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Just to tug a little on this particular loose thread, Wood's record at Lords since he lengthened his run up in 2019 is respectable (average under 30, wicket in every innings he's bowled in), albeit only includes two matches. His matches there prior to that were in 2015 when he did about as well...

England's record at home when they pick my preferred seamer line up is appalling. :lolol: Although, to be fair, I think there were wider issues than the seam attack in those matches. I'd play the same seamers unless the pitch looks totally flat, if we'd taken our chances we'd be saying how...

Well at this point, clearly it sounds insane :lolol:. I realised my reply was quite long so I'l summarise what's below as: No, that's not quite what I'm getting at. If it's a pitch with a decent amount of grass or cracking that helps the seamers, there's not really an issue. But if it's flat...

Wood bowled well in Australia, even if he didn't always get just reward for it. Took a wicket in every innings (except the one where he only bowled one ball) and was our top wicket taker. I still think, if everybody is fit and bowling well, that Anderson, Wood and Robinson is our best attack.

I'm hoping he does the classic trick of making contributions just large enough to keep him in the team but not large enough to actually effect the result.

Bairstow's keeping cost us significantly more than the declaration did. As did Broad's inablilty to keep his front foot behind the line. Has he always done that without me noticing or did he just lose his run up this game?

I disagree with every sentence of that excerpt except the obviously factual statements.

I've seen somewhere (can't remember where, probably on cricinfo) that statistically bowling first was the correct choice at the start of that test, given the teams (that England team were dead certs to get thrashed anyway) and whatever else goes into these analyses. He probably didn't plan on...

A result would still be the most likely result even if we'd carried on batting. It's not as if we were likely to bat until tea on day two. There were, what, 6 overs left in the day's play? The batters have to reset themselves the next morning, so the chances are we would have been bowled out...

They clearly haven't been paying attention. Being 30/2 is all part of the bazball formula. As is apparently being behind for substantial parts of the game.

Taking the hindsight game to the next level, if Stokes hadn't declared we wouldn't have been caught in that mini-session between the showers. :lolol:

Humpage's chances of playing a test won't have been helped by him only scoring 11 runs in his two innings in the ODIs than summer, and then going on the rebel tour to South Africa. Plenty of people at the time argued that Murray or Binks (for example) were better keepers than Parks, or Duckworth...

Even Jack Russell could bat pretty well, average in the high 20s and scored a couple of hundreds. The last time we regularly picked a wicketkeeper without any notable batting ability at all was probably Bruce French in the late 80s, and Bob Taylor for a couple of years when Knott was at World...

Sky just showed a graphic highlighting Anderson's metronomic accuracy the over before getting Carey out. Conveniently ignoring the two 4s hit either side of the wicket the balls immediately before. :lolol:

Anderson clearly gave up relying on the rest of the team to help getting people out.

The argument that picking a better wicketkeeper only saves a few runs on average seems a bit thin when they do miss chances leading to a big partnership.

One match later at Lords wasn't it? :lolol: I seem to remember him saying relatively recently that a good length in Australia isn't actually much different to in England, because the extra bounce means you want to pitch fuller than you think to draw the batsman forward. On that subject, it's...

Interesting to compare this game to the 1st test at Edgbaston in 2001. England actually scored marginally faster than Australia in the first innings of that match, but both teams were going at near enough 4.5 an over. We can only compare the first innings, since Australia didn't need a second to...

This is true. But it doesn't alter my view (which was pretty strongly expressed by both the English and Australian commentators in the first half of the day) that the Aussie batters allowed England to get away with a lot of poor or mediocre bowling. I'm not suggesting running down the pitch at...

And considering the Australians have to start again tomorrow, it wouldn't be surprising if we still took the lead in the first innings, despite the fact that the Australian batting is miles better than ours on paper. Australia left about 50 almost completely risk free runs out there today...