England vs Sri Lanka 3 tests

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Nissanka looks like quality player but unfortunately SL have a habit of having of guys coming in and really looking good and then falling off. Kusal Mendis is one and even Matthews and Chandimal to an extent but both have had injury issues
 
Nissanka looks like quality player but unfortunately SL have a habit of having of guys coming in and really looking good and then falling off. Kusal Mendis is one and even Matthews and Chandimal to an extent but both have had injury issues

A bit of Machiavellian shit goes down in the Lankan set-up IMO and this typically results in the tearing down of their exceptional talents to keep all the competing interests/stakeholders on a similar level, rather than a building up and support of their top talents. Hopefully Nissanka can be a success rather than a casualty of the internal workings.

Sri Lanka desperately need a quick of at least Malinga calibre, a real point of difference bowler. They have too many similar types at present IMO. A new Vaas would see them elevate through the test rankings and be a genuine contender for the 4 spot vs NZ and SA.

Their batting is a bit soft but every teams batting looks soft these days, if the bowling quality is good and there is any assistance from the conditions. I think they have enough pieces to put defendable scores up.
 

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I know SL have been whitewashed and lost many games in England/NZ/SA buy they have at least plucked the odd win and series victory over the last decade and a bit. That said when they come here they show nothing and it’s seems like the series has been lost without a ball been ball. Reckon hobart 07 was the last time SL looked competitive here and if it weren’t for a dodgy Rudi Coertzen call, SL might have even plucked a rare win

i remember this series quite well


especially this test, managing to pull off a draw playing one down with muburak as an opener


great to see them take home a win today.
 
i remember this series quite well


especially this test, managing to pull off a draw playing one down with muburak as an opener


great to see them take home a win today.
Kulasekara and Vaas, that's quite a monumental fourth innings effort from them to put on 105 off 40 overs for the 9th wicket. England were only behind by 80 or so when they came together.
 
A bit of Machiavellian shit goes down in the Lankan set-up IMO and this typically results in the tearing down of their exceptional talents to keep all the competing interests/stakeholders on a similar level, rather than a building up and support of their top talents. Hopefully Nissanka can be a success rather than a casualty of the internal workings.

Sri Lanka desperately need a quick of at least Malinga calibre, a real point of difference bowler. They have too many similar types at present IMO. A new Vaas would see them elevate through the test rankings and be a genuine contender for the 4 spot vs NZ and SA.

Their batting is a bit soft but every teams batting looks soft these days, if the bowling quality is good and there is any assistance from the conditions. I think they have enough pieces to put defendable scores up.
SL players seem to drink their bathwater as well and a lot of them behave/act like they’re global superstars (like that rapist bloke. He was stylish and promising batsmen and yet never delivered)

Chameera and Kumara are quite quick but more often than not are broken down with injuries. Neither of them look like modern day fast bowlers. Chameera is a twig and kumara is fat. Whole fitness standards of SL seems poor
 
i remember this series quite well


especially this test, managing to pull off a draw playing one down with muburak as an opener


great to see them take home a win today.
They won a series over there 10 years ago


 
SL players seem to drink their bathwater as well and a lot of them behave/act like they’re global superstars (like that rapist bloke. He was stylish and promising batsmen and yet never delivered)

Chameera and Kumara are quite quick but more often than not are broken down with injuries. Neither of them look like modern day fast bowlers. Chameera is a twig and kumara is fat. Whole fitness standards of SL seems poor
Likely comes down to the players own choice rather than being overseen by a fitness dept. Look at mathews, he was such a fat campaigner in the past but now he’s lost a bit of weight which has extended his career.

Their putrid Chris Harris shtick did for England at the oval anyway.
 
Nice work Sri Lanka getting a win.. England's play style will be extremely hit and miss.. they won't win a game in Australia in 18 months.
 

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That’s 4 hundreds, in his 7th test. That was his 11th innings.

He has 809 runs at 80.9.
He will get to bat again in this match you would assume.

