England begging for a draw, Manchester, 27th July 2025

[Burgey]

even if you think it's a bit of a misunderstanding, you surely can understand that indian posters may feel a bit uncomfortable with your comment that stokes gave "them" a chance to exercise "their" "biological hatred of everything english", without specifying who "they" are or any more details to avoid the ambiguity here

Yeah but you have to remember he’s English

 

[Spikey]

I'm requesting a permaban please.

look at ben stokes over here, making demands

 

[Burgey]

look at ben stokes over here, making demands

In this case they’re justified and his request should be acceded to.

 

[Spark]

BBC comments which usually hate on all teams playing England, have turned the hate towards the English team itself -precisely for their behaviour last evening. It's quite something.

Ehhhhh there's been a long running undercurrent of English fans who have never really been on board with this style of cricket in general and think it's basically not real Test cricket, I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC comments have an outsized representation of those.

 

[karan_fromthestands]

If you're finding excuses to be offended then there is not much I can help with, sadly. My comment was toward certain communities of Cricketing fans, a chunk of them being Australians, not toward any race or country or people.

same thing as Gill and the point of the thread, mountain out of a molehill.

Yaa, let's ignore that most of the posts before that comment were from Indians.

 

[Molehill]

Ehhhhh there's been a long running undercurrent of English fans who have never really been on board with this style of cricket in general and think it's basically not real Test cricket, I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC comments have an outsized representation of those.

Yeah, I had a look. There's clearly a lot of Indian fans posting there too.

But as you say, there's plenty of English fans who haven't forgotten some utterly daft declarations etc. Even in this series, a draw was entirely achievable at Edgbaston (as India showed here), yet they couldn't bring themselves to actually go for it. ironically, they seem to have changed a bit since then.

 

[SteveNZ]

I don't know if this has been said, and if so I'm offering week old bread and I apologise.

But in the midst of all I'm sure is (deserved) vitriol at Stokes for his arrogance that the game stops when he requests it to, has there been the charge of hypocrisy leveled at a captain who presents himself as the white knight here to save Test cricket with fast scoring rates and uber-exciting tactics, but wanted the crowd to go home and be robbed of two milestones and more cricket?

So tens of thousands of fans at the crowd, presumably a lot of them Indian who will take great thrill at Jadeja scoring a Test ton and Sundar scoring his first, and millions more watching...but Ben would like their viewing experience to end prematurely because his side failed to take more than 2 wickets in 142 overs? Just so what, his side can go to the pub early? Or sit down a bit quicker?

I can't even fathom the hypocrisy, arrogance, lack of foresight that takes. That the bowlers you face when you pass your ton somehow reflect the quality of that innings. I'm a Baz fan but his desire to stamp a moral code and holier than thou stance onto a playing group is now running ridiculously out of control. Saving Test cricket, honourable losses, winning draws, and the right to call off the game when it suits. A very English thing, which is fine at club level when no one gives a sh*t but inexcusable when it is a business and an industry.

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

Why can’t we all be like Lokesh Rahul in this thread?

 

[centurymaker]

Relieved to hear that Mr J has been banned for a week. I had put him on ignore some time back because his posting had been a little too much too offen.

 

[karan_fromthestands]

I don't know if this has been said, and if so I'm offering week old bread and I apologise.

But in the midst of all I'm sure is (deserved) vitriol at Stokes for his arrogance that the game stops when he requests it to, has there been the charge of hypocrisy leveled at a captain who presents himself as the white knight here to save Test cricket with fast scoring rates and uber-exciting tactics, but wanted the crowd to go home and be robbed of two milestones and more cricket?

So tens of thousands of fans at the crowd, presumably a lot of them Indian who will take great thrill at Jadeja scoring a Test ton and Sundar scoring his first, and millions more watching...but Ben would like their viewing experience to end prematurely because his side failed to take more than 2 wickets in 142 overs? Just so what, his side can go to the pub early? Or sit down a bit quicker?

I can't even fathom the hypocrisy, arrogance, lack of foresight that takes. That the bowlers you face when you pass your ton somehow reflect the quality of that innings?

We should be grateful though. Stokes offered us a handshake.

 

[ImpatientLime]

I don't know if this has been said, and if so I'm offering week old bread and I apologise.

But in the midst of all I'm sure is (deserved) vitriol at Stokes for his arrogance that the game stops when he requests it to, has there been the charge of hypocrisy leveled at a captain who presents himself as the white knight here to save Test cricket with fast scoring rates and uber-exciting tactics, but wanted the crowd to go home and be robbed of two milestones and more cricket?

So tens of thousands of fans at the crowd, presumably a lot of them Indian who will take great thrill at Jadeja scoring a Test ton and Sundar scoring his first, and millions more watching...but Ben would like their viewing experience to end prematurely because his side failed to take more than 2 wickets in 142 overs? Just so what, his side can go to the pub early? Or sit down a bit quicker?

