Bazball beaten: Indian young guns' nerveless stand aces chase, ensures Poms' first series loss under McCullum

Agree, although I’d change that to - good batsmen CAN make runs. But there are still lots of balls that are close to unplayable.

Presenting the facts - a bloke that averages 35 in test cricket and has 1 century in Australia or India can’t be an all time great.

So clearly 13th man you're out of touch with cricket followers. Rather selective memory. Stokes is an all time great for England. You sort of don't know to much.

That's ok. They're trying to promote the game in England because they were less than hopeless with Root as captain. I don't know where Brooks is at now but he is a great talent. Pope plays a magical innings which everyone knows he's capable of then goes back to his failure mode. Players like him must frustrate the rest of the team. On the other hand Crawley has done great under Bazball. I was certain he would fail but he's got the belief in his methods and is delivering.

but the Pommie spinners were similar to Murphy & Kuhnemann who have been forgotten since. They will re-emerge but I expect the same for the English spinners. This was a great win for India though as they have put a heap of new players under the pump and the team has won. I'de never heard of Patidar and he must be good to get a gig but has been abysmal. But Jaiswal & Gill are exceptional talents. I never ever saw the last keeper Bharat do any good but this new guy Jural comes in and gets MOM. I'm expecting Pant has a challenge to get his job back.

Flogged 2-1… hyperbole much? Australia managed first innings leads twice in the series. The fact is that the pitches were difficult during the first three tests, especially the middle two. The Delhi and Indore pitches were far more difficult for batting than anything rolled out in this series.

13th, as I've said before, I agree the English over-hype him and he's not as good as they suggest. But again, I think you're making statements that aren't supported by facts; he’s grossly underperformed away from home except for South Africa. Grossly implies he's some sort of complete failure outside of England and South Africa, but in the context of his career, this isn't true. He averages 34 away from England, so almost perfectly in line with his career average. He has five centuries on the road and 15 50s (which are half of all his fifties), so he's actually contributed plenty on the road. He averages 34 in the Windies, 31 in Sri Lanka, 34 in Pakistan, 32 in New Zealand 32 in Bangladesh. Remembering that for long stretches of his career he's been a number six batsman playing as an all-rounder, these are not 'gross underperformances'. I will agree that he's under performed in India and Australia, averaging under 30 in both countries and as these are the two major players throughout his career, they're blights. It's unfortunate that he didn't tour here in 2017-18 when he was starting to peak as a player, instead we've only had him on his debut series and as part of a complete shambles line up a few years ago. At 32, you'd also say he's on his last tour of India, so realistically he only has a tour to Australia in a few years to try and right his record. Anyway, I'm not sure we can take this conversation any further; you seem to now agree that he's a much better player than Watson when you actually break their careers down, but that he's very much over-hyped by the English... so we're pretty much in agreement.

The pitches for the Aussie series were either deliberately under prepared for the first three Tests or a complete road for the last match. You're right, these have been a damn sight better and IMO have been excellent contests between bat & ball. There's been times where the quicks have done really well, which doesn't seem to fit with most people's thoughts about Indian wickets, while other times, guys have made some really big scores. I think Ben Duckett is the epitome of Bazball, at least as far as the Poms see it. He's batted 8 times in this series and has gone at a strike rate under 89 on 2 occasions. He's only made middling scores bar that excellent hundred last Test, but has got England off to pretty good starts they should have built on.

All in all, the pitches in India this series have been a damn sight better than previous series against Australia or England, which have for the most part been diabolical bunsen burners that not even Kohli could make runs on. Good batsmen, if they apply themselves this series, have scored runs. Jaiswal has been brilliant, Gill, Rohit and Jadeja have all made runs in stages, Pope batted well in the first test and Root (when he finally stopped playing Bazball garbage and batted normally) put on a clinic in the first innings. The only outlier Bazball esque innings was the Duckett one - and I'd suggest it was one of those freakish days where everything came off - he won't do that again.

