Bangladesh / England

At least Moeen Ali made 99 not out

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Moeen Ali and Joe Root
Imagine that today is exactly like today only Moeen Ali made a duck. There, you see – things could be slightly worse.

This isn’t so much a ‘glass half full’ attitude as a ‘there’s still something in there, I’m sure – maybe if I tip the glass the right way for long enough the minuscule droplets will gather and form something visible in the corner’ attitude.

You work with what you have. An increasingly polluted world continues spinning. As do R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, for England have managed to bat out a full day of Test cricket.

Big first innings and a game that accelerates alarmingly as it approaches its denouement. That’s our prediction.

Predictions are for fools, of course, but there are so many fools these days that the addition of another one won’t tip the balance.

Joe Root made a hundred, incidentally.

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35 comments

  1. To be fair it was a batting pitch.Ball wasn’t getting much turn.Surviving RAshwin and Jadeja wasn’t a big deal today.

    1. Not sure you’re well placed to gauge the fairness or otherwise of your own comment, Lomax. Afraid you’ll have to leave that to others.

  2. Also, England’s current team has four players of Asian descent. (All of whom are English-born, I believe.) Which, according to S. Berry and your Maj’s own retweet, reflects the breakdown at club cricket level.

    As certain parts and aspects of the world become more angry and closed off, the English Test team becomes more diverse and multicultural.

    1. England have batted solidly, but it will only be once they’ve bowled that we’ll have some idea whether they really need to bat exceptionally.

      1. Man, that was dull. Sorry.

        This is why we didn’t put any of that sort of crap in the article.

  4. If Anderson were to be fit for the second test, who would he replace?
    Stokes obviously won’t be dropped, nor will Woakes. You probably would imagine Broad would keep his spot and Anderson will certainly come in.

    Would Anderson solve a problem & force England to go in with 4 seamers & only 2 spinners?

    Thoughts?

    1. Most like Zafar Ansari.

      People should probably stop asking us questions. We don’t seem to be delivering much of value here.

  5. In years to come we will look back on this article and think “What on earth could have happened? Oh yeah. That.”

      3. The Cubs debacle seems a bit blurred to me. I’ve dropped the ‘Cricket’ as it seems superfluous. I have to accept it’s 2016 and not 1906.

  8. While I think about it and returning to KC’s ‘Moeen Ali made 99 not out’, I can’t help but think that he will be one of the most memorable cricketers of this era. That lead me to wonder how many matches it takes for a good all-rounder to be recognised and whether poor consecutive performances by a team as a whole, obfuscates that recognition, or relegates them to someone who can ‘bat and bowl a bit.’

  9. If India had won the toss, they could well also be 450/6 by now (as England are at Lunch on Day 2), and we’d all be saying ‘Hate to say I told you so, 5-0 to India’, so let’s not get carried away.

    A lot of people at work seem to be talking about the USA at the moment, they seem to be a bit late catching up with the news from World Cricket League Division 4. I think Rahul Dravid might be their coach or something, since my colleagues keep going on about ‘the Wall’.

  10. I can’t believe it – that hot-headed, red-headed lunatic has succeeded by lashing out with reckless abandon. Seemingly no compass and no concern for the consequences; what will it all mean over the coming years and decades for the young and the yet unborn?

    Still, 100+ is 100+ and 500+ is 500+.

    You’ve got to hand it to him, he makes things happen.

  11. Have England ever previously had a #10 and #11 batting pair who have both made first-class centuries (not to mention 34 first-class fifties between them)?

    It’s a far cry from Monty Panesar’s day.

      2. Ah, them was the days. To be fair to them though, while in the first innings the 8th, 9th and 10th wickets all fell at the same score, in the second innings the score advanced by 1 run per wicket. That’s a massive improvement that would have resulted in world #1 status, if only they’d been given an additional 100 tests.

    2. The other major benefit is that there’s quite literally no way that Stuart Broad can waste a review.

      1. Hard to tell whether it’s sanity or our much-vaunted British pessimism, but I did wonder that… and thus far things don’t seem to be much harder for the Indian batsmen than they did for us. Granted I’m typing this at 17 overs in…

      2. India will park their first-innings tank right next to or slightly in front of ours, mark my words. Can we get our tank remobilised sufficiently with the additional emotional ballast batting on a 4th/5th day pitch entails?

      3. I thought there would be more of I can’t spake, we can’t spake, can anybody spake stuff. 537 in the first innings, 3 centurions, 475 runs ahead, bowling last on a deteriorating pitch with 3 spinners, 3 very good seamers, it is almost impossible for England to lose from here. Cheer up guys.

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