Have we hit rock bottom yet?

…not far off it 🙄🙄

It’s not pretty is it?
I just can’t work out who the next captain should be. Who else is guaranteed a place in the first 11? Root has been shocking here but he’s still a great batsman. Everyone else looks on very shaky ground.

Rock bottom should come today about 1 hour after play starts I reckon.

Who else is guaranteed a place in the first 11?

I think we should pick the person who would be the best captain and accept that they might not always be worth their place. As to who that should be, I’d give Broad a go, with Stokes covering when Broad needs a rest. Alternatively, Morgan?

There’s no obvious answer but that’s no reason to stick with a guy who has demonstrated time and again that he’s not up to it.

Ten wicket thrashing, bottom of the table, and Root is talking about the improvement he’s seen…

Jesus.
I’ve only seen a few of the windies test not great.
Windies did well good cricket england need to strip back the test team no safe positions in the team.
Aussie coach?

I’d like to see Root step down, previously I’d not said that as there was no-one else to do the job as Stokes doesn’t want it (and shouldn’t be given it even if he does). This series has changed that.
Broad is one idea, no way the ECB will do so, but it’s an idea.
I’ve seen Morgan mentioned, I doubt he’d take it and I’m not convinced he’s right either.
In terms of vaguely sensible ideas, Billings is one shout. Proven captain, young-ish and its not like Foakes has set the world alight. Burns is another proven skipper, albeit one who’s just been dropped. I did read someone saying Crawley too, but I suspect that’s mainly as he looks right (tall, blond, public school educated opener) rather than any specific skills.

It’s roots random tactical minefields he always sets that boggle me, every player has bad time with the bat even a year roots had his share he is far from a bad player but in the ashes he was out performed as captin.
ECB will stuff it all up anyway it’s tradition

There seems to be a lot of talk about how the attitude in the dressing room has been much better. Is that a dig at Broad and Anderson? Where they dropped because they challenged Root too often?

Morgan?

Currently the ‘best’ and most successful captain in English international cricket. Knows how to manage the side in the field. Bats a bit too. Could do worse.

I like Root to just bat.

Morgan last played a red ball match in 2019! Obviously a dearth of candidates if he’s being mentioned.

Have the pitches in the Caribbean deteriorated? The last few England tours have featured stodgy, slow, turgid surfaces – they can’t have been like this in the 70s and 80s can they with the quicks the windies had?

Obviously a dearth of candidates

That’s the real issue, but its a dearth of batting talent that’s worse.
Do any of the top England-qualified players play the top grades abroad any more e.g. Sheffield Shield? (Excluding short format leagues.) I seem to recall in my rapidly receding youth that a lot of top players experienced Aussie/SA etc wickets during the winter. I may be mis-remembering.

Interesting article in Wisden about potential captaincy candidates. A few terrible shouts, but one I’d not seen mentioned was coaxing Moeen Ali out of red ball retirement.
Lots of captaincy experience, solid performer, well respected. What more can you want.

Women’s team showing the men’s team how it’s done I see. A comprehensive victory over South Africa and into the final. Lovely stuff.

Excellent from thw Women, really pleased for them. Now just the small matter of knocking over Australia.

For the men’s test captain? Not Morgan – his back will never last for a 5 day test. Not Broad – he’ll burn all the reviews in his first over. Billings looks worth a punt but if they could tempt Mowen out of retirement I’d go for him.

Not Broad – he’ll burn all the reviews in his first over.

You make a fair point, but Broad seemed pretty insightful when I heard him on commentary. Perhaps it should be a condition of the job that reviews are delegated to the vice captain…

Yes, excellent performance from the women. After the start they had that is quite some recovery and whatever happens now they have a achieved what they were expected to. Anything in the final would be a bonus.

It says something when the names in the frame for mens test captain are people who aren’t even in the team and either can’t or no longer want to even play test cricket. You could say that Broad shouldn’t have been dropped, but even when he’s fit he’s unlikely to play all games of a series these days. Stokes is the only player who could be captain and would definitely be in the team if he’s fit.

On a plus the woman are smashing it.
I think they will edge it on Sunday

Women have done really well, but the Aussies won’t drop that many catches, so they better take wickets.

