Oh crumbs! Buttler gone,21 required. Very tense. Little Rishi the 'wicketer' is getting very excited!
Well we got over the line. Funny as Woakes might have not played had Stokes been fully fit and Buttler is under pressure.
Great fight back great win, but we still manged to make heavy weather of it near the end, I even thought the winning runs was going to be catch in the slips and it was not far from being so, phew!!!
It will always be the greatest form of the game. I’ve also found that the lack of a crowd at these games has not affected my enjoyment of watching anywhere near as much as with football.
Would have been a great atmosphere at the end of today's game, although in general, it is of course quieter in Test cricket, so I guess it's not as much of a loss in general the lack of atmosphere. Did find it funny getting used to early in the Windies series, took me a while to jig that a lot of those shots were going to the boundary and not getting cut off by a fielder lol
Only England 2nd's drawn test in 29 tests so this week was very rare! Wasn't there one against the Aussies last year ?
He definitely looks the part. Thought he was unlucky to be dropped earlier in the summer. No. 3 problem solved?
That was down to England wanting an extra bowler I guess. You'd hope he will go on from this. Has all shots and can bat quickly or play his defence. Mind you be totally different in India and against the Aussies. Mark Ramprakash (was on the BBC highlights just now) took 38 innings to get a hundred at test level. That seems an awful long time - maybe explains why he never reached his potential they say?
A few players from that era couldn't replicate county form into test form As you say Ramps, Hick, John Crawley , Matthew Maynard although TBF Maynard was shafted by the selectors .
Or to replace Burns at the top as he seems to really be struggling at the moment ? Will be interesting when they need to slot Stokes back in.
I’m a bit dubious about the openers but Crawley doesn’t look like an opener to me. 3. Crawley 4. Root 5. Stokes 6.Buttler/Bairstow 7. Woakes 8. Curran/Bess 9, Broad 10. Archer 11. Anderson I’ve missed Pope though, haven’t I? Hmmm. Drop Root and make Buttler or Broad captain? (Not a cat in hell’s chance).
Don't follow county cricket but thought he was more used to opening ? Yes Pope must play. I guess it's good that were not desperately looking around for the next batsman to try in the team. We seem to have some decent rough diamonds in there now.
Are you sure that you need 6 bowlers plus Root who can turn his arm ?. I would bin one of them off ,not Root obviously!, for another bat .
Yeah, he does. Well, maybe give him a go. He just looks a bit too -flamboyant - to me. Mind you, it didn’t do Trescothick any harm. Is he more use at 3 though? That position has been a real problem.
I’m not sure Anderson has much longer. The other thing is that Stokes only seems to be able to bowl 50% of the time, but would obviously still have him in as a batsman.
Not so sure, I read an interesting piece by Atherton in which he said that their relatively slow scoring was a deliberate team strategy to set a platform for the stroke players further down the order, and this was all with the Ashes in mind. I’m not sure either has done quite badly enough to be dropped - yet.
Saw this earlier : "Zak Crawley has now got a higher Test score than Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis ever did, insane stat"
