I think England are also missing a proper fifth bowling option, particularly on the sorts of pitches we’ve seen in the last two tests (good batting tracks which deteriorate very slowly). There’s a reasonable chance that the huge increase in bowling workload has been a contributing factor in Joe Root’s poor series with the bat. He’s bowled 107 overs in the 3 tests so far (36 overs/test), which is over 40 overs more than he’s ever previously bowled in a test series – and there’s still 2 tests to go! Prior to this series he’d only once bowled more than 31 overs in a test match.

England would have benefitted more by playing Ollie Robinson in this test match, who could at least have bowled some higher quality overs and is probably not offering a lot less with the bat than Jonny Bairstow at this stage. They must really be wishing that Moeen Ali had extended his test comeback to this series – he would have been a really useful option to slot in with Stokes unable to bowl. Though the reality, like you say, is that India just have too many good cricketers in these conditions compared to England.

Anderson and Wood bowled a lot of overs in hot conditions in this test match with only a short break between innings. It wouldn’t surprise me if neither play in Ranchi and they bring in Atkinson and Robinson as fresh legs.

The entire philosophy of Bazball seems to be the removal of any traces of self-doubt by developing a cult-like belief that everything you are doing is right and placing no value on the opinion of others outside the dressing room.

To be fair it has vastly improved the output of a number of their players to date. I do expect it to end in tears though, as most cults do. Human nature means that when most players do have a form slump, no amount of self-deception will convince them that they aren’t going through one. We are already seeing that with Jonny Bairstow, and even Joe Root in this series.

I do think the highly insular and self-absorbed culture which Stokes and McCullum have developed is not healthy and will result in problems down the track. Time will tell though.

Mark Waugh was a wonderful cricketer, but I’m not sure he knows much about physics.

The fact is that ball tracking has shown us that many balls we used to assume were not going on to hit the stumps in fact are. Old cricketers assessing the merits on an lbw based on how it was umpired back in their day is not more accurate than modelling a trajectory based on actual ball tracking data.

The ball tracking is not perfect but clear errors are extremely rare – I don’t recall seeing any during the Australian summer.

😂 Surely 1,050 would have been even better? 😂

To be fair, most of the England batting lineup have poor defensive techniques, that’s why they bat the way they do.

Joe Root and Ben Stokes are the only batters in the England team who have a defensive game capable of surviving long periods. And Root is horribly out of form and Stokes is a very inconsistent batter.

So yes, a team full of good defensive bats could perhaps have survived 130 overs on that pitch, although it would have been an incredible effort still – enough balls were misbehaving, albeit slowly, to create 10 wicket taking opportunities.

England do not have such a team which is why half the team decided sweeping balls off the stumps was a good idea, or trying to whack the ball over long on.

To be fair, commentators being flummoxed is hardly proof that wrong decisions are being made. Some of these guys think an elbow is the thing you sit on.

I don’t recall seeing a ball tracking decision during the home summer that I thought looked odd, can you give an example of one you thought was strange?

“You just want a level playing field. My opinion is if the ball is hitting the stumps, it is hitting the stumps. They should take away umpire’s call.”

How do you get to be captain of the England cricket team and yet be so blithely ignorant about ball tracking and the reasons for umpire’s call?

If the ball was hitting the stumps, the mode of dismissal would be bowled, not LBW. The question is whether the ball would have hit the stumps had it not been intercepted by the batter’s body.

The umpire has made a decision on field as to whether they believe the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps (whilst meeting the other requirements of the LBW law). Ball tracking performs a projection to test whether the umpire has made an error in that decision.

Being a projection of what the flight of the ball was likely to be, ball tracking has a margin for error, determined to be roughly the radius of a cricket ball. That being the case, if a ball is projected to be hitting the stumps within that margin for error it does not serve as conclusive proof that the umpire has made an error whether they gave it out or not out initially. That is, we can be no more confident that ball tracking is correct in that instance, than the umpire was correct with the original decision.

It is not a difficult concept to understand if players sit down with an umpire or the HawkEye operators for 20 minutes.

Ben Stokes is good at hitting and bowling a cricket ball, but he has no idea on this issue and his opinion on the matter is frankly worthless, and indeed smacks of the sour grapes that he claims it isn’t.

