaye iRose Bowl pitch ijongeka ngathi iza kuvelisa omnye umdlalo ongacacanga apho ibheji ilawula ngaphezulu. Uhlekisa kanjani. Sifuna iibitch ezinento ezinokuthengiswa zombini amalulwane kunye nee Bow Bowers, lowo uvuza abagqatswa abaphezulu kuzo zoqeqesho zombini. Ngoko ke yintoni ukuba umdlalo ngeentsuku ezine endaweni emihlanu? Ixesha elifutshane lokucinga ngokusemngciphekweni wokujongela phantsi ilaphu lomdlalo-kwaye ke izakuvela phi le mali?

Poor decision I thought today to retain both Stu­art Broad and Jimmy Ander­son. Both have had a rel­at­ively poor sum­mer by their high stand­ards and no one should be a guar­an­teed pick (oth­er than the cap­tain). Drop­ping one of them would have sent a clear mes­sage to the rest of the side that they can­not take their place for gran­ted. Healthy com­pet­i­tion helps to increase per­form­ance – a lack of com­pet­i­tion breeds com­pla­cency. Broad and Ander­son are class per­formers and will bounce back but a little nudge wouldn’t have hurt. Liam Plun­kett can count him­self unlucky to miss out but Ben Stokes less so. His bowl­ing has been reas­on­able but he’s on a rot­ten trot with the bat. He is anoth­er that will bounce back stronger. Good to see Chris Jordan back in the side – he can be a class per­former for many years to come. Chris Woakes on the oth­er hand a pick that simply bemuses me. Hope­fully I will be proven wrong but I really can’t see him as being of inter­na­tion­al class. He barely mer­its a one day pick, let alone a selec­tion as front line bowl­er in an attack of four.

Someone who has embraced test match crick­et with great aplomb is Gary Bal­lance. Anoth­er ton under his belt today means he is rap­idly estab­lish­ing him­self in that most chal­len­ging of pos­i­tions, the num­ber three slot. iimvavanyo ezintandathu, three cen­tur­ies scored. It’s look­ing good for the hard-fight­ing York­shire­man (adop­ted). It would be nice to see him go on tomor­row and register a ‘daddy’ hun­dred. Bal­lance remains in the middle with Ian Bell who was for­tu­nate to escape being out LBW. It was pretty plumb and should have been giv­en by the umpire but it wasn’t, leav­ing the Indi­ans per­plexed. Lonke ixesha isigqibo ngathi uya kubo uncumo zibalekele ngapha ubuso bam. After all they are the ones who rejec­ted the Decision Review Sys­tem (DRS) ngoko ke uya kufumana izigqibo baye kubo. If they refuse to embrace the tech­no­logy to reduce poor decisions, they can­not com­plain when one goes against them.