By winning the ODI World Cup, ok in a very tight final, England proved they have good batsmen and bowlers. It's not, from my perspective, the fault of the players, they are great cricketers, but the problem is with your selectors picking a test team based on your ODI team.
Joe Root is our only World-class Test batsman and sadly bang out of form, the rest are a mix of good county standard batsmen or ODI batsmen, at this level there's a huge chasm of difference between the disciplines and England have been found out, especially by the standard of the Aussie attack. When a bowler like Starc hasn't featured it tells you what we're up against...
The only carry-over from the World Cup is Jason Roy, who has admittedly failed. Last year we picked Buttler against India based on his one-day form and he was very close to being Man-Of-The-Series, only being narrowly nudged out by Curran. There's nothing to say that a good one-day player can't become a good Test player (Warner is an example), but our lot just haven't played enough recent red-ball cricket.
The West Indies tour went tits-up with some spectacular batting failures and we managed 85 against bloody Ireland at Lords, this malaise in batting seems to have developed over the last year but even when Cookie was around it always seemed to be 30-3 when him and Root were doing a rescue act. Our top three if you count Root as a No.4 is the big problem and county cricket isn't high enough in standard with the Test schedule as it is these days, these new batsmen rarely face proper test quality bowling in the county game...
Who'd have thought it - a day of proper test cricket! Excellent from Denly, brilliant from Root, and a highly significant (hopefully) 2 off 50 balls (!) from Stokes. Tomorrow might just be special.
We've made a game of it but tomorrow will be tricky in the first hour particularly if there's cloud about and with the new ball due we'll do well to get near the target. Could be a classic if we do...
Bravo Root, Denly and Stokes playing the night watchman role..... Proper test cricket and tomorrow could be a belter....
203 more needed and several batters left. I think I'll get some beers in and crank the barbie up tonight, this could be interesting.
Trouble is England have been in this situation before & have folded before lunch chasing a big score, I hope this time they can play like today & take it easy & just accumulate runs from bad balls, first hour & new ball crucial
Thought we should have kicked on after tea . 240-5 I think would have been a lot more positive than where we are now.Need a solid 1st session now