Originally posted by Insouciant Bear: Strassy IMO. I've thought so for a long time. Ian Bell will be up there in a year or so.
How exactly is Andrew Strauss Englands best batsman on current standings? Is it OK for Englands best batsman to go missing in Pakistan, be mediocre in India and then look no better against Sri Lanka when he gets back home? Is a century against a half baked Pakastani team enough of a statement to deem Strauss better than every other English batsman on current standings?
In his last 5 Tests he averages a shade under 50 with 2 centuries and 1 half century. Also, watching him bat tells you he's a class act. He's been getting starts but just not building on them.
Originally posted by Insouciant Bear: In his last 5 Tests he averages a shade under 50 with 2 centuries and 1 half century. Also, watching him bat tells you he's a class act. He's been getting starts but just not building on them.
One thing I thought about Strauss before Pakistan was his batting average on tour is very good and this made him more valuable in some ways than Trescothick however Strauss blew my theories out of the water.
Originally posted by Insouciant Bear: In his last 5 Tests he averages a shade under 50 with 2 centuries and 1 half century. Also, watching him bat tells you he's a class act. He's been getting starts but just not building on them.
One thing I thought about Strauss before Pakistan was his batting average on tour is very good and this made him more valuable in some ways than Trescothick however Strauss blew my theories out of the water.
So what. He had 2 bad Tests in his first few games in the sub continent. Big deal.
Originally posted by Insouciant Bear: In his last 5 Tests he averages a shade under 50 with 2 centuries and 1 half century. Also, watching him bat tells you he's a class act. He's been getting starts but just not building on them.
One thing I thought about Strauss before Pakistan was his batting average on tour is very good and this made him more valuable in some ways than Trescothick however Strauss blew my theories out of the water.
So what. He had 2 bad Tests in his first few games in the sub continent. Big deal.
Two bad Tests is an understatement when you average 11............
Not to mention that Strauss was still on holidays in the first 2 Tests on the tour of India. England were blessed young Cook came along........
Marcus Trescothick: 106 runs, 30.22 average, 1 centuries, 1 50.
Kevin Pietersen: 468 runs, 53.00 average, 2 centuries, 0 50s.
Those are both mathematically impossible.
----------------------- 'John and Kevin offered to settle their differences in the ring, but were forced to backflip after it became clear no-one wanted to see either of them in boxer shorts'
But Strauss grew up from the age of 6 in England, and is a product of the England cricket system.
Anyway, I love watching KP bat and i'm happy he's playing for England. It's just there's always something about having 'foreign' England players that isn't quite right.
Pietersen's introduction to Test cricket was about as hard as it gets, Australia followed by India and Pakistan away and he's averaging 47. I expect this to rise in the future as well. One of his best assets is its very difficult to stop him scoring once he gets going, he has so many shots.
Trescothick is a very consistent scorer, but I don't think he'll ever be a great. His average minus minnows is 41.91 and he hasn't yet scored a century against Australia in 30 attempts.
Strauss has a very impressive record and a superb century to matches ratio. His performance in the South Africa series is up there with Vaughan in Australia as the best performance by an English batsman in a series in the last decade.
