Definitely in englands hands, the injury to NZ bowler helps as hate to flog the others a bit more. Just need to see off the initial burst first thing. not sure why spinner wasn’t brought on, especislly after Stokes went just to give seamers a bit of a break.
If England do go onto win it'll be down to the same players that always get them out of trouble. Stokes, Root and the seamers.
Always accidentally click on this damn thread and it's just the ****ing misery that is cricket. Takes me a couple posts to realise my error too, so end up reading the ****. Rant over
Wonderful test match, wonderful result and a wonderful performance from Joe Root. Can go for a shower now!
Probably going regret saying this but.... My OCD won't allow me to leave a thread showing as unread so I have to click on it. Do the same with a few others
Great performance by root and foakes as wel as stokes before them 2. Does show the batting when stokes or root don’t get runs really is below average though as shown in first innings. Nice that losing the captaincy doesn’t seem to have had negative effect on roots batting.
Really all it took from either side was someone to stand up and not get themselves out. See off the née ball and then score then the time was right. In the end nz threw wickets away and out top 3 were fairly poor as well. Lees made a few nice strokes but he's now got himself in for 6 straight innings and got himself out as well. Develop yes but learn. Same fro Crawley. Pope is just out of position.
So how close is root gonna get to Sachin? 5000 runs away, another 4 years like last year and will get there. Remains to be seen if he keeps that form and continues with England that long. Currently 31. Same as as cook when hit 10k but cook only went on to get another 2k
Let’s be honest, without Root the last 2 years, the results would be even worse than they actually were and England would be on a par with Bangladesh.
Cook retired early though, 34? He's still out there doing it at county, could have gone om for another couple of years (or more) but he wanted to be at home on the farm. Tendulkar was 40 when he retired btw
I sort of expect that NZ have had a very good look at what went wrong last time and how the new kid surprised them and i kind of think they might just be a bit more tought to skittle this time round. I sort of expect england have not learned a thing and will bat exactly the same way again.
Not much movement today so easier batting conditions. England still don’t have much variety in attack when conditions dont help.
