Can't agree.The quality of England's cricket right now, is very high. I am afraid they are on the stepping stone to becoming a dominant side. Hope I'm wrong. Not just going by results here, but the way they have played recently.
Your depth is pretty phenomenal, in both senses of the term - a.) number/quality of backup options, especially quick bowling and b.) batting depth down the order. I don't think even the 2011 side was that well-stocked. I mean, you've got talents like Buttler sitting out Tests (justifiably given Bairstow's recent displays) and you can drop someone like Finn after one indifferent performance, and now Woakes is pulling up trees. Then Moeen Ali can come in and score 150 at 5 or 6 down.Can't agree.
There's certainly the potential to leap back to number 1 in the world however there's serious problems with the batting and in the spin bowling department. Until those issues get solved then becoming a dominant side is simply too much of a leap for me.
Agree with this but would add a top draw keeper/batsmen as well. Swann and Prior were the key to that period of success for England.I think so long as a couple of the more peripheral batsmen get more comfortable at Test level the way Bairstow has this year then the top seven will be fine. You can afford to have one or two issues, it's almost never happened that a side has genuine class players from one through seven.
The spin issue is a bigger one. Partly because unlike the batting there are basically no candidates to improve on Moeen just being acceptable, and because I think a genuine top drawer spinner is necessary to make an attack more versatile, more consisent and last longer.
I think the 2011 side that became briefly brilliant probably could have done so without Bell or KP playing as well as they did at that time, but they definitely couldn't have done it without Swann.
It won't matter in most places where the quicks are more than competent to set up games, except in Asia. The main reason England won in India 2012 was for the first time in decades they had two world class spinners.Also, I don't know if you need a great spinner. There aren't any teams great at playing spin anymore. Moeen is more than capable of chipping in with a few wickets given how the quicks set up matches most of the time, and Root can turn his arm over. Plus an allrounder in Stokes to share the wicket-taking/stock bowling burden anyway.
Again, they supposedly 'officially' did this 2-3 years ago if I'm not mistaken. Certainly that was the statement from the sports minister. Obviously was never adhered to.And now they're officially re-introducing quotas. What a joke.
time to give up on cricket in South Africa