Cricket 33: ODIs Still Aren’t Proper Cricket Edition

[ljkeane]

Curran will be a bit disappointed with that I think. He was looking largely untroubled by the bowling and Kohli wasn’t doing much to stop him farming the strike, he never looked overly confident there was a 2 there but he tried to force it.

[Jeor]

Ok, maybe not that close after all...

[ljkeane]

A bit of controversy on a review for lbw there. It looks like Kohli hit his pad rather than the ball to me and if the 4th umpire doesn't say he's nicked it he's clearly out, England certainly aren't happy.

[Jeor]

Yeah, I was pretty sure the sound that registered was his bat hitting his pad. Maybe on benefit of the doubt he had to say that (thinking generously it could have been a tiny double hit) but it seemed like the TV umpire made that judgement very quickly and not on the basis of benefit of the doubt.

Crucial wicket to miss out on, although I do expect England to wrap this up today anyway.

[ljkeane]

Whew, I was starting to get a bit nervous when that Kohli and Rahane partnership was ticking along. 

Anyway, despite my irritation with some of England’s batting, that was a pretty good test match and it’s been a good series. If India had won the toss at Lords it’d probably be 2-2 going into the last test.

[Philokles]

Madness to ever leave Moeen Ali out at home. As the series has been won, I would like to see Cook ‘rested’ for Burns at the Oval and Bairstow allowed to recuperate from his broken finger with an actual number 3 coming in.

[williamjm]

10 hours ago, Jeor said:

Yeah, I was pretty sure the sound that registered was his bat hitting his pad. Maybe on benefit of the doubt he had to say that (thinking generously it could have been a tiny double hit) but it seemed like the TV umpire made that judgement very quickly and not on the basis of benefit of the doubt.

I agree I don't think he hit the ball, but there was enough ambiguity there that I can understand why the third umpire might not overturn the result.

In the end it didn't matter, since it ended up being a great series victory for England. They'll be happy to have wrapped it up with a match to go, although it would have made the final match more interesting if India had managed to win this one. India's weakness again seemed to be the depth of their batting, the pitch didn't seem to have too many demons in it for a fourth-day pitch, but only Kohli and Rahane managed to put any kind of innings together. It has been a great series of fluctuating fortunes, although it does feel like it's been a mix of high quality bowling from both teams and hit-and-miss batting from both teams.

6 hours ago, Philokles said:

Madness to ever leave Moeen Ali out at home. As the series has been won, I would like to see Cook ‘rested’ for Burns at the Oval and Bairstow allowed to recuperate from his broken finger with an actual number 3 coming in.

They might have to locate an actual number 3 first. I'm not sure I can really even suggest any good prospects. Given the squad selection for this match, I suspect Vince would be the most likely to get picked, and he makes more sense than putting Moeen in at 3, but I'm not convinced.

I've seen some articles suggesting a recall for Ian Bell, which isn't necessarily the worst idea and the top order could do with some more experience, but even in his prime Bell did better in the middle order. It would also be a bit of an indictment of the younger English batsmen if they had to go back to someone in their mid-30s.

[ljkeane]

Cook's retiring from test cricket at the end of the series. He's not actually that old for a test batsman at 33 but it's probably time, he's not been at his best for a while.

Watching this series he's pretty much always got out to good deliveries rather than stupid shots like some of the England batsmen but whenever he gets a good delivery nowadays he seems to get out. In test cricket, especially as an opener, you're going to get good deliveries pretty often and you need to find a way to negotiate them and make a score at least some of the time, he doesn't seem capable of that anymore.

Anyway, despite the struggles he's had recently he's had a great career. Highest scoring England batsman, he's got runs in pretty much all conditions, won Ashes series home and away, won an away series in India and he's 6th highest scoring batsman overall. Not too shabby.

 

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Cook's retiring from test cricket at the end of the series. He's not actually that old for a test batsman at 33 but it's probably time, he's not been at his best for a while.

Watching this series he's pretty much always got out to good deliveries rather than stupid shots like some of the England batsmen but whenever he gets a good delivery nowadays he seems to get out. In test cricket, especially as an opener, you're going to get good deliveries pretty often and you need to find a way to negotiate them and make a score at least some of the time, he doesn't seem capable of that anymore.

Anyway, despite the struggles he's had recently he's had a great career. Highest scoring England batsman, he's got runs in pretty much all conditions, won Ashes series home and away, won an away series in India and he's 6th highest scoring batsman overall. Not too shabby.

It was starting to get to the stage where there was a decent possibility he might get dropped, so I can understand that he might want to leave on his own terms. That said, I wouldn't have been surprised if he could have recovered something of his old form given enough time, as you say he's not that old.

He does get to leave on something that is a high for the team - beating the number 1 side in the world - even if this series hasn't had many many personal highs for him.

Cook has had a great career, his performance in the Ashes win in the Australia might be one of the best performances throughout a series by any batsmen, and he also played a crucial role in the series win in India.

He'll definitely be a hard act to follow.

[ljkeane]

Somerset needed 78 to win today in the County Championship against Lancashire and got bowled out for 77 and a tie. Nice.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

Somerset needed 78 to win today in the County Championship against Lancashire and got bowled out for 77 and a tie. Nice.

They were also 77-8 before losing their last two wickets.

[Jeor]

On 9/4/2018 at 5:27 AM, williamjm said:

Cook has had a great career, his performance in the Ashes win in the Australia might be one of the best performances throughout a series by any batsmen, and he also played a crucial role in the series win in India.

