Cook is still capable of a big score but his average has been going down for some years

They just showed the odi ranking in the WI games so surprised England are still 6 in ODI.
Really tight between WI, pak, ban and possible England but england will win games and stay way clear of the trouble.

Narine causing problems for the South Africans with his spin having returned from a ban.

South Africa collapsed from 160/3 to 188 all out with Narine taking 6/27

Good win for the West Indies over a full strength South Africa

Their returning T20 stars doing the damage with Narine and Pollard marking their comebacks with excellent performances

good win puts pressure on Pakistan to win the odi series against England this summer.
by my calculation Pakistan are close to being confirmed to the qualification stage of the world cup if they lose 5-0 to England in that series.
even if they lose the other 5 games in the tri series they still gained 4pt from the tri series and now got a 4pt advantage over Pakistan.

WI not playing the Champions trophy might be a blessing in disguise, don't have games to lose points.

I was just looking at the womens batting averages for last year, and can see why Caroline Edwards world was 'turned upside down'.
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/eng...2015;type=year

Rather than being a country mile ahead of the rest her averages were only really at the top.
A shame for the England women really, a mixture of youth alongside skill and eperiencecounts more than the fear factor of a manager making their mark.

Maybe some upcoming South African women have British passports to boost the sideback to quality?

Cricket Writers is on and they are discussing the papers

Unfortunately they are sat on the balcony at Taunton before the pro-50 game and the tannoy is competing with them....

It's like they are deliberately trying to kill it

You could see them getting fistracted by what was going on around them

Cricket Writers was only actually on for 20 minutes, they have them stuck on the balcony whatever the weather and it was cancelled altogether the week the test match finished early. There seems to have been a decision to downgrade it from an in depth studio discussion programme like Sunday Supplement to a brief chat before whatever match Sky is covering that day

After an impressive performance against South Africa, West Indies are performing embarrassingly against Australia
Not the best of wickets but 88/7 is more down to poor/awful shot selection than unplayable deliveries

I've given up on Cricket Writers........why do they even bother putting in in the listings. Today it was shown as starting at 10.00........and when it didn't come on I just turned the telly off

I didn't know it was coming on at 10.30

It hardly seems worth bothering trying to catch it now.......

Another poor decision by a 3rd umpire overturning a not out call on the field in the WI/Aus game

Virtually impossible to tell if he hit it and the laws state that there should be conclusive evidence which there wasn't

More terrible umpiring decisions with lbws now...two plumb hitting halfway up middle stump not given on finch and one given that would have missed a 5th stump to dismiss maxwell.

And another lbw given not out that was hitting halfway up middle to save Lyon. Joel Wilson has had a shocker - 3 plumb LBW's given not out and the only one he gave out was missing by a mile.

Sarah Taylor is taking a break from the England team while she addresses some mental issues around panic attacks whilst playing

With Lydia Greenway and Charlotte Edwards having left the fold the team is going to look quite different as the 3 stalwarts all leave at the same time

New coach.....Mark Robinson

I think it's a good sign......the team was getting stale and seemed to have settled for sliding down the pecking order after years of being on top

Fresh blood and a bit more hunger needed.........if there's any fresh blood around that is.......

So depression again for a cricketer. Becoming a theme. Foxy Fowler in his recent round of interviews insists that it's actually a good thing that cricket is catching it early, and other sports have the same troubles, but people just suffer in silence.

Dunno myself, I do think the constant travel does play a part.

I wonder if there's something fairly unusual in cricket in that you can sit for hours knowing that you're going to be called upon but not knowing when it's going to be

You can see that that might cause some anxiety.......you can have a long time to fret and worry and churn over your form and the opposition etc

I guess it's pretty unusual in sport.........most sports would be like football, start at 3pm, play for 90 minutes

I think Boycott is right when he says that cricket is unique in its examination of one's psychology as much as it is of one's physical prowess.

cook wins the toss and england bat first

as expected same team as the last game

Maybe others will disagree, but I'm not sure what the value is of keeping Compton in this side. Even if he now scored 100, should he keep his place based on how he's done otherwise?

I'm not a fan of massive chopping and changing, but I am a fan of 'having a look' at new players in a confident, winning side. I think this would have been an opportunity for Jake Ball, Vince at 3 and a new batsmen in the side. IMO, they didn't need to replace Stokes with another (sort of )all-rounder anyway.

the comment that was made in the build-up was that england prefer to give a player one game too many to see if they can contribute than drop them one game too soon

personally i think we have seen enough of compton to say that he probably doesn't deserve to still be in the side and that there are other options around. as has been said by a couple of other FMs i would prefer to see bairstow bat at #5 as a specialist batsman and bring buttler back in at #7 with the gloves. bairstow looks wasted at #7 imo, i know he isn't batting there atm but will be when stokes comes back, and i think buttler is a better keeper.

bit of a defensive field from sri lanka with just 2 slips in right from the start for cook

Reckon the selectors just wanted more time to pick the next batsman.
Compton was guaranteed this series since in the early part of the summer not many batsman actually putted their name up for Selection.
Ballance didn't fix technique and was struggling in county cricket, bell got injured and he wasn't going to get picked anyway.
Westley isn't even good enough to be picked, Surprised he getting mentioned just because he was leading the run charts.

unlikely they were going to change the team and then have the new batsman play 1 test wait for like a month for the next test match.
Far better to give Compton one more Test match and then in the next month in the county championship Compton, hildreth, borthwick and all the batting contenders can show the selectors they should be the ones being picked.

Reckon Borthwick the favourite to being picked for the Pakistan series.

looks like it will be a very long day in the field for the Sri lankan team.