West Indies doing well approaching tea. India 130 for 5. Sky Sports 3.

Same ream for tomorrow

Thanks Joey Essex!

India back in control with an unbroken 6th wicket partnership of 190*

318/5 at lunch


also


The ECB has invited Graeme Swann to work with England's best young spinners.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/...y/1044459.html

Swann should be a good choice, he wasn't the most talented, was a bit wayward in his yoof, then became a very decent spinner, by just learning flight and control. Sometimes I feel just getting the most talented in who can rip it, like a Warne or Murali, isn't brilliant because there's no way that you can possibly replicate that.

If there was a turning point in this match (so far) it was surely when Ashwin was given out on 35 but it was overturned because of a back-foot no-ball. In the end there was a late collapse by India and they were all out for 353.

Noted

So the selectors took pity on James Vince ( and his bad hand ) He gets the pick over Adil Rashid for the Oval test. I hope this doesn't tempt fate and Vince drops more chances in the slips and then struggles with his batting.

thats a very green looking pitch

hope we dont regret that decision to bat first

Some terrific clips of Waquar and Wasim in previous Tests at the Oval

Wonder if Tuffers toe is still hurting....

Why change a winning team ? Not only would it change the team dynamic it also upsets the team spirit. As Not Sean said earlier, England are playing well as a team at the moment so why change that ?

Because they could be playing even better. As they said on TMS this morning, England do have questions about their batting.

I understand the argument (a thread staple!) about not changing a winning team, but I don't personally agree with it.

Having seen the greener than expected pitch it makes a little more sense. I was anticipating something drier and conducive to spin. Not so this test, Vince and his hand will prop up the batting once more. I wish him well and hope he can escape the frightful forties in this match.

Anyway this means Rashid is free to play against my team in the T20 finals ( curses )

Doesn't look out but the soft signal was out

Not the correct outcome imo

That looks a bad decision

The close up on Hales facial reaction on playing the shot suggests he saw it hadn't carried

He is not going to field in the slips due to his injury.

Typical - I had to take a work phone call during that controversy and couldn't hear the commentary. So was the general consensus that Hales was unlucky?

And they could equally be playing worse. If TMS are questioning our batting then dropping a batsman for a spinner seems an odd solution.

The issue was that the umpires gave a soft signal of out and there was no clear evidence to overturn it due to their being no clear footage

Without the soft signal it would have been not out

To be fair, I didn't say that. I was speaking generally, as I don't get or agree with the age-old argument about not changing a winning team.

I would have had a look at Borthwick in this match at the expense of Vince or Ballance, but I've said that before.

Being specific, though, this England team is unusual due to it's very long batting line up. IMO Moeen is a proper batsman, so could easily be given more responsibility and bumped up the order to bring in Rashid, who is also better than a tail-ender. In my mind, the phrase 'dropping a batsman to bring in a spinner' doesn't really reflect the wider context.

Thanks.

I wonder whether the thinking of not bringing Rashid in has anything to do with Misbah's tactics of attacking the spin bowler and memories of what happened to Simon Kerrigan at the Oval

TMS are saying the Hales dismissal clip is up on the BBC web site but blowed if I can find it?

Yes, very strange.

They gave the soft "out" signal because they expect fielders to be honest.
An honest fielder would have given the "not sure" signal.
It looked pretty obvious from the shot we did see that he'd scooped it up off the ground.
I can't believe we've still not seen a blown up version, or that they didn't have any better camera angles.

Oh well, nothing short of 500+ will do now :--)