He'll definitely be a hard act to follow.

Given he started his career at 21, I guess retiring at 33 makes sense - there are a lot of miles in those legs.

Let's not forget another signature achievement of his.

[ljkeane]

Buttler and Broad have saved England’s bacon here after another collapse. I didn’t think 300 was on yesterday.

ETA: I still think Buttler should be keeping wicket but he’s probably shown enough in this series that if Bairstow keeps the gloves they could promote Buttler up the order a bit.

[williamjm]

9 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Buttler and Broad have saved England’s bacon here after another collapse. I didn’t think 300 was on yesterday.

ETA: I still think Buttler should be keeping wicket but he’s probably shown enough in this series that if Bairstow keeps the gloves they could promote Buttler up the order a bit.

I don't think many people would have predicted England to be so far ahead in the game after how the first day went. It was excellent batting from Buttler and Broad and then followed it up with some good bowling to leave India in disarray. I'm not sure I see much benefit from promoting him - he could easily bat at 5 or 6, but those aren't the positions where England really need to find new batsmen.

I didn't comment on the first day's play at the time, but it was nice to see Cook managing to recapture some of his old form, it would have been a great story if he could have gone on to a century, but I suppose he's still going to have one final opportunity. Moeen's innings was a bit odd, he did show good determination (which he hasn't always shown in the past), but he did look like he was struggling with the challenge of batting at number 3 against a relentless Indian seam attack. I still don't see him as a long-term prospect in that particular position.

 

[Jeor]

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

Moeen's innings was a bit odd, he did show good determination (which he hasn't always shown in the past), but he did look like he was struggling with the challenge of batting at number 3 against a relentless Indian seam attack. I still don't see him as a long-term prospect in that particular position.

To be fair the Indians were bowling quite well during the time he was at the crease and it was clear the other batsmen were having trouble, too. However, I also think the Moeen at 3 is an experiment and it won't last - when you're at 3 you're often facing some pretty good bowling. Coming down at 6 or 7 you might get the second new ball (though the bowlers aren't as fresh) but more likely you'll get spin and second-tier seamers.

[ljkeane]

6 hours ago, williamjm said:

I'm not sure I see much benefit from promoting him - he could easily bat at 5 or 6, but those aren't the positions where England really need to find new batsmen.

My issue’s more that he shouldn’t be batting 7 if he’s just being picked as a batsman. I’d have him keeping wicket and leave him where he is. 

[Jeor]

Based on their form, wouldn't you just swap Buttler and Bairstow in the order?

If Bairstow's keeping, he should bat at the traditional WK slot of 7 and if Buttler is a specialist batsman he should be at 5.

I'd just base it on whoever is keeping bats at 7.

[ljkeane]

23 minutes ago, Jeor said:

Based on their form, wouldn't you just swap Buttler and Bairstow in the order?

Yeah, I wouldn’t have any major objections to that either, Buttler’s clearly in significantly better form. Having said that Bairstow’s got a lot better first class record than Buttler so he might be the better long term option to play solely as a batsman.

26 minutes ago, Jeor said:

If Bairstow's keeping, he should bat at the traditional WK slot of 7 and if Buttler is a specialist batsman he should be at 5.

I'd just base it on whoever is keeping bats at 7.

Yeah, agreed. 

Sangakkara when he was commentating for Sky earlier in the series was pretty firmly of the view keeping wicket takes a fair bit out of your batting and it’s a big ask to combine it with batting up the order. If anyone would know he would I suppose.

[Paxter]

A few stray observations (and one question) on this series:

1. India's selection has been atrocious. A few notable examples are Pujara's omission at Edgbaston (the eventual third-highest scorer in the series), selecting Kuldeep in seamer-friendly conditions at Lord's and playing an unfit Ashwin and no second spinner at Southampton. And the less said about the Pandya and Pant selections, the better. Only six of the eleven Indian players who started the series at Edgbaston remain in the side. 
2. England's lower-order has saved them again. Buttler and Curran are England's highest run-getters, while Woakes has the highest average. Cook, Root and Bairstow have just four fifties between them across 24 innings.
3. Ali must play every test in next year's Ashes. Rashid is by no means a poor bowler, but he doesn't have the control needed to win extended spells from his captain in bowler-friendly conditions.
4. WTF is up with Virat's captaincy?
5. The series has been incredibly well umpired, with a very low strike-rate of successful reviews.  

[williamjm]

20 hours ago, Paxter said:

1. WTF is up with Virat's captaincy?

I think he might actually have worse judgment when it comes to using reviews than Stuart Broad.

Today was probably the most one-sided day in the series so far. It'll likely end up as a 4-1 scoreline tomorrow, which I think makes England appear more dominant than they really were in the series, but I think they are deserving winners.

It was a fairytale ending for Cook with one final big century, there's a pleasing symmetry that he scored a fifty and century on debut against India and did the the same in his final match, and also managing to move past Kumar Sangakarra to become the fifth highest run scorer. Good to see Root getting a long-overdue century as well.

It was a devastating start to the Indian innings as well. I was slightly glad Anderson didn't take on more wicket, because this was always going to be Cook's day, and if Anderson had moved past McGrath to become the most successful seam bowler of all time it might have got a bit forgotten about, he might get a bit more attention if he does it tomorrow.