All we’re certain of is that both need fixing.

Oh, I’m fully on board with you. I’m just wondering if fixing the senior batsman might be the way to fix the junior batsmen rather than the other way round, mostly because otherwise England are going to run out of junior batsmen to pick

Are you suggesting Sam should rechristen himself as Kayne West and become the Eminem of England? I totally approve.

Get on with it, Sam.

http://ianlouisharris.com/1974/09/03/back-when-i-didnt-know-my-asif-from-my-sarfraz-cricket-on-tooting-bec-common-summer-1974/

Contains some really cute embedded vids – not least the extraordinary Asif Mahsood vid. I have also included a link to my report on the recent Lord’s test, which is almost King Cricket-like in its cricketlessness.

These days Sam, I think you’d be better advised to release two albums simultaneously, one packed with low-fi acoustic songs of a plaintive tone, entitled ‘Insecure’, and another made up of Kayne West covers, entitled ‘Complacent’. Make the album covers mirror images or negatives of each other, it’s what all the kids are doing these days.

As regards the batting, I have to agree with KC, although I think the captain has additional responsibility with regard to his team’s overall batting approach. Ed Smith may be to blame for the strange collection of white ball stars, solid but fading stars and not-quite-good-enough-at-the-moment also-rans, but the job of making a team out of them is to some extent, like Althea and Donna, strictly Root’s.

Quite. But what we were really saying is that while everyone’s an individual, there is an argument that the batting has polarised and that this is part of the problem. Maybe some of the senior players are batting worse in part because the junior batsmen are so ineffective.

The first category of batsman has been crap for ages, but when England are 150/6 again it isn’t because Stoneman, Westley and Ballance all got out twice.