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England.....Where to from here?

Father Time

School Boy/Girl Cricketer
Following the dreadful defeat to Pakistan at Lords, where do we go from here? Thought we need our own thread to discuss the various different options & avenues ahead for our failing Test side. Do we stick or twist with Trevor Bayliss? Is it all the fault of the ECB? Are our players simply not good enough? Is Joe Root the best captaincy option? Potential young players (& not so young) to consider? With an Ashes series in 2019, how are we going to turn the current losing mentality & malaise around? New coach/coaching team? Your thoughts please?
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Following the dreadful defeat to Pakistan at Lords, where do we go from here? Thought we need our own thread to discuss the various different options & avenues ahead for our failing Test side. Do we stick or twist with Trevor Bayliss? Is it all the fault of the ECB? Are our players simply not good enough? Is Joe Root the best captaincy option? Potential young players (& not so young) to consider? With an Ashes series in 2019, how are we going to turn the current losing mentality & malaise around? New coach/coaching team? Your thoughts please?
It'll all seem OK again come September after we've rolled India
 

Father Time

School Boy/Girl Cricketer
As someone who is passionate about Test cricket & England in particular, I am shocked at how poor we have become. The more I think about it, the more I vere towards having a massive clearout of the dead wood. I think that we should invest in youth & stick with it even if we lose for another 18 months. We cant do any worse. Pakistan should be a shining example.
 

Shri

Mr. Glass
Anderson's getting old. Will be interesting to see if his body holds up the whole way in a 4 test series tbh.
 

SeamUp

International Coach
Porter/Coad will seem like Ball/C.Overton selections. Woakes is better then them in my opinion in style. Fisher could be a solution in time.

I see Athers was even going for left field calls like Simon Jones ie Saqib Mahmood but he needs to get on the park.
 

Thomas S

Cricket Spectator
We need to go back to basics in terms of our test cricket
We always seem to be in a one-day attack mode, no1 has the patience to stick around score 1 run off 30 balls and build an innings
Bayless needs to go as well fair enough he's worked wonder on the White Ball team but the test team has declined at an embarrassing rate
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
You can trace the decline in the standard of players produced back to when they doubled the number of 2020 group matches and started to shoe-horn the 4-day games into the margins of the season. The current schedule where the 4-day games are mostly played in spring and autumn are a logical extension of that, and obviously finding room for the 100 ball competition will do the seemingly impossible and make things even worse. Add a domestic structure whereby most players are learning their trade in Division 2 of the CC and it's no shock to see the rotten standard of players coming through.

Clearly the people in charge don't give a damn about the standard of the test side, which makes it difficult for the rest of us to care any more. There was a recent piece by Matthew Engel (long time cricket correspondent in The Guardian and elsewhere) who has become so disenchanted with the English game that he now follows baseball instead. I couldn't go that far, but I completely understand where he's coming from.

Here it is.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...-but-can-the-novelty-of-baseball-fill-the-gap
 
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Engle

State Vice-Captain
England seemed jaded, whilst Pakistan looked hungry.
To get an idea of the difference in experience prior to the Test, England had played 388 more Tests, obtained 17063 more runs and 935 more wickets than Pakistan.
 

theegyptian

International Vice-Captain
You can trace the decline in the standard of players produced back to when they doubled the number of 2020 group matches and started to shoe-horn the 4-day games into the margins of the season. The current schedule where the 4-day games are mostly played in spring and autumn are a logical extension of that, and obviously finding room for the 100 ball competition will do the seemingly impossible and make things even worse. Add a domestic structure whereby most players are learning their trade in Division 2 of the CC and it's no shock to see the rotten standard of players coming through.

Clearly the people in charge don't give a damn about the standard of the test side, which makes it difficult for the rest of us to care any more. There was a recent piece by Matthew Engel (long time cricket correspondent in The Guardian and elsewhere) who has become so disenchanted with the English game that he now follows baseball instead. I couldn't go that far, but I completely understand where he's coming from.

Here it is.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...-but-can-the-novelty-of-baseball-fill-the-gap
They were **** in the 90s too when there was no t20. Didn't have great fast bowlers or spinners or bats then too.



T20 and specifically IPL has fundamentally changed the game of cricket at the professional level.

ECB tried to hold off (see KP) for as long as they could but in the end they couldn't hold out any longer. The players wanted to play for the money, for the competition, for the atmosphere.- and they want it at home too.

ECB haven't transitioned well (and clowns like Graves do it no favours) but there was no good way of doing it; particularly if you value tests and 4 day championship cricket over the t20 game which most (including myself ) fans of the english game do.
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
They were **** in the 90s too when there was no t20. Didn't have great fast bowlers or spinners or bats then too.



T20 and specifically IPL has fundamentally changed the game of cricket at the professional level.

ECB tried to hold off (see KP) for as long as they could but in the end they couldn't hold out any longer. The players wanted to play for the money, for the competition, for the atmosphere.- and they want it at home too.

ECB haven't transitioned well (and clowns like Graves do it no favours) but there was no good way of doing it; particularly if you value tests and 4 day championship cricket over the t20 game which most (including myself ) fans of the english game do.


We had better players coming through in the 1990s than what we're seeing now. It just needed central contracts and some intelligent management from Duncan Fletcher to turn things around. For me, what we're seeing nowadays feels terminal, whereas 20 years ago I felt there was some decent talent available, even if not quite World XI standard.

I don't begrudge our players wanting to play in the IPL. I do massively begrudge those in charge of our domestic system wantonly killing off anything that doesn't earn a quick buck because they have no idea how to protect the game in the longer term. As you say, it was never going to be easy accommodating everything, but anyone with any intelligence and the balls to stand up to the blinkered short-termists would have produced something better than this.
 

Father Time

School Boy/Girl Cricketer
OK, lets say if, just if, we left out Cook, Stoneman, Malan, Woakes, Broad, Anderson. What would that leave us with?
I just compiled a list of young players who have represented the Lions recently or have shown promise.

Nick Gubbins
Keaton Jennings
Haseeb Hameed
Liam Livingstone
Joe Clarke
James Hildreth
Sam Northest
Dan Lawrence
Ben Foakes
Craig Overton
Jeff Overton
Tom Curran
Sam Curran
Dominic Bess
Jack Leach
Mason Crane
Jamie Porter
George Garton
Olly Stone

So keeping on...

Joe Root
Ben Stokes
Johnny Bairstow
Joss Buttler
Toby Roland Jones

& you could quite sensibly bring back Eion Morgan as captain.

I think theres plenty of positivity to work with there. Bowling might be stronger than the batting, but pick me a team from that lot to wear the badge with pride.

Give me a new head coach with a vibrant attitude along with a new coaching team & see where it ends up?
 

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