Better morning than an afternoon for England.
Buttler essays another drop, no doubt to Bairstow’s considerable interest. I read that Buttler is very well thought off as a dressing room presence which is one reason his place in the side seems somewhat stickier than it might be. It strikes that this is an elaborate way of telling Bairstow that no one really likes him.
England need to eat different sandwiches. They always seem to be poor after lunch.
Well, Archer’s recovered - 2 in 2 balls. Shan Masood responds by going through 5 gears at once.
England now 12/2 having lost both openers for nuffin. I worry that our shorter batting line up is about to be horribly exposed and get us bowled out for sub 150 - it seems an awful lot rests on the two at the crease now.
It’s been 5 innings since we were last shot out for nothing. Given the figures I went through up thread, we’re due a collapse. And here it comes. 12/3
The follow on target is looking quite far away right now
Hey, look, the score is exactly 75/4 right now.
Lose another one between now and 100 and I can chalk two more up, one on each of my running tallies.
Feel the pain, but I’m curious.
Doesn’t every English county side have one of those unremarkable and metronomic, tie up an end, drop the ball on a length, tight line, give 'em nothing, little bit of wobble and/or seam bowlers who constrains bats until they get out to rash shots trying to get the score moving?
They used to.
Australian philosophy is typically you either bowl at 140k plus or turn it square. Anything else is dross. Which neatly explains why our bats are crap whenever the ball starts to swing/seam. The odd exception like Terry Alderman or Damien Fleming were gold dust in English conditions.
(and I’ve just got a tut tut from Discourse for replying to you 3 time in a 700 post thread!)
Looks like Pakistan v England is shaping up to be a good test. Here’s a really interesting article from Jarrod Kimber about Shan Masood’s redemption, and why opening in England is a nightmare for touring batsmen.
I’m way too old and decrepit to sit up to the wee hours watching a Test match in the UK via livestreaming but #1 son was and he was waxing lyrical about the quality of the Pakistani bowling.
Would that be the view of the educated cricket pundits of the SDMB?
It was like watching a clone of Wasim Akram, with all his faults taken out.
Joe Root looked completely lost.
Shaheen terrifies me, he is so good. Please no injury or off-field problems. Yesterday he took the new ball first, its a coming of age for him. Its illustrative of how much we have fucked up our pipeline that he the first strike bowler since Waqar Younis to have been able to play a couple of year behind a senior quick. Otherwise post Wasim, Waqar we just threw them into the lions den.
Poor Umar Gul could have had a much better career if in the first match he played he wasn’t Wasim and Waqars replacement.
Today I learned that Glenn McGrath was an Englishman. 
Don’t know if I qualify as an educated pundit but I did see the opening collapse (well most of it - I left the room for 30 seconds and Stokes was gone when I came back). Shaheen is really good, and terrifying for England in a different way than AK84 means. Pace and movement, finding a good length and also setting up batters nicely - Burns thought he knew where that wicket-ball was going, and found out too late that he really didn’t. Shaheen was unlucky not to get Root, who clearly wasn’t at all comfortable against him.
Abbas was excellent too - a graduate of the “speed is nothing” school of bowling, simply moving it around at will and gunning for an LBW. Which he duly got (“swing it away, swing it away, swing it away, swing it in” doesn’t seem like a complex plan, but if you can execute it on demand it will defeat most batters) and Sibley threw away a review on a ball that was always hitting middle. Stokes plan of coming forward to negate LBW wasn’t a bad one. I saw the replays and I’m still not sure - Stokes may not be either - how that ball negotiated its way past his outside edge and still found top of off but all the evidence is that it did.
Also, reading the post-mortems, let’s take a moment to admire this piece of press-conference mind-gamery from Misbah-ul-Haq:
“It’s crucial to take wickets with the new ball, especially when you are playing with just 326 runs on the board."
“Just” 326 when the oppostion are 94-4.
I think I suggested Shaheen was one to watch a while back, either on this thread or a previous series based one. He’s always looked like someone who could be frightening - I’ve not seen him recently what with one thing and another, and if yesterday was any indication, he’s developed into someone with the potential to be the best fast bowler in the world. He’s left armed, tall, quick, moves it on a string and young. I hope he doesn’t get injured, he should have a long and storied career.
Shah also impressed me. Obviously a bit greener, but tipped 90 mph and moves it around aggressively too. He’s got the goods and is going to be a serious proposition.
Abbas did what Abbas does. He was also excellent. Check out his county cricket stats over the last two years and it’s clear he likes English conditions. He’s basically Jimmy Anderson from a couple of years ago when it comes to bowling in England - and Jimmy’s figures in England back then were insane. Now our batsmen have to face someone like that, I think they’re not going to appreciate it.
