Posts Tagged: Ben Stokes

0Ruthless India Despatch Visitors

There was a point in the fourth test between India and Eng­land when the hosts were 30-odd runs behind their oppon­ents with only three wick­ets remaining.
It was a false dawn though and the mas­ter­ful Kohli and mag­ni­fi­cent Jay­ant Yadav (in only his third test) com­bined to take the match and with it any hopes of a series draw bey­ond the grasp of the visitors.
It served to under­line the gulf in exper­i­ence of con­di­tions on the sub-con­tin­ent. India rammed home their great­er know­ledge and under­stand­ing of how to play in such an arena. Through most of this series they have been the far bet­ter of the sides and a win was inev­it­able once a lead of 200 was sur­rendered. … Read Full Article

0Bangladesh Cricket logoCongratulations to Bangladesh as England Spin to Defeat

Well done Bangladesh on a first test win over Eng­land. The vic­tory was thor­oughly deserved and the series could have so eas­ily fin­ished 2–0 to the hosts rather than the 1–1 draw.
Both matches were excel­lent adverts for test crick­et in that they were test­ing for both teams with the Tigers in my mind claim­ing a points vic­tory over the two games. In Mehedi Has­an they have clearly unearthed a young dia­mond who may yet help to pro­pel his team to more vic­tor­ies against the top teams.… Read Full Article

0Professional England See Off Tigerish Bangladesh

Well done Eng­land on a pro­fes­sion­al ODI series vic­tory against Bangladesh. The Tigers might not be viewed by all as the toughest oppon­ents and the vis­it­ors will cer­tainly face stern­er tests – but any Asi­an oppos­i­tion on home soil is any­thing but a pushover.… Read Full Article

0Points to Ponder After Opening Loss

One test in, Eng­land are one-nil down. Well done Pakistan
Hav­ing brushed Sri Lanka aside Eng­land are in the midst of a much stern­er test against an in-form Pakistan. And the vis­it­ors suc­ceeded where many oth­ers have failed of late, i.e. to expose England’s weaknesses.
Per­haps England’s main weak­ness is a lack of top qual­ity spin­ner. Moeen Ali is use­ful for a good few overs and tends to sur­prise many bats­men and trick them into a false sense of secur­ity. He is, how­ever, a second spin­ner. If he couldn’t bat would he be in the side? Very unlikely. He’s a backup option, not lead the attack mater­i­al. How and why Eng­land have chosen to ignore Adil Rashid amazes me. Over the dec­ades Eng­lish select­ors have shown a reluct­ance to pig leg-spin­ners and Rashid is seen as sus­cept­ible of leak­ing a few runs – but he has proven in ODIs and T20s that he is able to keep it tight. Thank­fully they have at least indic­ated they are will­ing to put this right by nam­ing him in the 13 man squad for the second test. They must pick him – espe­cially as Old Traf­ford tends to offer encour­age­ment to the twirlers. Eng­land have a bit of a selec­tion dilemma on their hands – I sus­pect Ben Stokes and Moeen are fight­ing it out for one place.
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0Super England Claim Super Series

With just one match left in this new “super series” format between Eng­land and Sri Lanka the home nation have proven them­selves com­pletely dominant
Win­ning the test series comes as no sur­prise – the vis­it­ors were nev­er going to be able to cope with Ander­son and Broad in home con­di­tions – but I expec­ted a stern­er test in the 50-over format.… Read Full Article

0Pitch Perfect England Need a Sterner Test

So the first test of the sum­mer is at an end. Well done Eng­land for a vic­tory for what was really a match of men against boys.

Sri Lanka are, to use that oft touted sound-bite, a team in “trans­ition” and boy did it show. It must be remembered, how­ever, that they kept a strong Eng­land bat­ting line up to a tad under the 300 mark – and half of those runs came from the excel­lent Jonny Bair­stow. Alex Hales did well too with a decent knock and must be kick­ing him­self he didn’t con­vert it into a ton. Had it not been for those two it might have been a closer run thing. We will nev­er know.… Read Full Article

0England and Wales Cricket Board logoManagement Need to Stoke the Fire for Success

Wow, incred­ible, fant­ast­ic. I could go on: the list of super­lat­ives to describe the mag­ni­fi­cent (there, I’ve slipped anoth­er one in!) innings by Ben Stokes in the drawn second test has to rank along­side the best ever knocks in inter­na­tion­al cricket.
I know – points to this writer for stat­ing the bleed­in’ obvi­ous! What his innings does do though is high­light the need for Eng­land to be able to not only spot tal­en­ted indi­vidu­als such as Stokes but to nur­ture them and encour­age them to reach their full poten­tial.… Read Full Article

0Ashes to Ashes, England to Dust

For what I am about to say may I be struck down from above…but I am glad that this Ashes series is at an end. Quite simply Aus­tralia have played far bet­ter than the sum of their indi­vidu­al parts and Eng­land have been, for the large part, abso­lutely diabolical.

As sure as night fol­lows day the Aus­sies wrapped up a dev­ast­at­ing 5–0 series win, yet again bowl­ing Eng­land out for a piti­ful total not worthy of an inter­na­tion­al line up. The vis­it­ors now need to go back, re-group and pick up the pieces from this poten­tially dis­astrous tour down-under.… Read Full Article

0Australia urn their easy Ashes victory

With a ruth­less determ­in­a­tion and a killer instinct worthy of a wolf chas­ing a wounded deer, Aus­tralia duly com­pleted the rout of a demor­al­ised Eng­land this morning.

Eng­land simply haven’t turned up this series and a reju­ven­ated Aus­tralia have preyed on every weak­ness and every fail­ing to humi­li­ate what is still a pretty good side.

Win­ning a fourth con­sec­ut­ive Ashes series was a pretty tall order and it was one that was bey­ond Eng­land. The urn now returns to Aus­tralia (fig­ur­at­ively speak­ing, any­way!) and we no doubt won’t hear the end of it from our cous­ins on the oth­er side of the planet.

As Cook admit­ted in his post-match press con­fer­ence, Eng­land have been out­played in all areas and will, I sus­pect, claim a 5–0 tri­umph. It’s simply not their style to take their foot off the gas. The wolf has caught the prey, now he wants to fin­ish every last tasty morsel.… Read Full Article