England Cricket Thread

Serious surgery required, still!

Openers - Hameed needs a proper run, so continues for me. I’d put Crawley in for now, as Burns had a mare this Test.

Middle Order - One shining light! Malan and Root, and I’d maybe give Lawrence a go at 5 ahead of Pope who just doesn’t seem to make it happen.

All-Rounder - Stokes at 6. Clearly not 100%, but still can make things happen.

Wicketkeeper - Foakes is on a plane home from the A Team Tour. Ridiculous. Send him back pronto, and send Buttler and Bairstow back to White Ball!

Pace Bowling - Anderson and Broad are sadly starting to age. Robinson has been good. Wood needs managed. We miss Archer and Stone, and Mahmood deserves to be in the mix. And mix is what we should do so they all play and enhance the unit. Some hope at least?

Spin - Pick a bloody spinner, let him play and get experience. Wether it’s Leach or Bess, it’s unfair to not use them then expect miracles when we do!

Quoted from ccu on Monday, 20 December 2025

Serious surgery required, still!

Openers - Hameed needs a proper run, so continues for me. I’d put Crawley in for now, as Burns had a mare this Test.

Middle Order - One shining light! Malan and Root, and I’d maybe give Lawrence a go at 5 ahead of Pope who just doesn’t seem to make it happen.

All-Rounder - Stokes at 6. Clearly not 100%, but still can make things happen.

Wicketkeeper - Foakes is on a plane home from the A Team Tour. Ridiculous. Send him back pronto, and send Buttler and Bairstow back to White Ball!

Pace Bowling - Anderson and Broad are sadly starting to age. Robinson has been good. Wood needs managed. We miss Archer and Stone, and Mahmood deserves to be in the mix. And mix is what we should do so they all play and enhance the unit. Some hope at least?

Spin - Pick a bloody spinner, let him play and get experience. Wether it’s Leach or Bess, it’s unfair to not use them then expect miracles when we do!

Melbourne should be flatish so a spinner is a must, maybe even 2. Injury problems might limit the options.

Keep Hameed drop Burns. I'd be tempted to promote Malan to open and move Root to 3 if he's fit. Then Bairstow at 4, Stokes at 5 playing his natural game although I think he's injured and might be rested. Buttler will get another game after his efforts yesterday.

The bowling options are difficult, Broad and Anderson will both find it tough at the MCG so I think Wood, Robinson, Woakes, Bess and Leach.

So much will depend on the fitness of Stokes and Root. If Stokes is unavailable then maybe Pope gets another chance, although maybe Lawrence.

We've not competed at all yet in all 3 facets of the game. A specialist keeper is a must but we have 2 wk/allrounder options.

With so many out of form players at the same time, we can only hope that a couple of the batters can come good because without the runs we'll never compete and the Aussies love to rub our noses in the dirt.

Was hoping the cricket would give some festive cheer but has an air of inevitability now.
What has happened to players digging in and staying in? It's supposed to be "test" cricket.
Some ridiculous dismissals again.
They look so under cooked and unprepared. Why weren't they in Oz for weeks and weeks playing state sides?
Sad to see. Still at least there's the hundred FFS...

This sums up our Batting. The irony the lad at the top (and best Wicketkeeper we have!) isn’t involved isn’t lost:

Yes, agree about Foakes. Different class of keeper to Buttler.
Despite some great catches Buttler is losing us more than he gains with his keeping.
I grew up watching Bob Taylor behind the stumps and he was outstanding.
He wouldn't get in the side today as his batting wasn't great but his keeping was so good it was worth the fewer runs.

Foakes Keeping alone is worthy of his inclusion, the added bonus of an average of over 30 from Number 7 would be perfect…

This is awful

What an absolute shambles. You might as well say now that almost every player in the England team should not play test cricket again.

The management team can also go as well. Silverwood is way out of his depth.

It's beyond embarrassing now. I didn't ever think we were going to regain the Ashes, but a 5-0 now looks inevitable.

English cricket has sold it's soul to the white ball formats and TV money. Test cricket, and particularly the Ashes, is one of the truly great sporting contests and it has been reduced to the level of farce.

Shame.

Brilliant stuff from Jimmy the only bit of light.
I'm just not sure there's currently a decent crop of batsmen out there. We've been through so many now and most have averages way off what's required.
Most damning statistic I saw was that extras are England's third highest scorer this year.
Says it all really.

It's a shan.......

Did we do ok?

Words fail me. That was beyond shit.

Next plane home for everyone...that was a total shan..
Ashes over in a whimper..

Aussies 267 for 10 wickets, poor score by their standards.

England 253 for 20 wickets. Par score for England these days. Average of just under 13 runs per wicket. Diabolical.

Looking forward to the women's Ashes later in January. At least they will be competitive games.

The telling moment was the last ball-22 year old bowling out a 39 year old, who happens to be our best player

The team isn’t good enough-I don’t buy this one day stuff either.The team changes too much, with its rotation policy-pick your best 11 and stick with it

Embarrassing.
Far too much emphasis on the pink ball, white ball, bish bash bosh rubbish.
Test cricket is the ultimate test for cricketers, and we seem to have completely forgotten how to play it, gone after the money and concentrated on keeping the masses rather than the cricket purists happy.

Even the Aussies might be a tad embarrassed to have won so easily - I am sure they would have preferred to have had to fight for it.

After watching the final capitulation, I tried naming out strongest XI IMO.

I got 5 Players…

1:
2:
3:
4: Root
5:
6: Stokes
7: Foakes(Wkt)
8:
9:
10: Robinson
11: Anderson

A sad state of affairs…

I think you could make a case for Malan and Wood in there as well, CCU.
Can't be many quicker in the world than Wood currently - and he bowled very well generally, I thought, and Malan hit 2 80s.
Problem is how often do they get to play red ball cricket?
I thought it would be a tough series but it wasn't even a contest.
I grew up never seeing a whitewash in an Ashes series and it looks like being 3 in 15 or so years now in Australia.
It's not even an outstanding Aussie side. When they thumped us in 2007 there was Warne, Langer, Ponting, Gilchrist, Hayden etc
Embarrassing.

Malan is borderline IMO, there’s even a case for asking him to open moving forward, hence not confirmed.

Hopefully time to keep Bairstow and Buttler in the white ball world permanently too!

Wood is pencilled alongside Archer, but given the frailties of both, they likely share a spot (And can see Archer being prioritised in white ball when he’s fit again!)?

I’d like to see Stone and Mahmood integrated soon, as previously said…

Even though much of this debacle was down to the ECB neglecting red ball cricket plus a general lack of talent, I’d still be firing out Silverwood. Too cosy and comfortable with the players, should have gone with Gary Kirsten last time.

Need someone with the character to put their foot through some arses.

It doesn’t look great for the foreseeable future though. Wood’s pace may look good but he never seems to take many wickets.

Some clear and concise words from the great man

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/ashes-root-boycott-england-australia-25802779

Unfortunately our red ball game as deteriorated as fast as our white ball as thrived and advanced.
Add to this the quarantine,no practice in Australia, it’s no surprise we have been totally outplayed.
With the exception of Anderson ,Broad and Root the rest are white ball specialist.

Silverwood isolating for 10 days:

Our Men’s Head Coach Chris Silverwood will have to isolate for 10 days, along with his family, in Melbourne and will miss the fourth Ashes Test.#Ashes | #AUSvENG

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) December 29, 2025

Can someone tell Smith he won’t dissolve in drizzle?!

As soon as a spot lands he’s off before the Umpires call it…