Then they’ve two leggies.
This attack is going to fit England for clown shoes all series. Pope is the only one who looks like he has a clue what is going on out there (watch him get out first ball this morning now).
The Shan Masood story is a great one. Good for him working his arse off to improve. Thought his knock was excellent.
Our record against Pakistan is pretty poor and I don’t think we’ll be improving it here.
Seems harsh getting a warning for replying to people when they’re providing the functionality to do so…
Yeah, they’re still a bunch of dobbers knocking around in county cricket taking a load of wickets. Darren Stevens still takes loads of wickets and he’s 44 or something, just by hitting the seam in the mid-70s mph and getting it to jag. We’ve even picked one for England - Sam Curran takes loads of county wickets and rarely gets it above 80 mph.
English cricket is obsessed with winning in Australia (and, to a lesser extent, India - but mostly Australia) and as a result, ever since Duncan Fletcher was coach, they’ve been focusing on pace rather than skill as the assumption is that you need pace to win down under (Anderson the exception and hiding a lot of potential faults - even Broad would have taken more wickets if he hadn’t had been stupidly driven to become an “enforcer” and bowl short for much of his spells). All the dobbers don’t really get a look in as a result. Look at the haste to get Archer in the side, the willingness to work through the myriad injuries that Mark Wood has had, the desire to put 3 or 4 mph on Chris Woakes et al for evidence for where they want to put their eggs in this particular basket.
I don’t even think they’re necessarily wrong. Curran is going to get hammered anywhere other than England. Indeed, if it doesn’t move in the air or the ball goes dead off the seam, he’s going to hammered at Test level in England I reckon.
Yeah, this is the problem with most “military medium” English bowlers - get them on a non English wicket and they just become predictable.
Be interesting to see how today goes. Joss had a poor innings behind the stumps (and there was a suggestion on cricinfo that Bess could be dropped due to Buttler’s errors, when Buttler himself keeps his place),but he’s got another chance with the bat here to Do A Stokes.
Ben Jones from CricViz put a tweet up yesterday with a graph:
Since regaining the gloves, Buttler costs 26 runs per Test when keeping against spin. This is the worst record of any keeper in this category, starting from 1/1/18. He owes us a ton here just to get to parity given the chances he binned in innings 1.
Funny thing was Warne who has seen the attack in Australia and during the PSL was saying at the end of the Pak innings that “the tail enders just want to get out of here and at the English top order”, to disbelieving gasps from the English contingent (Wasim was keeping his mouth shut).
What, do they not do opp research in the SkySports box.
Naseem Shah is new, so I can understand, but Abbas made England life miserable 2 years ago and plays county and Shaheen has been talked about for a couple of years.
Warne also said they were playing a batsman short, so it seems the English were not ready for this. WOn’t be surprised if they recover now and get Crawley back in Southhampton.
England should have a better time of it today, supposedly sunny. 40 or so overs to go till the new ball.
One thing that has changed since last summer is that he has been told not to bang it in short by Waqar Younis, since Waqar feels (and he took Wasim’s advice on this) Afridis height is such that he gets sufficient uncomfortable bounce anyway.
We need some quick wickets today. Need at least a 100 run first innings lead, since I have no belief in our batting lineup.
I reckon Warne is an idiot on pretty much anything other than spin bowling - I don’t think this is a reflection on Sky Sports coverage which is usually pretty sound analytically, just that Warne lets his mouth run away with him. Cricket Twitter (at least the guys I follow) were taking the piss out of him for talking nonsense during that passage of play.
One of the issues that Sky have with Shah in particular is that they have to collect their footage of him from the matches that are being played on this tour. They don’t have the rights to footage of him from the Australian tour (CA did a deal with BT Sport to carry their home Tests and the BBL) and don’t have the rights to PSL either. They can talk about what he is capable of but can’t show it yet. I suspect getting good coverage of him is going to be simple if he keeps bowling like yesterday.
If I were a decent pace bowler, I would definitely be listening to Wasim and Waqar. Shaheen won’t go far wrong there.
Listening to TMS, it sounds like England are getting lucky. Pope has survived three inside edges to Shaheen, who must be wondering what more he has to do. Buttler has edged one short of the slips and been beaten several times. There have been a few scoring shots but it is not easy out there and it sounds like the wickets are in the post. However, we’ve all seen players survive tough spells through the grace of the cricketing gods and then make scores, and I’m sure that’s what Pope and Buttler are telling themselves right now.