Not the best day or week for the England cricket team as Sri Lanka took the honours with a thumping 8 wicket victory and a well deserved one as that. I know that most of us NOT606ers who have posted out thoughts to them winning, the win over in Pakistan being one such occasion, but when you lose with an inept performance and brain-dead batting, well you deserve to get as much pelters as you get...!!
I'm not sure that Pope deserves the stick he is getting, he is the stand-in captain after all, and I'm sure that he wasn't given free reign to captain as he wanted to. But, in saying all of that, he's no captain in my eyes...!!
My main beef lies with the batters and the village pub cricket shots that some of them played, sometimes with success, sometimes not, and with opposition analysts watching every ball nowadays such is the nature of coaching, I doubt the Indians and Aussies were quaking in their spikes...!! Yes Test match cricket can bore the pants off you, especially if you prepare a dead turner, but staying at the crease and building up a score is the success winning Test Match cricket. Always has and always will.
The fact that England had numerous occasions to post a 2nd innings score that would have snuffed out the Sri Lankans and a potential 3-0 clean sweep will not be lost on the other teams that we will play in the near future. Once a good team smells blood...!!
With the recent passing of Graham Thorpe, a man who could entertain as much as grind an innings out, it seems that we no longer make or nurture that type of player anymore, all bar Joe Root, and they are still relevant today as they were 10 or more years ago.
The bottom line is that if your gonna lose, do it trying to get a result, not look as if it's a pub village game where 6 and out is the order of the day...