Winter Tour playing Pakistan & South Africa

[Chazza]

You know we've got a collapse in us

[RichC]

Kiss of death there

It was more wishful thinking

[Chazza]

This experiment with Ali opening has got to stop.

Hales has to be given a chance.

[RichC]

Lucky there.

A few players could do with being dropped

[Chazza]

Bell has to be gone now.

Hales opening leave Taylor in and shift Ali further down the order.

[Shaggy]

Andy Zaltzman @ZaltzCricket
Bell's 9th Test dismissal for 0 or 1 this year. Only WI rabbit Merv Dillon has more (10, in 2002). Bell =2nd with Courtney Walsh (1997&2000)

[RichC]

Bell has to be gone now.

Hales opening leave Taylor in and shift Ali further down the order.

[Buzzo]

KP notched a 66 ball 115 in a twenty20 game in SA today.

[RichC]

62-6

Bell 0
Root 6
Taylor 2
Bairstow 0
Patel 0

Some fine numbers there

[EwarWoo]

A great economy rate

[Shaggy]

Another sorry effort

[Alex]

Cook has been fantastic this series. But the spinners are clearly not up to it.

I think if we had a bit more of a killer instinct we could have won the series. First game would have been fine if not for bad light, second we could have drawn fairly easily.

This game was lost with a poor bowling performance yesterday from the bowlers.

I think its quite easy to kick England still after the KP thing a couple of years back. But there are clearly signs of progress. They just need to hook them all up. As I understood it, us and Pakistan were the 3rd and 4th Ranked test sides in the world. Losing this series has seen us slip to 6th and Pakistan go to 2nd. So apart from South Africa, there isnt much to choose between most at the moment.

[dww]

I think one of our problems was lacking the imagination/will to go "**** it lets play to our strengths" and pick a seamer rather than Patel in this match. I think we need to give any spinners we feel we will have in the squad long term as many chances to improve and get experience as possible, but adding an extra spinner who we don't believe is good enough to compete for a first choice team seems odd. Especially as our two first choice spinners are far from world class.

[captainfog]

Patel was a poor selection choice (should have picked Plunkett if Wood needed resting) and the injury to Stokes hurt our bowling. He's just the sort of character who could have turned the game our way on the afternoon of day 3 with a magic spell.

I'm actually quite pleased with the performance as I thought we were going to be destroyed on this tour but we did pretty well, we came close to winning two matches and should have drawn the second. A 2-0 scoreline flatters Pakistan. There have definitely been some encouraging signs for the future.

Must admit I'm not at all confident about our batting coping in SA. They probably have the best fast bowling attack in the world and we have big question marks over 1,3,5, 6 & 7. Apart from Cook and Root nobody is has nailed down a spot.

Assuming Stokes is fit then I'd go with this lineup (if he's not I'd play Moeen in the allrounder spot of 6). I've included Bell because... well... just because I'm not sure who else you'd pick. Ballance, Lythe, Bairstow.... they've all been found wanting batting in the top 6.

Hales
Cook
Bell
Root
Taylor
Stokes
Bairstow
Mo
Wood
Broad
Anderson

[Buzzo]

Back to back T20 tons for KP.