Hope they do win though. Show the blokes how to do it.

They have an excellent bowling attack, but I’m afraid the batting is just too fragile to really trouble the Aussies (sound familiar?). I hope I’m wrong, but the first wicket always goes down for nothing and although Danni Wyatt had a great day out today she was dropped five times and if SA had taken even a few of their chances it could have been a very different story. But you never know, in a one off game anything can happen and England have come as close as anyone to beating the Aussies recently. Being the underdog won’t hurt either.

Well played Australia, class of the tournament. Great effort from Nat Sciver, tough scoring 148* and being on the losing side!

Yep, hell of a game. If someone had managed to stay with her instead of 20’s and 30’s could have made it close even with that total. Didn’t want to post during it for fear of commentator cursing it.

Feel sorry for Alyssa Healy too. Not only has she inherited her uncle’s skills, she’s got his gurning looks as well 😉

They are a different class sadly. Time for Brunt & Shrubsole to move on I feel.

I stayed up to watch it live, so feeling like c@@p now!!

On the subject of the men’s test side…

Lees – looks half reasonable and he needs to be given a chance. It’s not as if we’re awash with talented openers.

Crawley – I hope he isn’t destined to become another Hick. Occasional flashes of brilliance (where he looks like a world beater, not just a dasher) but mostly frustratingly tame dismissals.

Root – probably needs a break from captaincy, but one of England’s only two world class batters.

Lawrence – loads of natural talent, but an utter space cadet.

Bairstow – should never be seen in keeping gloves again. Good flat track bully with the bat, but seam movement exposes him. Such hard hands that an edge from him will carry to the cordon 95% of the time.

Buttler – time to fill his boots in white ball contracts.

Stokes – world class batsman. A great 4th seamer to have, not good enough to be 3rd seamer.

Woakes – good trier, but not worth his place with bat or ball individually. Doesn’t fancy it with the bat when the bowling is quick and his bowling is gun barrel straight military medium unless there is a lot of juice in the pitch or very favourable overhead conditions.

Foakes – it is great to see a proper keeper, not just an iron-mitted stopper like Buttler and Bairstow. The problem is his batting. Could go the way of other specialist keepers who couldn’t bat at test level.

Overton – needs ****ing off once and for all. Looks like he should hit the deck and move it around with a heavy ball. Actually a cart horse who bowls floaty shite.

Mahmood – has potential, especially with reverse swing later in the innings, but skiddy bowlers can end up going for lots of runs. He needs to model himself on Mohammed Shami.

Wood – a nice to have. Can break partnerships or clean up the tail, but he shouldn’t be bowling long spells and is 100% on the limit, every ball. He has to throw himself off his feet to bowl at the speed that is his USP.

Robinson – a more talented version of Overton who does hit the deck a bit, but is basically a good old fashioned county trundler.

Leach – I want to like him, nice action and is a subtle bowler, but in the era of balsa bats his subtlety can be lost simply by being twotted to cow corner. He also gets cut too much. Orthodox left armers should never get cut for four.

All in all a bit of a shitshow. And we’re going to lose Anderson and Broad soon – if not already.

It’s an interesting write up, and I agree with most of it. But the question is – who else? It’s very well saying that so-and-so isn’t Test class, but are they the best XI or XIII available now? Who else would you bring in?

I don’t follow the county game any longer, so no idea myself, a genuine question.

I hope they are not done with Pope. Or Hamed.

Lawrence…does he have enough upstairs to make himself more useful?

who else?

Bloody good question. Fisher looked OK. Pope has what it takes technique wise to be world class. Hameed is much of a muchness with the likes of Burns or Sibley.

This is the real worry. Who could replace, for example, Leach? Dom ‘two long hops an over’ Bess? I’d rather have Root bowling his roundarm filth than that!

What we won’t have bowling-wise is a world-class pair of quicks who can rout a side one week and contain them the next on a flat deck.

I liked the look of Ollie Stone, but have no idea how he is injury-wise. He’s a quicker but less movement version of Broad. But it is impossible to see a ‘next generation’ already in place to build a team around. The aussies have always seemed to have this. The Waughs and Tubs overlapped with the Hayden-Langer-Slater-Ponting generation who overlapped with Clarke-Hussey-North and so on with Warner-Smith etc. England don’t have that strength in depth because the gulf from county cricket is massive – it is where discarded academy and ‘squad’ players end up mixed in with journeyman players – somewhere you end up when you ‘fail’ rather than somewhere you graduate from.

