Posted by It’s always exciting to try and guess what day one talking points will be. When India picked three spinners and England picked one, it seemed like maybe that would be a thing. But you don’t always get to a point where the composition and quality of your bowling attack will have any real impact on the outcome of the game.
Sometimes in a modern free-roaming videogame, you can venture into an area where you get minced.
“What’s over here?” you wonder. “What’s in this room/cave/dungeon?”
So you amble in for a quick look-see and a battalion of ash zombies descends on you or a dragon incinerates you or something.
“Oh, okay,” you think. “I’m not supposed to go to this place yet.”
Sometimes you’re just not ready. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter what decisions you make in a battle, you simply don’t have what you need to compete.
England could bowl very well in this game and they’ll probably lose. England could have picked different bowlers, who bowled even better, and they’d probably still lose. They could have picked an entirely different batting line-up and it’s very unlikely it would have made much difference.
England are playing Test cricket in India and you get the impression they’re just not ready yet.
Ash/Ax zombies did descend.
Such a pity, considering they seemed so well prepared for this tour. I guess Sri Lanka really weren’t at the kind of level they would have hoped for.
Well technically it’s still 1-1 so it’s not like they’ve disgraced themselves.
Not at all, England have been good, and may yet spring a surprise here. 3 notes from today’s play for me –
1. Today’s Test was played in a small, nondescript, bland stadium that nobody will ever hear of again.
2. When in India, Strictly Come Dancing (apologies). England were stuck to the crease today.
3. Today marks an evolution in pink ball Test cricket. 6mm grass cover is passe, teams will stick to their strengths.
Leaving out Bess seems like such a wierd decision. He got wickets in the one batsman friendly track this series has been played on, and then dropped on the turners, this time in favour of a seamer.
For England to start winning the best thing they could do is to get Twitter to block Micheal Vaughn’s account. He made a tweet today about Zak Crawley looking like Rohit Sharma. England were about 70/2 at the time and very soon afterwards Crawley got out and England collapsed to 112.
In summary, the man (if he is that) is a jinx to this England team.
*savescums*
1. In one sense, I hope not. What socks/cryogenic freezers are best though?
2. In another sense, yes I hope Stokes plays more aggressively going forward. Even Virat could do with a 100!
This match isn’t over yet
Soon will be
I think we’ve found a situation in which Joe Root might not be the context.