and who of the touring party would you make captain?
Stokesy
Heās the nearest to the kind of (criminal) record you need to survive in Australia.
Stokes filled in as on field captain in Adelaide on Sunday morning when Root had to go to hospital after taking a belt in the nuts. Stokes has enough on his plate though and heās playing through injuries and I suspect wonāt see the tour out.
At this stage, you could just take it on a test by test basis. Broad or Anderson the other two candidates for an interim captain role.
Get Morgan in as captain and have him bat at six or seven. Heās failed with the bat at test level but so have all the alternatives. If he averaged 25 heād be a net positive for the team.
Thereāll be 3 fairly predictable and possibly 4 changes for Boxing Day.
Zak Crawley will be one of the openers. Both Hameed and Burns could be dropped. Burns was the less bad of the two in Adelaide, so heāll probably hold on.
Jonny Bairstow to come in for Ollie Pope, Iād expect.
That would be two fairly underwhelming changes to the batting line up.
Mark Wood to replace Chris Woakes.
The big conundrum is whether they go with a specialist spinner. If they do, Jack Leach is still a better option than Dom Bess. Stuart Broad or Jimmy Anderson to lose out if that happens.
Got to be a better plan than going back to all these failed players. The county game must be in rag order.
1 Like
They only care about 20 20 now.
1 Like
They threw a lot of energy at the 100 which is even more dumbed down than T20.
Paddy being called for to sort them out.
They are hopeless without white ball Paddy telling them where to stand
1 Like
yes, desperate to see
i actually get no joy in a non competitive ashes*
*i do
1 Like
Hazelwood out of the Boxing Day test.
Captain Pat will come in for Neser in the only change so. Whatās the track like in the MCG this week?
Two chances for Australia. Cummins back in for Naser and 32 year old Scott Boland handed a test debut replacing Jhye Richardson.
No news of an England team. Maybe theyāre gone home.
Silverwood was defending his selection for the second test. He might send them all back out again to redeem themselves.
Burns, Pope, Woakes, Broad dropped for Crawley, Bairstow, Wood & Leach
1 Like
The four additions that I had predicted. Wood will improve things and shouldnāt have been rested in Adelaide. The other three changes are fairly underwhelming.
England could do with winning the toss, batting first and posting a big total. That would involve Root posting a big score of 150+.
Reminiscent of the 90s when Hick and Ramprakash would bounce in and out of the team after every bad loss.
Scott Boland will be the 463rd player to be capped for Australia but seemingly only the second after Jason Gillespie of indigenous Australian heritage.