He has 3 innings to score 191 runs to break into the top 5 all time for fastest to 1000 runs.

If he can do it in one, he equals Sutcliffe and Weekes for innings taken to get there. Bradman took only 7 tests so that’s already passed him by.

What’s probably stopped him is that he’s not had enough really big scores to do it. All those other players in the top five had some big scores - Bradman’s massive Ashes series in 1930 with his triple and double.
Weekes not so much colossal scores but had a back to back 190-odd and 160-odd. Kambli had consecutive double hundreds. Neil Harvey passed 150 three times. Sutcliffe was the exception - like Mendis I think his best was a 160 and the rest were just consistent hundreds and 50s.
 
It’s really not.

‘Abysmal’ when almost a third of those matches are in India, and their record is 7-3-1 outside of that series, is a slight exaggeration.

Amazing - hardly, but abysmal is not the right word, either.
Comparable to how they'd be playing if Bazball never happened, though?
 
Nice work Sri Lanka getting a win.. England's play style will be extremely hit and miss.. they won't win a game in Australia in 18 months.
I think this is extremely unlikely. They're due a win and while Cummins remains in the Australian squad Crawley is going to keep finding a way to arse runs against his bowling.
 
I think this is extremely unlikely. They're due a win and while Cummins remains in the Australian squad Crawley is going to keep finding a way to arse runs against his bowling.
Going with the same top order though

Crawley arses a few runs
Duckett out fourth ball
Pope out early as well
Root gets some natural variation
Brook will end up giving catches when facing test standard bowling

Despite a bit of batting depth down to 7 or 8, you’re looking at England making 250 on a good day on a good wicket.
 
Going with the same top order though

Crawley arses a few runs
Duckett out fourth ball
Pope out early as well
Root gets some natural variation
Brook will end up giving catches when facing test standard bowling

Despite a bit of batting depth down to 7 or 8, you’re looking at England making 250 on a good day on a good wicket.
In Australia, that's 50 runs away from competitive because an away series win here is achieved by doing 2 things:

  • stopping Australia from making 350+ every time they walk out to bat.
  • making each test go 5 days.

Do that, and you're every chance to roll us at home.

England's issue IMO won't be their runs, but their inability to take time out of the game and/or a difficulty in taking wickets with an inexperienced in Australian conditions bowling line up. They've hung onto Broad and Anderson for so long that the two became passable bowlers here solely because it's a rough tour for almost everyone else. Ollie Robinson got belted so badly he took to bowling offies, Archer is not a long form player reliably due to fitness issues and run rates (going at 5 runs an over is not conducive to preventing Australia making 350+ runs, almost regardless of how many wickets he's taking) and while Stokes has enough mongrel in him to carry them he's 33 and has had injury issues threaten his bowling before.

Mark Wood's been terrific, but he cannot play 3 tests in a row. Ollie Stone? Extra bounce gets wickets here, but bowlers like him are dime a dozen at shield level. Who's going to shoulder the bulk of the overs here to build pressure while they attack from one end? Who's going to take bulk wickets?

Their bowling is more an issue than their batting.
 
Comparable to how they'd be playing if Bazball never happened, though?
They wouldn’t have won in Pakistan I don’t believe - it took Australia until the final session of the final test playing ‘normally’ with a better credentialed batting line up and they definitely wouldn’t have won a test in India I don’t think. They’ve been a bunny of the West Indies (relatively) at home and away and I think the way they played contributed strongly to the fact that the WI didn’t get much of a look in during that series. I don’t think playing normally with their threadbare batting would have given them much of a shot against Australia either.
 
Going with the same top order though

Crawley arses a few runs
Duckett out fourth ball
Pope out early as well
Root gets some natural variation
Brook will end up giving catches when facing test standard bowling

Despite a bit of batting depth down to 7 or 8, you’re looking at England making 250 on a good day on a good wicket.

Brook has already faced test standard bowling (Australia) and averaged over 40 across the series.

