I find it hard to understand in an era where England in form with no injuries have a world beating side with an awful keeper/batsmen whereas when england were much worse in the 90's had one of our best ever in Stewart.
Should we jus sack the idea of having a keeper who can bat for a while and have two allrounders in the team ditching the 4th specialist seamer.

Jones actually topped the years dismisslas charts with 46 catches and 2 stumpings. So nobody can fault his keeping as I can only remember him dropping 2 catches in 06 there again he did average 12.94 so hes finished.

Read, Marvellous keeper apprently I haven't seen him enough to tell but i'll go with the general opinion. He showed what he can do with the bat, and that isn't a lot. He's the only guy worth sticking with at this moment as there is slim pickings.

Is time for and attack with two allrounders shoving Read to No.8, that would solve some of the problems we have with our fragile tail and could anybody do much worse than Mahmood with the ball.

So are they any nominations....other than Dalrymple

England's rightful #7 = Flintoff

Either
1) pick a specialist keeper (Read, Foster) at #8, especially now Monty seems to be a fixture in the side
or
2) a bowler who can bat at #8 with a batsman-keeper (Prior, Davies) at #6.

At present, they only have the players to fulfil 1).

Aye, with the emergence of Monty I now believe England's 7-11 should be:

Fred
Read (w)
Broad
Monty
Hoggy

quote:

Originally posted by Mister Robby:
Aye, with the emergence of Monty I now believe England's 7-11 should be:

Fred
Read (w)
Broad
Monty
Hoggy

Not keen on that four-man attack, though.

Flintoff's lost pace and aggression with his ankle problem, so you're really talking about three medium-fast bowlers and a spinner.

Who's going to bowl the hostile stuff?

quote:

Originally posted by BGR:
Flintoff's lost pace and aggression with his ankle problem, so you're really talking about three medium-fast bowlers and a spinner.

Who's going to bowl the hostile stuff?

I think Fred will recover from his ankle problem, though he'll have to be managed more carefully in future. S.Jones will be returning to the attack, possibly at the expense of Harmison.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonewaller:

quote:

Originally posted by BGR:
Flintoff's lost pace and aggression with his ankle problem, so you're really talking about three medium-fast bowlers and a spinner.

Who's going to bowl the hostile stuff?

I think Fred will recover from his ankle problem, though he'll have to be managed more carefully in future. S.Jones will be returning to the attack, possibly at the expense of Harmison.

You're assuming that Jones will be able to bowl as fast as he did pre-injury: that's a very big if IMO

quote:

Originally posted by B@sil:
You're assuming that Jones will be able to bowl as fast as he did pre-injury: that's a very big if IMO

Which injury?

quote:

Originally posted by Jonatho Darrow:

quote:

Originally posted by B@sil:
You're assuming that Jones will be able to bowl as fast as he did pre-injury: that's a very big if IMO

Which injury?

Lost count - but I was thinking of his knee.

quote:

Originally posted by Mister Robby:
Aye, with the emergence of Monty I now believe England's 7-11 should be:

Fred
Read (w)
Broad
Monty
Hoggy

Looks good with maybe the 1-6 consisting of:

Strauss(c)
Cook
Shah
KP
Collingwood
Bell

If Vaughan rediscovers his batting form he could open, with Cook moving to number 3 and Collingwood making way.

quote:

Originally posted by B@sil:

quote:

Originally posted by Jonatho Darrow:

quote:

Originally posted by B@sil:
You're assuming that Jones will be able to bowl as fast as he did pre-injury: that's a very big if IMO

Which injury?

Lost count - but I was thinking of his knee.

My take on it is that Jones gets all his pace from his massive upper-body strength. He had already throttled back his pace in the last Ashes, gaining him a lot of control in the process.
I'd far rather have bowlers clocking 85mph and landing it on a line and length than bowling 90mph and spraying it everywhere. e.g. Lee was bottom of the Australian (bowlers) bowling averages.

With a little tinkering it's virtually impossible NOT to come up with a more competitive side than the one dunc picked!

quote:

Originally posted by JKLever:
With a little tinkering it's virtually impossible NOT to come up with a more competitive side than the one dunc picked!

Bangladesh?

quote:

Originally posted by Stonewaller:
I'd far rather have bowlers clocking 85mph and landing it on a line and length than bowling 90mph and spraying it everywhere. e.g. Lee was bottom of the Australian (bowlers) bowling averages.

I would go along with that except for the proviso that it was Jones' extra pace, which made his swing bowling that much more effective.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonewaller:

I'd far rather have bowlers clocking 85mph and landing it on a line and length than bowling 90mph and spraying it everywhere. e.g. Lee was bottom of the Australian (bowlers) bowling averages.

Aye... 85-86mph added to the ability to swing it both ways and hit good areas.

It's still a long shot whether he can come back the same bowler though - it'll be 2 years he'll have been out of test cricket.

quote:

Originally posted by Jonatho Darrow:

quote:

Originally posted by JKLever:
With a little tinkering it's virtually impossible NOT to come up with a more competitive side than the one dunc picked!

Bangladesh?

Bangladesh gave Aus a better game in the 1st test of their series lol...