Congrats to Anderson - amazing achievement, but England lack a Plan B. Tunnel vision / naivety has cost them this series. Always going to be tough, but Bazball alone was never going to win out in the subcontinent. And the 'experienced' middle order needs to take.most of the blame.
A great achievement by Anderson, I reckon he will retire this summer, maybe after the Old Trafford Test v Sri Lanka on his home ground. Bazball has not worked against these quality bowlers in those conditions, there was no consistency from any of the batsmen, with Pope, Stokes, Foakes particularly poor, the others made a few starts but barring a few knocks failed to go on and make big scores. It should be an easy summer for England, with Windies and Sri Lanka Tests, and there should be lots of wickets for Jimmy in English conditions.
Pope had one great innings. Stokes got some filthy deliveries - ball keeping low etc and Foakes was often too timid; he should have been more Bazball and not just tried to survive. But all the batters underperformed , mainly due to good bowling by India but also poor shot selection or execution at times. Root was great when he played like Root - which he only did in two or three innings; Bairstow is so frustrating as he has all the shots and the power to destroy the opposition, but has bad habits which see him trapped in front of his stumps lbw or clean bowled far too often. Crawley and Duckett attack and play a high risk game - they did fairly well, but it’s not always going to pay off. But at least England are usually 90-2 after 15 overs, rather than 40-2 like they used to be. The bowlers did better than expected but the gulf in class and experience told in the end. England were competitive at times and key moments in games might have gone their way and made a difference to the outcome of the series had they had that extra experience and game awareness or made better choices when batting.
Boat race day today, it was a family day out to watch it from Barnes Bridge , we had an elderly aunt who lived nearby, parked up the old Morris Oxford at hers and a short walk to the Thames , no idea why we always supported Oxford but it could be the dark blue and certainly nobody in our family had ever been to Oxford university unless it was to repair the heating
The boat race has it's critics, elitist, entitled, irrelevant but if it wasn't for the rowing these kids would be in street gangs selling drugs and running the country
