Team Selection
One day late, but I thought I'd give my penny's worth.
I'm not sure how successful England are going to be picking the team around Ambrose. Ambrose and Flintoff can't bat at 6 and England can't bowl good sides out on good batting pitches with 4 (and a half) bowlers. The only option I could see is Broad batting at 6 which is quite a gamble.
It's time England picked a wicket keeper who can bat at 6 and the only one I can think of is Prior.
2 comments:
Everyone has an opinion on this and there's not much agreement so it's pretty tricky!
Personally I'd bring in Foster for Ambrose (as he seems to have crept ahead of Read in terms of keeping according to the experts), but leave the keeper batting at 8, and play 6 batsmen, with one of them able to bowl a few overs if the conditions are right - eg. Collingwood or Bopara.
I don't subscribe to the view that as we can't bowl sides out with 4 bowlers, we must play 5. If your best 4 bowlers can't take 20 wickets, then how does bringing in your 5th bowler - who by definition you have less faith in than the top 4 - help? Assuming you got the original selection right, 4 full time bowlers should be enough - it has worked for the Aussies for many years. 5 is ideal if you have the players for it - eg. South Africa as they have Kallis.
My gut feel says play 6 batsman to try and get decent scores and use scoreboard pressure to help your top 4 bowlers take wickets. And support them with the best keeper to take all possible chances, and the best captain to help them tactically.
With 4 bowlers, each bowler can be over-bowled and become less effective.
With 5, each bowler can bowl to their desired liking, for instance a short burst of 5/6 overs for someone like Flintoff for example.
Also if there is a bowler having an off day there is the option of not using that player that much but still having 4 other bowlers to use.
I think Australia are an exception as they were fortunate to have at least 2 bowlers who rarely bowled bad balls and bowled a lot of threatening balls. As a result they didn't need the extra bowler. England currently only have one. And thus need enough back-up.
But with 4 bowlers the onus is on the bowlers picked to perform rather than hide which may be the case if there was a 5th.
I guess it comes down to who the 4 bowlers are and whether the captain can get the best out of them on a consistent basis.
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