Posts Tagged: Chris Woakes

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

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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0England vs Sri Lanka — any Lessons Learned?

The third and final test in the Eng­land vs Sri Lanka test series is now at an end after the rain brought a damp squib of an end to the match.
So what have we learned? Not a great deal really. We are almost where we were three tests ago. Nick Compton would appear not quite of test level is one obvi­ous con­clu­sion. Per­son­ally speak­ing I feel it would be a little harsh to jet­tis­on him – I would give him the Pakistan series to make a final decision on him. I doubt that will hap­pen, how­ever and Lords was the last we will see of him in the whites of the three lions.… 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

0Cook shows his mettle in a Ballanced performance

Well done Alistair Cook. OK, so he missed out on mak­ing a cen­tury, just, but to score 95 when the chips were really down took unbe­liev­able char­ac­ter. The only way he was going to silence the crit­ics was with some runs and hope­fully today’s score marks a per­man­ent return to form. The crowd’s reac­tion when he scored his half cen­tury and the ova­tion when he left the field when speaks volumes as to the sup­port for him amongst the crick­et watch­ing pub­lic. He’s a good man and didn’t deserve some of the diatribe fired his way.

Geof­frey Boy­cott has pre­dicted a draw already – and the Rose Bowl pitch looks like it will pro­duce anoth­er unin­spir­ing match where the bat rules supreme. How ridicu­lous. We need pitches that have some­thing on offer for both bats­men and bowl­ers, one that rewards top expo­nents of both dis­cip­lines. So what if the game is over in four days instead of five? Short term fin­an­cial think­ing risks under­min­ing the entire fab­ric of the game – and then where will the money come from?… Read Full Article

1The Ashes urnAustralia hold the upper hand — in a dead rubber match

Two days in and Aus­tralia cer­tainly have the upper hand. But so what. The Ashes are won and won pretty con­vin­cingly at that. This is a dead-rub­ber match and is very remin­is­cent of Ashes series of old when Eng­land used to sud­denly pull a decent per­form­ance out of the hat when the urn was in the pos­ses­sion of the Aus­sies. Play­ers who time and time again let the team down would sud­denly grab a five-for or score a cen­tury and their series aver­age to the his­tor­ic observ­er would look half-decent.… Read Full Article