No mention of the fantastic win by the Irish in the West Indies yesterday? And you call this a Cricket thread?
Good partnership from Stokes and Pope. Rabada banned for his celebration on removing Root and other misdemeanours.
Nice for our lower order to turn it on against someone - usually the other way round! Mind you Pope was there to help and Curran is a pretty decent run scorer.
Good to see Pope and Sibley making runs in this series and Crawley not out of his depth either. Have we actually found some young batsmen who can bat at long last ?
And I'm impressed that Stokes can reign it in when he needs to be cautious and then accelerate when he can. Whereas Buttler tries to be a Test player but can't do cautious.
The problem is that although test cricket is supposed to be the pinnacle of the game, the uncouth slogathons of 20/20 in particular mean that a lot of young openers coming in to the test team often find it harder to adapt, hence the search for 1,2 & 3 batting positions for England taking too long.
Yes though they play enough county cricket as openers to be pretty familiar with the requirement of the role in the longer form. It's just good to see so many young players in the side without single figure scores next to their name. Even Bess is now taking wickets with his spin.
We finally bowled them out, but only after a 99 run last wicket stand, mainly because Root was trying to get a "Five for", he finally let someone else bowl after he conceded 2 x 6, 3 x 4 and 4 byes in just one over
Apparently the highest number of runs ever conceded in an over in test cricket (28). Ruined his figures and serves him right !
Doesnt put Root in a good light particularly as Captain when he puts personal glory before what's best for the team
I agree but if there was another on 4, he would have put him on to keep bowling and there was a massive amount of leeway.
Had the usual collapse and Stokes got into a row with a "fan" it seems. But Root and Pope steadied things.
Apparently Sky replayed it randomly a number of times. Stokes clearly doesn't like being mistaken for Ed Sheeran haha
Can anyone explain why England are going to Sri Lanka again, less than 16 months after the last time they were there (Nov 2018)?
