England's winter of cricket 2024/25

First topic message reminder :

The squad for the tour of Pakistan has just been announced...Stokes and Crawley are back, with Dan Lawrence dropped. There are also recalls for Rehan Ahmed and Jack Leach, with Brydon Carse getting a tour also.

Full squad (likely XI then others);

Zak Crawley
Ben Duckett
Ollie Pope
Joe Root
Harry Brook
Ben Stokes
Jamie Smith (wk)
Gus Atkinson
Olly Stone
Jack Leach
Shoaib Bashir

Reserves:
Jordan Cox
Brydon Carse
Rehan Ahmed
Chris Woakes
Josh Hull
Matthew Potts

Will MacPherson noting they see Tom Hartley as more suited for the true turning wickets of SL/India/Bangladesh, hence his omission. Tests likely to be played at Rawalpindi, Multan, Rawalpindi. (Two Pindi tests...fun).

Extra seamers suggest Stokes might not be fit to bowl?

150 as par, KP_fan ? Not sure par would mean much to England But if one of these gets out soon I suspect they might find even 100 hard to cross !

And indeed Brook has gone now...gone on back foot to open up for a shot down the ground but beaten by Noman's quicker ball and stone dead lbw - wasted a review too but hardly relevant now I fear. This is finishing early . 78/5

For all the frenzy & frenetic approach, not 1 Eng batter has crossed 20
Look at Salman's inning yesterday....template of how one should play on such a pitch
.

Straight bat defense as stock....be ready to hit down the ground , cut , drive and sweep.only occasionally.

They've not played well at all . Almost the only plan being sweep in either direction, and a bit too indiscriminate for mine. Not much defence . Smith made a mess of his attempt to sweep and didn't detain them long...could he perhaps have settled down a bit before launching? Carse - after a review reprieve from a first ball decision - has produced a couple of terrific straight sixes and with Stokes so far sweeping effectively they've reached 113 so might yet threaten KP_fan's "par" of 150....small consolation.

Stokes played better than anyone , somewhat surprisingly give his Asia record. But he's gone now for 37 , dancing down the pitch and throwing his bat literally out of his hands...Rizwan doing the rest. That's five for Noman now and just mopping up left...127/7

Carse continues to entertain. A third six , this time over cow...all good clean strikes. And he's chosen the right balls to hit or defend. Pakistan thought they had him then but have just wasted a review...A good game for Carse , now 25 no after some good bowling...he's growing on me. 132/7

Oh well, not too worried about this. Losing the toss made the chance of winning about 20% at best, before a ball was even bowled. England won't exactly be thrashed in the end, and haven't played that well really

Well it does set up a decider, which is always interesting. My concern though is that England have looked so inept against spin here that if the next pitch is similar they might end up well beaten in the series by a Pakistan side widely derided as a basket case just a week ago...and one who hadn't won a Test at home for ages prior to this. One could say they lost an important toss ; but even so , it is probably only Duckett's excellent first innings hundred that has saved them from being totally thrashed. Ha . We lost the picture here for three minutes and I see it is all over...152 runs a fairly convincing margin.

Noman the silent tortoise crept up with 11 on his demonstrative rabbit mate Sajid with 9.
only 2 bowlers used by Pak and Eng crumble to sub-150 in very Old fashioned play by Pak with both bat & ball.

Winning was impossible for Eng but a better fight would have been to play straight, down the ground, drives, cuts, hit in the V and blend it with occasional sweeps atleast by the 3 technically competent batters Root, Smith & Stokes.
That might have taken them closer to 225-250.

Pak will do their best to make a rank turner next game and I hope Eng win the toss & test Pak's conventional brand with their sweeping & hacking.

Thought we did alright on day 1 and for most of day 2...but as soon as Duckett/Root fell end of day 2, we've been fairly pants bar a couple of players. Would definitely have been a good toss to win!

Need to reassess and if the pitch is similar in Rawalpindi (and why wouldn't it be from a Pakistan perspective...), then it would be handy if Stokes can call correctly!