I agree. I think cricket is more important to the Aussies, add to that the much smaller feeder system and you have the conveyor belt you describe. I know the 2 division county system was supposed to sharpen the standard in Div 1 but it just hasn’t, and I wonder if it’s time to jettison as a system and revamp to a six or eight franchise system like the hundred.

To me the problem with the Div 1/2 system is that players didn’t really move around. Most English players play for the county they were at the academy of. In many ways that means if your county is a perennial div2:county that’s where you’ll play no matter what your test aspirations are.

It’s a real trap – one of the best things about cricket is having a county ground close to a lot of the population where ‘watchable’ cricket is played regularly. Slim it down and watch the remainder go into administration is not too appealing. But….if I was going to slim it down it would be to the half a dozen test venues. It kind of makes the most logical sense. Players honed on test grounds and test grounds getting the lion’s share of the revenue and support. Maybe the other grounds/clubs specialising as short format grounds and recruiting players for that. Arguably easier to self finance a short format game with bigger crowds rocking up on fewer days.

All Div1/2 really did was reduce the pool of non-centrally contracted players the national team was prepared to pick from. In the early days there was also a crazy situation where nearly all the overseas pro bowlers were world class seamers in one division and spinners in the other.

It probably is time to slim the whole thing down to 8 or so ‘franchises’. It is a tricky one. As a cricket fan I would mourn the loss of Canterbury, New Road or Grace Road (but not Derby – horrible ground), but it might be in the longer term interest to do that, flog the grounds for city housing and use the cash to fund a new system.

The problem in English cricket goes way deeper than div 1/2. It goes all the way down to grassroots junior level where the county pathways are about money rather than players. It costs £2000/year to have a junior in the county system. Where I am in Sussex, all the county players come from 3 private schools with all the facilities.

Club cricket is thriving – cheap to play and kit available to those who can’t afford it. We all know India/Pakistan/SL/Bangladesh are cricket mad. Their English communities have huge participation in club cricket, but that’s where it stops.

So Root has gone and there’s no obvious choice to replace him.

I’d ask Chef if he wanted a season as interim captain

I cannot see a long term replacement is available today. root going was probably a good thing for him and his health the problem is above the captain

Yes, Root stepping down is right for him I’d hope.

But to replace him – not so sure. Stokes is not without his problems (off field) and on field is not at his best. Whilst a shoe in for the team (when well) I’d rather he focus on being the best batter and bowler he can be. Him performing with bat and ball is key to a balanced side.

After than there is no one that is an automatic selection for the first 11, which surly needs to be a goal for your captain. Not ideal given he just got dropped/rested but I’d put Buttler in charge I think. If I was going to dip into the better county captains who could just about hold it together at international level…Burns maybe as on the fringes of the England setupal ready? Or get Morgan to do the test job too.

Trouble is, is there a young cricketer in the wings who’ll be ready for the job in time? Pope? My feeling is there is quite an interim to span until the next obvious candidate comes along.

Can’t see it being anyone other than Stokes, despite the fact it being likely to affect his batting/bowling. But it may not I guess. Worth a go.

The others talked about aren’t even automatic picks, in fact beyond Root and Stokes who is?

Moeen, if you can coax him back to red ball, the the best optio
If not, Billings has captaincy experience and whilst not an automatic pick, at least has an argument for the place.
However, Stokes will be offered it, I just hope he’s clever enough to turn it down…

Stokes confirmed as England Captain just needs to stay fit and not “do a botham” or perhaps do “do a botham” ;).

Yeah it’s a gamble on stokes game and his cricket.
It’s wrong they have put him in this situation he plays with 100% from what I’ve seen, adding the stress of blaming him for losing the press will do could finish him.
I do hope stokes smashes it thought… Do they need a new bolwer to replace his day to day work?

So stokes is on form today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket

So, Brendon McCullum as the red ball coach. Not sure anyone saw that coming at all. Brave appointment that is.