England set to slide down Test rankings

Well Australia be going the same path lucky 2-2 drawn series wanker

It's a 2 year cycle, meaning teams can't all play each other home and away. I do think it might encourage the top teams to make sure they include series against the weaker nations that they've often avoided in the past as picking up some relatively easy points against weaker nations may be important to being among the top 2 at the end of the cycle to get into the final.

Hi Chris thanks. So to get a more even spread, trying to get all teams in laying each other? It’s going to be interesting, see who/how teams maybe try to ‘game’ it.

To make the test championship more even, each nation has a fixed number of home and away series that count for the test championship. Any other test series beyond are excluded from World Test Championship points. The England v NZ test series that is coming up is one such series. I don't know what other scheduled series there are outside the WTC, but I'm sure that wouldn't be the only one.

Hi Chris. Which test are excluded from the championship?

Agreed. Woods, Archer and Curran will love it here. If only coz they're fearless and up for a fight. Ronan, I get Joffra bowled a lot, but as I understand it his lazy action puts his body under far less physical stress than likes of Pattinson or Starc.

Graham McKenzie bowled more than all of them because he was our only bowler of any quality for most of his career. He had the most beautiful, economical and powerful action of all time and, as a result, never got an injury. Archer's action is wonderfully economical (like Holding without the long run-up) so he is unlikely to have a Lillee, Pattinson, Cummins style of injury.

Yeh .. Nah. If you play Sri Lanka, WI and Bangladesh often enough your ranking rises.

Archer will not like the flatter pitches in Australia and seems to be a bit light on for stamina. I suspect that they won’t win another test for 10 years :laughing:

I’m looking forward to that England v NZ series. On paper the Kiwi side is better than the Aussie side apart from Smith, Cummins and possibly Hazlewood and Lyon. If they play to their potential, yes they should comfortably win.

Those four would be an incredibly long tail unless Archer demonstrates something close to his FC ability (his test batting performances to date weren't to promising). But personally I've never been a fan of picking teams with a view to "what if it all goes wrong". If your top 7 can't get it done, it's unlikely the bottom four will. It's the same reason I don't see the point in an 'all rounder' at 6 if they're not a good enough batsmen; if your four bowlers can't get it done, it's unlikely a fifth will. This isn't always true (see the last test), but it's mostly true. Plus usually whatever you might gain in the "other" skill is offset by that player not being good enough at their primary skill (ie Marsh not getting runs and Ali not getting wickets).

I particularly agree with the second paragraph Chris. I spent a lot of tie listening to English commentators and all were seriously worried not so much about the current lineup, but by the complete lack of talent coming through. In an ideal world, there should be at least one or two guys vying for each of the top 6 Test spots, but at best, the English pundits seem to think their might be one or two at most. In fairness, we're in a similar boat, with the current squad largely underwhelming with the bat and the contenders doing little to force they way into the side.

Not with you on Archer, Ronan. 40 overs per test is only a tall order for a 32+ yo with 3 days break between Tests. Archer will never know his limit unless he's pushed and at his age he can cope with a decent load. He has an easy action and short runup, so will cope better than an into the wicket express bowler. So be it if he gets injured, that's the life of a fast bowler, but he can pick soft tissue issues by being rotated just as easy as bone issues from repetitive actions. He's not backed up in the 2nd innings that well in this series and that's his age and experience showing. Even though he bowled fast at Wade he lost the plot and Root enabled him by having Stokes at backstop. He will learn if onfield experience like Broad gets in his ear for on the job training. Long unproductive spells hold every bowler in good stead if they are prepared to learn. That only comes though if they play.

I think they'll get a bit of a beatdown in australia in 2021/2022. They might win a test off the back of archer but hard to see them being competitive.

Haha, the saffa Buttler? That should be a surprise to Jos I’m sure. :laughing: Jak, the sand pit’s calling.

It’s an interesting point about Burns having the underrated skill of playing and missing. It’s true, some people seem to have that gift. Steve Smith too - however well he played, there were still a couple of innings where he played and missed a few times. But throughout his career he doesn’t seem to get caught behind a lot. However, I’m not sure these guys “hold their line” to seaming balls more than most others - Williamson, Root, Pujara, for example, seem to have even better techniques in playing with softer hands and not overcommitting. Players who are beaten by the seaming ball at 85-90 mph don’t have time to change their line - it either takes your edge or it doesn’t. It’s not clear that Smith does anything better than everyone else in this regard, though he obviously reduces risks through great shot selection. Harris is another who seems to have had a lot of luck on the outside edge, compared with someone like Joe Burns, who has a much better technique. Or maybe players like Harris and Rory Burns just have had purple patches of good fortune at different times and may come back to the pack. Holding your line as swinging or seaming deliveries pass your edge is crucial for an opener.

Clearly England very much have an eye on the World Test Championship. I heard multiple English players mention it during the Ashes, never once heard mention of it from the Aussies. Which is interesting. But that does potentially mean that test series that are excluded from WTC points may well be used as opportunities to blood younger players and things. So maybe, on top of a change of bowlers, they might also use it to give some of the young batsmen on the fringe of the team a shot, sending more players who are real first class cricketers instead of white-ball hitters. Will be interesting to see if they do.

To be honest, England's batting lineup did finish the series looking better than Australia's. While Smith obviously was the standout by a long way, Australia still didn't have a single opening partnership reach 20 in the series, still hard to see Marsh or Head being long term test options, and Wade, who was only ever really a short-term option anyway, seems very hot and cold, as he scored two hundreds in the series, yet still only averaged 33 because he barely scored a run in his other 8 innings. We truly do have 2 batsmen in our top 6 locked in, and lots of question marks outside of them. Part of me does feel though, that for the long term good of England cricket, they might have been better off with a 3-1 loss than a 2-2 draw in the Ashes. As the drawn series might tempt them to keep trying players like Roy, Bairstow and Buttler and Denly, where a loss may have seen them abandon some of their white ball players in favour of other young players with much better first class records.

Broad is still only 33, so no reason he shouldn’t still have a good 2-4 years still at the top level. It will be interesting to see what happens with Anderson. In some ways Archer coming through would be a perfect time to move on from Anderson. But at the same time, right up until his injury this season, he’s been comfortably England’s best bowler over the last couple of years, even at his age, he’s enjoying the best form of his career. If they were to play a bowling lineup like Archer, Broad, Anderson, Leach though, that’s suddenly looking like a pretty long tail, which could be interesting considering England have relied so much on a strong tail making up for top-6 frailties over the last few years. They usually prefer to have at least one of their bowlers be someone like Woakes who is decent with the bat too. Mind you, the way Root was so reticent to bowl Woakes at many times when he was in the team suggests he doesn’t have a lot of confidence to throw him the ball. So they’d be better off just picking their best three fast bowlers regardless of batting ability.

I agree, selectors should just stop trying to turn players into something they aren't. Where there are those players who are simply great players across different formats and would walk into your best side in any format, then they can be cross-format players, and just be careful with workload management. But stop the thought of "they've done so well in ODI's, we should pick them for test cricket and hope they can do really well there too". For the most part though teams are doing this already. Pretty sure the only real crossover between the WC squad and test squad for Australia was Warner, Khawaja, Smith, Cummins, Starc and Lyon. That's 6 players out of the 17 in the test squad. The fact that some of the players picked purely for tests still didn't do well is another issue, but it's mostly not trying to have a single group for the different formats. The fact that England have been so focussed on ODI cricket over the last four years probably has a lot to do with them then pushing player who really should just be ODI players, like Roy, Buttler and Bairstow, into the test side more.