Sack the lot of them?

Ah well it’s so easy to sit at a keyboard 11k miles away, having never played the game at a standard above the lowest leagues and even this over twenty years ago.  What the fuck do I know? 

Let’s start with the good bits, the bowlers done pretty well.  Mark Wood had the kind of series we all hoped he could, Broad and Robinson bowled well, Jimmy was Jimmy.  But (and here things start to go downhill…) as good as he is at home Chris Woakes is not the type of bowler to do well in Australia.  Jack Leach done okay at times but like all the bowlers he suffered from mismanagement.  And for much of the series England’s fielding was not test standard, slip catching was particularly poor.  With terrible selections and butter fingered fielders it’s a wonder the bowlers done as well as they did.

Then there’s the batting…

Not quite two years ago, England won a test series in South Africa with young players contributing, the future of the test team looked assured.  But none of them have pushed on; Crawley, Sibley Buttler, Bairstow, Burns and Pope have just been treading water and recent re-additions like Hameed and Malan haven’t nailed down a place either.  The England teams of the nineties are much maligned but those batting line ups were much better than the recent ones.  The likes of Butcher, Gatting, Smith and Hussein were better players let alone Atherton, Stewart and Gooch.  The last England team to win down under had Matt Prior batting at seven and keeping wicket; he averaged higher than any current England player except Joe Root as did all of that batting line up.

Halfway through the series I was thinking “sack the lot of them” but then who else do we pick?  It seems like there are very few options out there, for example statistics say the best two openers in county cricket are Burns and Sibley.  This pair aren’t any better nor worse than Hameed and Crawley, I’d be surprised if it isn’t these two who open the batting in the Caribbean.  Who else is there?

What is certain is Root and Stokes are always going to play and with his ton in Sydney, Bairstow has once again done just enough to hang onto his spot.  We hope this is the beginning of a late career surge for JB but fear we’ll see many more examples of how not to play a straight ball. 

This still leaves two more batting spots to fill but I can’t see how Joss Buttler can be one of them.  Nice bloke but it’s time he went out to white ball pasture, he’s had enough chances.  I suppose the next in line for a middle order bat is Dan Lawrence but from what I’ve seen he doesn’t look like a permanent fixture.  English pundits purr when speaking of Ollie Pope but he hasn’t made the grade yet, why not give Sam Billings a go?  Will someone like James Vince get a recall?  If there’s no one else then why the hell not?  When it comes to keeping wicket, just pick Ben Foakes FFS!

What bothers me most is England’s brains trust.  The lack of preparation before the first test could be excused by unlikely weather and a Covid world but the truth is two inter squad matches was, is and will always be inadequate practice for an Ashes series.  This was a failure at the planning stage and is inexcusable, the team was handicapped before a ball was bowled.  Joe Root’s captaincy has developed to the point where we can now call him average, on a good day.  As leader he had a few days this tour which were far from good. 

Since Ed Smith’s surprise sacking, England’s selections have been baffling and the team’s overall performance is getting worse.  For this trip down under we took two players who were only ever going to be drinks carriers and never looked like playing.  At least Overton and Lawrence’s reputations haven’t diminished which is good for them at least.  The biggest management cock up of all has been the bizarre selections or more to the point, non selections.  I’m all for ‘horses for courses’ but only if they pick the right fucking horse!

The whole tour can be defined by the first morning in Brisbane where we left out our world class tall fast bowler then won the toss on a green pitch under cloudy skies and elected to bat.  The Ashes series was effectively over after one ball.  Those responsible for these decisions are not fit to be working in the world of international cricket and it’s here the blame lies for what happened over the five matches that followed.  For this and for his consistent ability to talk trite bollocks Chris Silverwood must resign.  At least he'll show people he's got more self respect than our lying, racist Prime Minister.

XI for first test vs West Indies;

Crawley, Hameed, Bairstow, Root, Stokes, Lawrence, Foakes, Wood, Robinson, Broad, Leach.