And JB was like that despite having kept regularly for Yorks! Smith had basically never kept in FC games for Surrey, and it’s supposed to be surprising that his keeping — and later batting — got ragged as he dealt, without a coach, with an unprecedented and intensely scrutinised keeping workload!
It makes sense to an extent, because the imperative on Test keepers to also be high-quality batters means they need to prove themselves by batting the order and getting big runs in county cricket, but it does mean that they have limited experience/aptitude when it comes to marshalling the tail, etc
… top-order batters, not natural number 7s, so are going to have to learn a hell of a lot “on the job” if brought into the Test team. Cox, Rew, etc.
I’m a Surrey guy, I love Foakes to my bones and would love to have seen him given the vote of confidence cement himself as the keeper for the long-term, but I’ve accepted that that ship has sailed. It *is* a bit of an issue though that all the keepers coming through — Smith included — are by nature…
Yeah, assuming he’d accept the hit to the ego, I’d be positioning Stokes as number 7 and first- or second-change bowler rather than 6 and the fifth bowler, and have Smith keep and bat 6 with a mandate to consider himself “true” batter. Let Stokes do the momentum-raising and batting with the tail.
And there’s a real danger that Smith — who should be being groomed to step up to 4 as a specialist bat and the successor to Root as the “proper” batter who plays the long knocks everyone else builds a mammoth team innings around — goes the same way by being pigeonholed as an “enforcer” at 7…
Honestly, Pope just makes me sad. He’s been a great team man, putting his hand up to bat 3, buying into the philosophy, subbing as keeper when needed, etc., but this setup has ruined a man who should have been a lock to be England’s next all-time great batter.
… but they just don’t seem interested, and that seems clearly to come from the top. And in the bigger picture, a proliferation of three-day Tests because you can’t bat 100 overs in mildly challenging conditions is *detrimental* to the “product”, even if England manage to win more than lose.
… how the seeming Messiah Complex and martyrdom around “saving Test cricket” (which you could argue they *did* do during Covid) has seen them refuse to *also* pursue other approaches that would have presented better chances of winning or survival. A hard-fought draw *can* be hugely entertaining…
And that’s before getting onto the frustrations that the intransigence of this side and it’s management have caused as a viewer and the concerns for the future of the game — I’ve *loved* how they have transformed perceptions of what’s possible for batting sides in Tests, but I’ve *hated* …
Related: how many players have meaningfully improved under McCullum, either versus their pre-McCullum performances or compared to what they were when introduced by McCullum? You can quibble over the odd name, but it’s very, very few.
… but without them there wasn’t the flexibility/humility to accept that different approaches might be required to assist a bowling attack very much still finding its feet. So many seamers latterly looked quickly spent even after having game time managed — could batting longer have helped?
It’s telling, I think, how clearly the marked decline in Test results/performance dovetailed with the retirement/axing of Broad and Anderson — Bazball made much more sense with two world-class seamers to paper over deficiencies and get the team out of holes of the batters’ making…
… of a less experienced group who *did* need some technical and tactical coaching to *discover and hone* their games at the top level, without tons of experience to lean on, and who would have benefited enormously from having more than one way to win (and some way to avoid defeat when necessary).
… which is to say, he was a great fit when an experienced bunch of world-leading players who knew their games inside-out needed freeing from psychological straightjackets to deliver through the Covid years and the immediate aftermath, but has shown little ability to adapt to the different needs…
I would say no, on the basis that the last couple of years have shown up not only the limitations of his philosophy and skills, but that those limitations intersect horribly with the needs of the team and the times now and in the short-/medium-term future versus when he took over…
I feel like I'm going mad whenever I read this shit. We've done what these fucking dickheads wanted! We've sold off public services, squeezed wages, cut spending, made every millionaire feel like a special boy. And still, anemic growth at best. It doesn't *work* lads!!
You can’t expect a conservative media so rattled by a single by-election victory that we immediately got Kuenssberg publishing an “omg they’re *so much* more alike than you think!” take amounting to little more than “two men like campaigning and do social media well” to engage in policy analysis!
I think it's very bad to lose a grasp of which parties are threats to liberal democracy and which ones you merely don't like.
Okay, enough. Look, the centre-right are going to be the centre-right, that's completely unsurprising to me. I don't expect the Economist to like Polanski.
But this shit is just dangerous. It is asserting that what is at the end of the day a democratic party is akin to literal neofascists.
Also worth noting that there is going to be a *lot* more of this pushing the simplistic idea that the Greens are nothing more than a left-wing mirror image of Reform, and where it isn’t just lazy it will seldom be in good faith
A choice that you can all but guarantee will not have crossed the mind of anyone involved in commissioning, producing, or signing off on the image
Honestly the contempt I feel for Dubai 'ex-pats' isn't based on class so much as their willingness to embrace a life of luxury and excess in a society propped up by slavery, exploitation and human rights abuse as though they were living in a JG Ballard novel they refuse to understand
How many non-international List-A game is he going to play for the rest of his career? Strong chance it’s zero.
How many non-Test first-class games? Assuming he’s now and will be for some time a centrally-contracted all-formats regular, maybe two per season?
T20 is a crapshoot.
It’s possible!
Yes, he’ll probably play loads of IPL at the very least, so might pick up one or two in T20, but given how little other domestic cricket internationals play, it’s *plausible* that the current state of affairs — all his pro hundreds are international hundreds — remains the case his *entire career*
Social normalisation — the feeds of first-, second-, and third-degree connections of new members being flooded with “I’ve joined!” posts so Green-curious folk see how big a network they already have in the party — is key. You’ll get more from daily posts than irregular ones only around milestones.
*Daily* updates now, please — ideally featuring some sort of Blue Peter-style totaliser.
Lets every new member feel part of a specific daily number and probably makes them more likely to post about joining if they can share the post about *the actual day they did it*.
Can only assume that the person asking @theanfieldwrap.bsky.social’s AFQ show about the optimum simmering time for a bolognaise, now of all times, is an avid @beefanddairy.bsky.social listener
No media outlet — “traditional”, “new”, or fan — that wants to be taken remotely seriously should be taking Romano remotely seriously.
This has been obvious for a long time, but it’s good to see him under greater scrutiny.
Good piece by Nick that surely barely scratches the surface.
… and pushes the lazy portrayal of the Greens as merely a lefty mirror of Reform.
I now see she’s a regular columnist for Spiked, which explains a lot.