It’s interesting that he didn’t think umpires call should be out when he was given not out by virtue of umpires call early in his match-winning innings at Headingley last year in the Ashes. Strangely his DRS complaints only seem to come up when England lose – like his embarrassing inability to understand parallax error regarding the Crawley LBW in the previous test match.

Ball tracking is very accurate, more accurate than the human eye. There is a margin for error, which is why umpire’s call exists (and why Ben Stokes opinion is wrong and ignorant).

Very occasionally an operator used to make an error which resulted in impact being attributed to the wrong frame which can result in a further inaccuracy – but this is vanishingly rare these days since they now usually have two operators working independently to determine the correct frames etc to use – so you’d have to have two operators making the exact same mistake for it not to be picked up. None of the so-called controversial DRS decisions in this series have fallen into that category.

Well they didn’t even reach 150 in pursuit of 550, so I think we have our answer to that question already.

The English media reaction to Bazballis hilarious. After Day 2 India were rattled (time for them to find a new word?) and the Anthony de Mello trophy was coming home.

Now they are a bunch of no hopers playing the dumbest shots in test match history.

Scyld Berry epitomises this – there’s an image going around showing his article from June gushing about Root playing the same shot for 6, now it’s the worst shot in history because the outcome was different.

England are set up to play extreme cricket, so they are going to have high highs and low lows. Those extremes are amplified by their over the top press.

It’s a premeditated shot, he can’t decide to play it when he knows where the ball is going to pitch, he has to decide before the ball is released.

But yeah, Bumrah is not a great bowler to play that shot against as he mixes things up, bowls yorkers etc rather than metronomic line and length. So there’s a much higher chance that the ball won’t be in the right spot compared to other bowlers.

If you believe the ridiculous spin he put about defending some gay people (who incidentally he was reported to have mocked and thrown a cigarette butt at earlier in the evening), then you will believe anything. It’s part of the hagiography that follows Ben Stokes around.

He has an extensive rap sheet of poor behaviour from early in his career apart from that, including mocking Katie Price and Dwight Yorke’s severely disabled son in a video. Unfortunately for Ben his PR people couldn’t spin that one so he was forced to publicly apologise.

That’s true, but I think the Ashes still holds a special place for a lot of Australian cricketers.

For Starc specifically, he has said on several occasions in the last year that he wants to play 100 tests. He’s currently on 87 tests, if he plays all of Australia’s tests between now and the end of the India series he’ll be up to 94 tests. Then there’s another 4-5 tests before the Ashes (depending on whether Australia qualify for the WTC final). So the earliest he could possibly make it to 100 tests would be during the 2025-26 Ashes.

Anyway, we will find out soon enough – fast bowlers can decline very quickly when the end comes, Jason Gillespie being a prime example. The end may not be at a time of Starc’s choosing.

I’ll give Ben Stokes some credit, I think he has calmed down a lot from his early years where he clearly couldn’t control himself at times. I think his lucky escape from going to prison might have been the wake-up call he needed.

He has turned himself into a master of spin (PR not bowling) and hagiography instead. Played a masterclass in plausible deniability when his team shunned the post-series drinks in the Ashes. Not to mention the nonsense about him being a gay rights activist as a defence to his brutal bashing of two blokes.

The whole story reeks of poor player management. Professional set-ups will have management constantly talking with players so they are on the same page regarding availability for formats, overseas leagues etc.

The instability and outdated culture at the PCB does not lend itself to those conversations taking place (never mind that even if they did, 5 minutes later you have a new Chairman, senior management, selection committee and coaching staff). If Rauf was important to their plans in Australia, that should have been discussed with him months prior to the tour and preparations made to get his body ready – not when the team was already selected. Same goes for the bizarre story of Mohammad Haris turning up in Bangladesh, training with his BPL team for a few days then flying back because his NOC was declined. How was that not determined before he got on a plane?

In any event it seems like the PCB are still trying to keep Rauf a little onside as the NOC suspension is only until June this year so it probably isn’t going to affect his participation in any leagues (there is just the PSL which he doesn’t need an NOC for and the IPL which he can’t play in anyway).

Haddin was rubbing Stokes’s face in it after the no ball, then went on to score 93. I remember seeing him wind up Stokes on the TV at the time.