I can't even fathom the hypocrisy, arrogance, lack of foresight that takes. That the bowlers you face when you pass your ton somehow reflect the quality of that innings. I'm a Baz fan but his desire to stamp a moral code and holier than thou stance onto a playing group is now running ridiculously out of control. Saving Test cricket, honourable losses, winning draws, and the right to call off the game when it suits. A very English thing, which is fine at club level when no one gives a sh*t but inexcusable when it is a business and an industry.

i am one of those fans in the UK who finds the current england set up mostly tiresome but what has stokes ever said publicly to warrant stuff like 'presenting himself as the white knight here to save test cricket'?

 

[OverratedSanity]

I don't know if this has been said, and if so I'm offering week old bread and I apologise.

But in the midst of all I'm sure is (deserved) vitriol at Stokes for his arrogance that the game stops when he requests it to, has there been the charge of hypocrisy leveled at a captain who presents himself as the white knight here to save Test cricket with fast scoring rates and uber-exciting tactics, but wanted the crowd to go home and be robbed of two milestones and more cricket?

So tens of thousands of fans at the crowd, presumably a lot of them Indian who will take great thrill at Jadeja scoring a Test ton and Sundar scoring his first, and millions more watching...but Ben would like their viewing experience to end prematurely because his side failed to take more than 2 wickets in 142 overs? Just so what, his side can go to the pub early? Or sit down a bit quicker?

I can't even fathom the hypocrisy, arrogance, lack of foresight that takes. That the bowlers you face when you pass your ton somehow reflect the quality of that innings?

That England deluded themselves into thinking India would accept the offer was one thing. Quite another was their reaction to India refusing it. If they'd offered a handshake, India refused and England just shrugged and got on with it I doubt people would care. But their antics after it was refused and their attempts to make it seem like Jadeja and Washington's hundreds would be less meaningful because it was part timers bowling ... it was all just incredibly petulant. It's Kohli screaming into the stump mic levels of childish.

 

[capt_Luffy]

Can we all just dial back and take a breather?? I agree that the "biological instinct" line was out of place but think Johan has made his position pretty clear on that it wasn't meant to be offensive. Also like, not a single English poster took this thread in good humour. Not only Johan, but GIMH, Molehill, Silly point, even Line and Length!! (@Red_Ink_Squid too cool for this). I say we cut this one out for a week and may visit it post Series again??

 

[Spikey]

I'm picturing a future scenario: joe root is 87* and on the verge of getting his 40th test century. he's had a year without tons. pressure is building.

and then ben stokes saying yeah let's call the game off I'm done here.

yeah stokes is totally gonna do that

 

[capt_Luffy]

Relieved to hear that Mr J has been banned for a week. I had put him on ignore some time back because his posting had been a little too much too offen.

The irony......

 

[ImpatientLime]

I'm picturing a future scenario: joe root is 87* and on the verge of getting his 40th test century. he's had a year without tons. pressure is building.

and then ben stokes saying yeah let's call the game off I'm done here.

yeah stokes is totally gonna do that

i mean atherton did

 

[Spark]

Can we all just dial back and take a breather?? I agree that the "biological instinct" line was out of place but think Johan has made his position pretty clear on that it wasn't meant to be offensive. Also like, not a single English poster took this thread in good humour. Not only Johan, but GIMH, Molehill, Silly point, even Line and Length!! (@Red_Ink_Squid too cool for this). I say we cut this one out for a week and may visit it post Series again??

The reason he got banned was that he made a post over the weekend which was also had some pretty egregiously offensive racial overtones if read at face value. James explicitly warned him via PM earlier today that we wouldn't be giving him the benefit of the doubt any more after several examples of such; his responses in this thread made it plain what he thought of that warning.

He was also very very lucky to not get an on the spot week long ban a few weeks ago for a particularly bad post; he's had more than his share of warnings (mostly because we couldn't figure out why he was suddenly posting like this)

 

[centurymaker]

You need to seriously think about out how potentially awful the upcoming Ashes series might be if certain posters are still active come November.

Will send my list through in the next couple of days so the mods can get to work.

Hmmm. It's gonna get nasty for sure. Bazballers will do random **** to draw attention to themselves. Try to make everything about themselves.

I bet a vast majority of the cricketing world will be rooting for Australia in the Ashes and rightly so. I can't imagine there will be too many Indian fans left who will support Bazball England. Many people probably want this McCullum's cult to come to an end.

 

[capt_Luffy]

The reason he got banned was that he made a post over the weekend which was also had some pretty egregiously offensive racial overtones if read at face value. James explicitly warned him via PM earlier today that we wouldn't be giving him the benefit of the doubt any more after several examples of such; his responses in this thread made it plain what he thought of that warning.

He just is having a hard time rn (don't know much and as much know him, won't like me sharing as much I know either) and look, I agree that that Post could be seen as offensive so can't blame especially since he refused to back down in typical Johan fashion...... Wish saw this a bit earlier. But none of the English posters took this thread in a lighthearted way, and that really was quite the shocker here.

 

[centurymaker]

The irony......

Oh please. Stop crying. I hardly post in comparison to you two. So I am a drop in the ocean. Irrelevant. You two are everywhere. Invading every thread there is. So your posting stands out way more than a nobody like mines.