I shall contact my tout

West Indies capitulating quicker than England

Needed to bat just over 2 sessions to gain aother draw but are 96/9 in just over 40 overs

The problem they have is that their best players want to play somewhere else

At the moment pakistan deserve the number 1 ranking.

They have not won the current series.

they probably going to draw which is way better than what most team achieve in alien conditions.
should be remembered Pakistan beat England pretty easily 2-0 last winter and are likely to draw 2-2 in England.

Well deserved number 1 ranking even if it is most likely going to last for a week and probably the team will never get close to the summit again with how the fixtures are set up for Pakistan.

Solid start for England

Pitch doesn't seem to be doing anything and looks easy paced

Concentration is the king if we are to fight back

lol the way smith is batting he roughing up the pitch.
wonder if batsman are allowed to be that forward playing a shot and get away with roughing up the pitch.
doubt Sri lanka care much.

I believe only running down the wicket the umpires can take action and not if they playing a shot.

But hoping one of the umpires here can confirm if smith can actually play shots like that.

Every ball from Wahab seems to be a no-ball that isn't picked up by the umpire

You'd think the 3rd umpire would be telling him in his earpiece that it's happening


Maybe no-balls are OK now as long as you don't run on the pitch.....

(Another) awful shot sees a wicket go down

Left down to Bairstow, Moeen and Woakes as seems the norm lately

Sad to see but how many of these wickets were not down to good bowling. I cant blame Cook for getting an edge on his but the rest werent too hot in my view.

Listening to TMS and they just mentioned the stats for Hales, Vince and Ballance combined this series

498 runs at 22.8

Can't see that being the way forward if we expect to compete in the winter tours

I know this is a biased suggestion, but I'd take Lancashire's young opening bat Hameed on the winter tour even if he doesn't play that much as the experience of those conditions will be invaluable especially as I think he will become an England regular in years to come

Proper old fashioned opening batsman that makes Cook look like Jayasuriya !!

NB Hameed scored a 209 ball ton in 5 hours during yesterday's Roses match

I appreciate I'm now doing my impression of a broken record on groundhog day, but...

I would have dropped both Vince and Ballance for this Test and at least tried out someone else, as it would be hard to be any worse. Borthwick for certain, and then possibly either Hildreth or Rashid (with Moeen moving up). Hales for me gets another go, partly because I can't think of another opener who hasn't already been dropped at this level, and partly because I think he's been slightly more unlucky than the other two.

I tuned in to TMS before the game started and Michael Vaughan was suggesting that they might look at Hameed of Lancs.......he's only 19 but he's had a good season opening the batting and got a 100 yesterday against Yorkshire

He's in the system already because he's already played for England at U15, U17 and U19 so he's earmarked to play for the senior side at some point ......Vaughan's argument is that the best England players tend to start early and learn on the job.......and there's no guarantee that waiting until a player is 25 will produce one that's ready anyway as recent selections have shown

Fair points but Hales has gone down in my estimations mainly due to his temperamental behaviour during this game

Huge weakness to show to the opposition

I hadn't seen dave's post as I was looking up Hameed's record before pressing 'submit'.......so it's a case of great minds think alike......

or............***** seldom differ...

I don't see the problem with bringing someone in at 19. Tendulkar started at 16, I believe, and there's a whole bunch of very young Olympians competing as we speak. I don't know Hameed and haven't seen him on screen, but if he plays as he does, then that strikes me as the kind of temperament that could handle pressure.


My support for Hales has nothing to do with my being a Notts fan, of course...

But I agree with you. I wouldn't complain if he was dropped, too, but I genuinely think he's got out to more good balls than Vince/Ballance and reckon that he may have more of a future, possibly, perhaps, maybe... I think his future, if he does have one, lies in playing more freely, though.

if they are going to bring in another opener then i would have thought bell-drummond is ahead of hameed, even if he is playing division 2 cricket

Moeen has just played a reverse sweep with the back of his bat, on purpose. I've never seen that before!

I have no problem with that

I am just thinking of the future in giving experience to players that are likely to become part of the team. I'd take both as in the fullness of time , I see Hameed as Cook's replacement more than a partner

he controlled it well and personally i dont have a problem with batsmen playing those sort of shots if they are comfortable playing them but can you imagine the uproar if it had just popped up in the air and he was caught given the match situation

Looked a tight 2nd run that ended up going to the boundary for overthrows

This pair certainly taking risks into trying to wrestle control of the match back

Me neither, but I was wondering if anyone had seen a player use the back of the bat on purpose before.


I notice that they had run two before and therefore scored 6 in total. I wasn't sure if it would be given as 4 or 6 runs. I didn't know that overthrows were seen as in addition - what's the difference between this and a fielder accidentally kicking the ball over the rope, for example?