Shane Warne made me giggle there. 'Here in England you get 9 months bad weather......... And then 3 months of winter'
I still fancy us to put a couple of decent partnerships together. We bat all the way down to number 10.
We are in such a fallow period with our openers. Think someone made the point during the last test where since the 70s we have always had 1 established opener - it's a line dating back to Boycott-Gooch-Atherton-Trescothick-Strauss-Cook where when one "great" retires, we already have another established opener in the team to smooth the path for the new one. In the 6 years after Strauss retired we never came close to finding a replacement (or maybe they discarded them too soon) and here we are with Burns and Hameed, both who look walking wickets 9 times out of 10
Looks more of a batting day today so hopefully Malan, Pope, Bairstow and Moeen can capitalise. Even a lead of 150 puts us way ahead in the game
I’ve seen hameed bat 3 times and he’s not looked like a walking wicket at all. His wicket yesterday was simply down to pressure to get off the mark imo.looked a good batsman last test. It’s also his second test as an opener in 4 years. The issue we have is that we didn’t have that “man to step into the breach” when Cook retired, by the time he retired, it was still up in the air who’d be opening for England. When Cook “became” that batsman he had time to settle.
I'm not sure this is a such a good batting track like what's being reported. The ball is moving about quite a bit and the bounce didn't look true when the Indians were bowling last night. I think we'll do well to get 300 from the position we are in now. I'm looking forward to seeing Pope batting, he's due a good innings and has all the talent in the world.
Maybe, but with the sun out and the green tinge hopefully lessened, the ball shouldn't move as much - don't forget, the Indians haven't been able to move the ball as much as the English bowlers. Would like to see Malan take the attack to them this morning like Thakur did to our lot