You really never know what you are going to get with Pakistan , do you ? Eviscerated just a few days ago , dumping their senior batsman and both their leading pace bowlers for a host of second choice spinners and gambling on winning a toss on a wearing pitch...and they've seen everything go nicely to script. Not much doubt we will see similar conditions next week if humanly possible to produce another one without playing five days on it already

Of course things may be very different if England get first use next time. But the caution here is that England reached 211/2 at one point (mainly due to Duckett) and subsequently lost 18 wickets in scoring a further 224 ... while Pakistan , batting a second time on the same well worn pitch , managed 221/10... that does suggest a bit of difference not totally down to the luck of the toss, does it not ? England's spinners were OK (Bashir poor in the first innings but much improved on the more responsive surface second time around ) and he and Leach had 12 wickets between them overall : but they didn't exactly run through Pakistan ... England owed a lot to Carse in particular that they weren't chasing even more.

But it is their batting against spin that really has to lift. On the evidence of this game , only Duckett and Root seem to offer a lot of confidence on this sort of pitch : some of the others will need to make a quick adjustment if they are going to encounter similar conditions again. And this week it will be England having to make some tricky decisions as to what might be their best bowling combination for game three . Going to be serious anticipation of a true contest - and plenty of doubts about the likely result - ahead of the match ; which was probably not the case before this upset ...

Mmm, a bit one sided in the end. Good toss to win in the end, bit like playing in England and timing your bowling efforts to when cloud cover is around. All part of test cricket. Pakistan managed a better effort with the bat than England did once it start ragging though. Certainly the fielding (catching) needs to improve substantially

Absolutely dire from England. That was one of the worst test performances I've seen from them in a while.

Let's not forget, they weren't playing India here, or Sri Lanka, or even Bangladesh, they were playing a Pakistan team in crisis mode, rife with internal division, the worst team in the WTC on form, and with a botched selection policy.

And England lost. Didn't just lose, got soundly hammered.

It really is the sign of a mentally weak team. Pressure comes in and England crumble all too readily. Seen it all before. England lost their last 18 wickets for 224 runs. Yes, it was turning, but so what? Test cricket is about tough conditions. England have become far too accustomed to playing on flat featherbeds. And they didn't collapse to some world class spell of bowling from Ashwin, or Bumrah, or Hazlewood...they collapsed to Sajid Khan and Noman Ali. Christ, that's bad.

England have also gone backwards in their sub continental approach. The amount of sweeps today took me right back to early 2012, when England played Pakistan in the UAE, and didn't have a clue to handle Ajmal. The pre meditation was a clear indicator they didn't have a clue then, and the same thing now.

Fielding, abject. Has been the case for a while. England put down too many simple chances. They did in the first test, it didn't cost them. Here, it definitely did. Smith's drop was so unbelievably bad that it raises questions as to whether he should keep.

I know Key/McCullum are trying to keep a settled team, but there's so many questions over numerous personnel. Pope is a tailender far too often. In classic Pope fashion, his last century is sandwiched in between 9 innings where he's averaging just under 10! That's what Pope brings. One big innings in a winter or summer, but then eight or nine other contributions where you'll be lucky to see him breach 20. Can England really carry such a player in a series against India or Australia? Stokes brings very little with the bat overseas. If he can't bowl at a good level, what's his value to the team overseas? And Bashir is only competent in helpful conditions. Pick him in Australia and he'll get annihilated.  Crawley, still very unconvincing. After a brief peak last year, he's back to averaging in the mid 30s, and it's well over a year since his last ton. He's a very ordinary option.

There are some good points. Carse has started excellently, Potts is improving, and Leach has shown his worth and why he should be England's number one spinner (as they refuse to pick Dawson). Duckett is sneakily becoming a very good test player. He's averaging 42 since the start of 2023. He will never be a good converter, as he'll always play one shot too many, but he's making the best of his talent and can always put England on the immediate front foot in a test. I'd still like to see more from Brook in testing conditions. I'm starting to think of him as a bit of a flat track bully.

Onto the third test. If England don't win that, serious questions need to be asked.