The thing with Stokes though is that despite multiple so called matchwinning innings - I can only think of two that really come to mind, his average is similar to that of most bog standard middle order All Rounders. Cam Green, who everyone wants out of the side averages only slightly less than Stokes as well. It's about expectation - Stokes averages 34 and is considered a hero and one of England's greatest ever players, whilst Watson averages 34 and is considered an average at best player that underperformed. Now, sure Stokes has been involved in a few more memorable innings, and I will agree is the better player, but not by as much as English fans would have you think - he's barely made a score in India, and from memory the only hundred he has scored in Australia was way back in his debut - he's grossly underperformed away from home except for South Africa. The complete narrative that the English use around Stokes is that he is "changing the game" - it's complete nonsense as Gilchrist batted the same way (except better and more consistent) more than a decade earlier, and averaged 47 doing it.

The Moral victory for England is having it still played in their country even if they will never participate.

Why is this taking up space that could be filled with a rugby article in the highly visible 'Roaring Hot' section of the rugby page?

You look at Watson’s numbers and you realise how poorly he was treated I think Watson wasn't handled well and his injuries caused even more problems, but I'm not going to rewriter history here, Watson's record is very modest in test cricket. He should have been left to be an aggressive, counter-attacking batter at 6. If he'd stayed there, his record would be more palatable. but if you are after consistency with the bat, Watto is better than him. By consistent, do you mean consistently poor? Watson's career doesn't stand up to scrutiny. After two good years in 2009 and 2010, when he averaged 65 and 42 respectively, scoring 2 centuries and fourteen 50s, this was the rest of his career: 2011: 24.09, one fifty 2012: 31.45, three fifties 2013: 35, two hundreds three fifties 2014: 25.8, one fifty 2015: 30, one fifty. So across five calendar years he never averaged over 35 and scored two centuries and nine fifties (so not even two a year on average). And those two centuries? One was in a dead rubber test in England and the other was in a basically dead rubber third test in Australia against a broken England. If you bat up the order, consistent 20s and 30s don't win tests for teams. You need to make big scores and Watson did not do this, in fact, he didn't even score fifties. So yes, Stokes is less consistent, but at least he has the ability to score big runs and lead his team to wins as a result against good opposition. People forget that Watson's great run of form included us playing a very poor Pakistan and West Indies combo over 2009-10, around that, he didn't contribute to any wins at all with the bat that I can even recall. In contrast, Stokes many key and memorable centuries, the best being against us in 2019, but his 258 in South Africa back in 2016 was an epic knock that Watson couldn't dream of scoring. Even just pick his random century against the Windies in 2017, he scored an even century in the first innings when the total score for England was 258 and he came in at 4-71. Watson never did anything like that.

That was good enough to flog Australia. They only batted 6 times. They made 400 in the First Test and won by an innings, made 390 runs in total in the 2nd Test and won by 6 wickets and made over 570 in the 4th Test to close out the series.

Better bowler than Watson sure, but if you are after consistency with the bat, Watto is better than him. Stokes’ test average is ballooned by some very big scores, but also a lot of failures. You look at Watson’s numbers and you realise how poorly he was treated, he also batted as an opener or number 3 for most of his test career which is a tougher place to bat than 5/6 where Stokes has spent his whole career, he’s a better test cricketer than Watson, but there is nowhere near as much in it as people would think.

We don’t go back to India for tests until 2027. Thank Dennis for that!

Or theatres...

I’ve pointed out to you before why he’s nothing like Watson. I still agree he’s overrated and certainly not a trailblazer. But he’s a far better test cricketer than Watson was and I’m not going to rehash why again.

Has he? On very few occasions he's played an exceptional innings, but most of the time you watch him and he bats very slowly at the start then gets out as soon as he looks to increase his strike rate. He's not some trailblazer changing the game - he's an average at best All Rounder with a similar career average to Shane Watson.

With you 100%. Good for the Ashes though. An England team we all love to hate