Cricket: Random Discussion Thread

Australia needs a clean out of its batting - Khawaja, Weatherald and Marnus need to go. In comes Kellaway, Renshaw and Marnus' clone McSweeney. Webster for Green. Easy win for England in Sydney. Bazball continues because of our idiot selectors. Bailey should go too.

It’s not as if there’s a ton of bats scoring avalanches in Shield though.

People who.are relatively pleased with today's cricket:

England
England Fans
Cricket Australia
feel wrath

correct.

Just a shame about the weather break, because he was so at ease out there and looked totally untroubled

Rooooot

Best we've ever had

Boom - am in NZ today on a trek and managed to find two mins of wifi to hear the good news!

Solid knock from Root, less than 2000 behind Sachin. Let’s forget any stupid discussion about Rpot not being one of the greats.

Australia’s aim for Day 3, bat till after tea, 200 run lead, Englan’s openers out before stumps.

Head with 500 runs for the series, closing in on 3rd century. Carey on 27 dismissals, the record is 29 in any Test series. Smith has 213 catches, three behind Root.

Does anyone know if there will be any special exhibits displayed at Lord's for Travis Head - especially for Aussie tourists that might do the tour - lol

Head 162* at lunch, his 7th score of 150, but he has yet to get past 175.

We got a win and 2 Root centuries. What more could England really have hoped for? A successful trip.

Since we're not winning this test I'd like to see whenever they get to bat England bunker down and grind out a draw, would be nice to not end this series on a depressing low.

Of course this is england we're talking about, every batsman bar Root will get out trying to hit sixes because this is an entirely unserious cricket team.

A 4-1 win is probably the most accurate reflection of Australia's dominance - so I expect this to be the result

It wouldn't be a England test series without Stokes going down with an injury

What a time to get your first first class century

In the dead rubber of a losing series?

I don’t live in the UK or follow country cricket any more but who are the batsmen coming through?

Crawley is done. Maybe Smith is good enough to bat at 6 in other conditions and then Stokes can bat at 7 but Stokes just isn’t a test #6

So we ideally need two young batsman

Something broke in me watching Will Jacks trying to launch Beau Webster's part time off spin over cow corner second ball.

Does no one coach this team? Is there anyone instructing these players about what the situation requires? In what world is that the correct play? What is going on?

Why do none of these players know how to build an innings?

Beau Webster came in at 8 for Australia and played a great knock for 71, and those runs are vitally important for Australia. This game would be much more on a knife edge if he had holed out trying to smash Joe Root for six second ball. Its such basic mistakes and lack of any direction that has screwed England over consistently

Like Australia have been better than England but I feel like talent wise there isn't a huge chasm between the two teams, it's that one team plays test cricket and the other team is just run on vibes.

England got their way to second in the test rankings (now third) playing this way so it clearly isn't as much of a failure as everyone is saying at the moment

England are 7th in the world test championship rankings and have never threatened to make the final despite having the best test batsman in the world on their team.

Steve Smith is in the England team?

Bazball was fine at the start. It turned a negative, boring, unconfident team into fun, confident winners.

But the transition to something more sustainable started way too late and way too slowly with not everyone getting the message.

The ashes has been a shambles but I'll take it.

2 tons for Root, 1 for Bethell and a test win for the first time in forever.

Could we have done better with more prep, better prep and better strategies? Of course because Australia basically got three quarters of their bowlers injured and have a batting line up containing an over the hill Kawaja, a new Wetherald and a questionable allrounder. But I'll take it.

It's not as bad as Rory Burns, 1st ball of the series, a Boland 6/7 and a 0 in the win column.

I just hope they continue to evolve.

Stat I saw was that Bethell faced more balls yesterday than Duckett has all series.

Yeah I love Root and love watching him bat and despise Smith but the little cheat is definitely a better batsman and has had a better career

I’d pick Williamson over Root too tbh.

More interesting debate is Kane vs Smith. Very even stats so perhaps Kane gets it for me based on watchability (and integrity!)

Since 2020 Joe Root has scored 6584 runs at an average of 54.41 with 24 centuries

Steven "Cheater" Smith has scored 3587 runs at an average of 46.58 with 11 centuries

For sure in the 2015-2019 range give me the cheater, he was untouchable, but Root has been better for quite a while now.