Welcome to Mumbai Test thread. I’ll be updating this post with daily reports as the game progresses. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below. Cheers. Day 4 I’m a little too embarrassed to be angry. When you reduce at team to 306-6 and they end up making 631 it’s humiliating. It’s hide behind the sofa and try not to blush too much territory. I imagine everyone in world cricket is laughing at us today. No doubt Kohli will steal all the headlines again. Fair...
Is Chef Temporarily Frazzled Or Done?
Trevor Bayliss has been England’s coach since July 2015. Since then we’ve played 25 tests with a generally attacking (or perhaps we should say ‘positive’) approach. Although results have been a little mixed, our players tend to play their best cricket on the front foot. Even Alastair Cook played in a relatively carefree way last summer. Consequently it’s highly significant that, after eighteen months of Bayliss’s tenure, he’s suddenly found it necessary to say the following ahead of...
Is A Win In Mumbai Pie In The Sky?
It has been pretty quiet over the last few days. A young Lions team has been playing in the UAE, and many observers are still purring over Haseeb Hameed’s rapid rise from embryo to test opener, but that’s about it. I guess this is the calm before the storm – the storm being the 4th test in Mumbai. Well, I doubt it’s going to be a breeze. It’s a bit too early to tell what the pitch is going to be like, but I suspect it will be a good cricket wicket – much like the one in Mohali. There will...
The Thursday Tartlet
It’s time for our TFT weekly roundup. As always here’s plenty to get our teeth into. And I promise to avoid any ‘I love a good tart’ gags … even though my Dad jokes are getting increasingly hard to resist with age. First of all it has been confirmed that Keaton Jennings, who was the leading run scored in division one last season, has been called up to replace Prince Haseeb. It’s hard to argue with this selection. Even though I rate Nick Gubbins quite highly...
Battered
Sometimes you’ve just got to put your hands up and say “well played India, we were rubbish”. For that, my pedigree chums, was the truth in Mohali. India have been too good for us. Full stop. We always thought this would be a tough tour, and that we’d need to play at our very best to be competitive, but unfortunately we’ve played well below our potential. This has enabled our hosts to swing their collective boot and catch us square in the nuts. And yes, it stings a little. I’m particularly...
The 3rd Test Facepalm Thread
Day 3 I’ll just repeat the last thing I wrote yesterday afternoon: “I sense that tomorrow could be the crucial day in the series”. Well, I bloody hope not because India were all over us like a cheap churidar kurta. We struggled to take the last four Indian wickets – enabling them to pile up a commanding 417 – and then our top order fell in a heap before the close. It was utterly depressing. There were only two bright spots for England today. Their names were Adil...