Haddin was a serial pest on the field, there is nothing about this story which sounds remotely true – apart from Ben Stokes having anger management issues at the time (as seen in him later breaking a hand punching the wall and brutally assaulting people on nights out).

The Ashes is coming the following summer. I doubt too many will be keen to finish up before that if they are still performing well/fit next season.

Surely no one is suggesting he get dropped before next summer though? And there is a tour of Sri Lanka next season.

Averages 4 against spin at IPL and T20 international level – does that not concern you when wickets are expected to favour spin in the West Indies?

Warner and Head to open is fine, but Jake Fraser-McGurk needs to show he can perform beyond the BBL to get a World Cup gig. He’s a fine talent but we’re yet to really see how he stacks up against international attacks, aside from a pretty ordinary Windies side. In particular, how is his game against quality spin in spinning conditions? We can expect plenty of that in the West Indies.
Why do you want to bat Maxwell at 5 – where he averages 22 at a strike rate of 132 – instead of 4 – where he averages 35 at a strike rate of 159 with 4 hundreds? Especially in the West Indies were you want him batting straight after the Powerplay against spinners.
Xavier Bartlett in the first XI? Because he towelled up a dreadful Windies batting lineup in the ODI series and had a decent T20I debut? Think we need to see a little more from him for him to crack the starting XI.
What has Aaron Hardie done to deserve selection above Stoinis or Green as a reserve allrounder? His shortcomings as an international T20 batter were pretty clear in the T20I yesterday – he has a lot of things to work on especially in his play against spin to be a viable option at this level. Stoinis has been dreadful at ODI level, but his T20I numbers are very good.
Matt Short is a fringe selection for the squad, but he hasn’t demonstrated he belongs there above Matt Wade or Smith yet. Like other batters who have dominated the BBL, his play against spin is questionable and he has been found out in the IPL (where he averaged 3.75 at a strike rate of 71 against spin) and at T20I level (where he averages 4.5 at a strike rate of 62 against spin). Smith and Wade can at least knock the ball around against spin even if they don’t dominate it.
Warner
Head
Marsh (c)
Maxwell
Stoinis
David
Wade
Cummins/Agar (depending on conditions)
Starc
Zampa
Hazlewood
Reserves: Ellis, Johnson, Cummins/Agar, Inglis
Is where I see the squad at this stage, could be changed after the New Zealand series, or if selectors want an extra batter or allrounder instead of Ellis or Johnson. Smith or Short could still make it, Sean Abbott also in the mix.

Can’t say I paid too much attention to his fielding prior to him playing for Australia, but since he’s come into the Australian set up it has been noticeably poor whenever I’ve seen him play.

I wonder if it’s because, unlike other Australians, he is not contracted within the state system. So he hasn’t had the benefit of doing fielding drills, pre-seasons etc with a state team unlike his teammates. Franchise teams are only together for short periods so not much time to develop fielding skills and in between he’s probably focussing more on training his hitting ability than fielding.

Zampa I think is just not naturally that athletic so probably has a lower ceiling on his fielding ability, David looks to me like he could be a lot better if he worked on his fielding more.

Can we put Tim David into a fielding boot camp prior to the T20 World Cup? He’s been great with the bat in this series, but every time I see him field it looks like he’s doing it for the first time. Constantly moving late or in the wrong direction and he’s dropped some absolute sitters.

If he’d moved in the right direction to start with, he catches Russell in the second last over and West Indies end up with a score in the 190s rather than 220 (the drop went for 4 and Russell hit four sixes and a four of his next five balls). Can’t afford that happening in a crunch game in the World Cup.

Don’t have a problem with that, though I’m also not bothered with a clearly incorrect decision being corrected if a replay shows it to be wrong. Understand the point about removing any possibility of bias, however uncommon.

Then again I’d also be happy to rip up DRS and put it all in the umpires hands with a goal of maximising correct decisions.

That’s for DRS and it’s written into the playing conditions for that. No similar restrictions are prescribed for regular appeals.

What’s your point? Professional players also have DRS, TV referrals, higher quality umpires, better equipment, better grounds, and any number of advantages compared to amateurs – all of which have a far greater impact than appealing after seeing a replay once every 10 years or so.