All Out Cricket's Discussion Of The Week - What do England need to do to win at Lord's?

With the 2nd Test at Headingley petering out into a draw, we want to know what you think England need to do to give themselves the best chance of winning at Lord's next week. More team changes? Different tactics?

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Prepare an incredibly green minefield of a pitch, I'm afraid. It will work against us too, but we have to back our batsmen and just hope that we can get the better of a low scoring affair. We might as well lose 2-0 as it makes little difference overall - it is still a series defeat.

Oh, and play Swann, too.

I'd go with an attack of Anderson, Broad, Finn/Onions and Swann.

Get Swann back in, and find a way so that the KP issue is resolved without England losing their best batsman.

Drop KP. That's the old foggies methodology. Bring in JB who flopped against the #7 side.

DouglasJardinesbox wrote:Drop KP. That's the old foggies methodology. Bring in JB who flopped against the #7 side.

Agree there. It truely is a very daft move to drop your best batsman against one of the top 3 ranked bowling attacks in world cricket. With KP gone, I would move Prior to bat at 5, Taylor at 6, then 5 specialist bowlers from 7 to 11 (Bresnan at 7, Broad at 8, Swann at 9, Anderson at 10, Finn at 11).

swann, push taylor in at 3(with no KP)- stick him in at the deep end- his defensive play was also very good in his first outing

Not sure I understand the need to move Trott from number three? Where else can he realistically bat? Taylor should slot in at 5.

Swann obviously returns (why did they leave him out in the first place?). Depending on conditions this might just be the time for 5 bowlers, though I would completely understand if Bairstow plays and they stick with 4 bowlers.

If Bairstow does play, it'll be interesting to see where. Would England want 2 younger players coming in at 5 and 6? Maybe Prior will move up and split them or it may tip the balance towards 5 bowlers.

liverbnz wrote:If Bairstow does play, it'll be interesting to see where. Would England want 2 younger players coming in at 5 and 6? Maybe Prior will move up and split them or it may tip the balance towards 5 bowlers.

I'd imagine we'd certainly have Taylor 5 and Bairstow 6. Otherwise it'll be five bowlers.

I think I'd go against what I've always said and go with 5 bowlers for this one.

After all that has gone by, England of course stand a much better chance in this game without Pietersen, because they will be a much more galvanised side. They could well do it.

We can't pick Bairstow. The West Indies found him out with the short ball and the Saffers will exploit that ruthlessly. Swann in for KP needs to be the only change. The weather forecast for the Test is looking good so we can force a result here. The first innings will set the tone, so if we're batting make 400+ and heap the pressure on the Saffers, if we bowl first we need to skittle them out for under 300 and we can do that with an attack of Anderson, Broad, Finn, Swann and Bresnan. It's just like the 2nd Test v Sri Lanka again, we need to win to remain No.1 and I'm confident we will. Adversity brings the best out of England.

Onions in for Bresnan, Swann in for Pietersen.

Duty281 wrote:We can't pick Bairstow. The West Indies found him out with the short ball and the Saffers will exploit that ruthlessly.

Rubbish. They bowled a couple of short balls which he didn't play very well. Hardly evidence of a technical flaw that would write-off a Test career. They wouldn't have selected him if they didn't feel he was good enough.