They’re more likely to make runs playing that way than they are to make runs playing traditionally
 
In Australia, that's 50 runs away from competitive because an away series win here is achieved by doing 2 things:

  • stopping Australia from making 350+ every time they walk out to bat.
  • making each test go 5 days.

Do that, and you're every chance to roll us at home.

England's issue IMO won't be their runs, but their inability to take time out of the game and/or a difficulty in taking wickets with an inexperienced in Australian conditions bowling line up. They've hung onto Broad and Anderson for so long that the two became passable bowlers here solely because it's a rough tour for almost everyone else. Ollie Robinson got belted so badly he took to bowling offies, Archer is not a long form player reliably due to fitness issues and run rates (going at 5 runs an over is not conducive to preventing Australia making 350+ runs, almost regardless of how many wickets he's taking) and while Stokes has enough mongrel in him to carry them he's 33 and has had injury issues threaten his bowling before.

Mark Wood's been terrific, but he cannot play 3 tests in a row. Ollie Stone? Extra bounce gets wickets here, but bowlers like him are dime a dozen at shield level. Who's going to shoulder the bulk of the overs here to build pressure while they attack from one end? Who's going to take bulk wickets?

Their bowling is more an issue than their batting.
It’s a combo. That was illustrated perfectly in the oval SL test. You have to want to stay at the crease while batting, and be accurate and disciplined while bowling. The bazball way consists of trying to twat the ball and get out quickly while employing crazy schemes to get wickets.

It’s a challenge trying to find a good length for an England bowler. So much of broads quality and stats was tarnished because his captain told him to persist with short deliveries that hardly threatened the batsman. Similarly with the current guys, they’re seemingly trying for that one magic ball too hard while sending down balls that get hit to the boundary without much trouble.
 
They wouldn’t have won in Pakistan I don’t believe - it took Australia until the final session of the final test playing ‘normally’ with a better credentialed batting line up and they definitely wouldn’t have won a test in India I don’t think.
Hmm...

Pakistan I'll give you, but India used to have a habit of dropping the first test to England at home. It happened under the previous regime, it's happened under MacCullum.
They’ve been a bunny of the West Indies (relatively) at home and away and I think the way they played contributed strongly to the fact that the WI didn’t get much of a look in during that series. I don’t think playing normally with their threadbare batting would have given them much of a shot against Australia either.
I'm really not sure here. I want to see what they do out here before I judge them either way.

I don't know. That they needed to do something is immaterial to trying to judge Bazball on its own successes and failures. I'm not an international cricket coach, but one would think you'd avoid sitting on your hands in that position.
 
Hmm...

Pakistan I'll give you, but India used to have a habit of dropping the first test to England at home. It happened under the previous regime, it's happened under MacCullum.

I'm really not sure here. I want to see what they do out here before I judge them either way.

I don't know. That they needed to do something is immaterial to trying to judge Bazball on its own successes and failures. I'm not an international cricket coach, but one would think you'd avoid sitting on your hands in that position.

Well what else can you do when the players you’ve got just aren’t up to it? You’ve picked this core group of guys who you backed in to play ‘normal’ cricket over the course of a couple of years and it was simply horrible.

You pick a new group and the results immediately improve exponentially on what they were in the two years before.

The series results - ie. winning the ashes and winning in India, aren’t the results you crave, but you draw one of them, and the other you are probably going to lose regardless, so you probably have to just cop those anyway. I agree it’s not PROVEN, yet, but I think when you look at a combination of resources at their disposal, and results achieved, you can’t not say that it’s been a success.
 
Brook has already faced test standard bowling (Australia) and averaged over 40 across the series.

They’re more likely to make runs playing that way than they are to make runs playing traditionally
Brook got spooked by that Nathan Lyon ball that looped up and bowled him. It messed with his sense of order. He got a few fifties v aus but never looked like he had the mental strength to stay in enough to convert them. He’s become another one that can be tempted by loose bowling. And Jamie smith is going that way too seeing him in a captaincy position, smith is better than that.
 

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England vs Sri Lanka 3 tests

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