England Cricket Team

[midge5]

So the squad for the next game is:

Michael Vaughan (Yorkshire, captain),
Andrew Strauss (Middlesex).
Ian Bell (Warwickshire),
Paul Collingwood (Durham),
Alastair Cook (Essex),
Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire),
Kevin Pietersen (Hampshire),
Matt Prior (Sussex),
James Anderson (Lancashire),
Steve Harmison (Durham),
Monty Panesar (Northants),
Liam Plunkett (Durham),
Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire),


No surprise to see Shah dropped after the last test, and it seems pretty obvious that Vaughan will just be a straight swap for him.

However, what would other people do about Flintoff?
His ankle seems a bit too dodgy to put much reliance on him as a bowler, while his batting form in recent times has been abymsal, not a patch on those who are already in the team. It would seem immensely unfair to drop Cook/Bell/Collingwood for him. Other than that the batting lineup to me actually seems quite strong.

For wicket keeper, I would have stuck with Reed. He was crap in the odi over in Australia but then so were most of the rest of the team. He did quite well against Pakistan and in the tests against the Aussies. After the other day though Prior has probably done enough to keept he jersey for a while and all the changing wasn't really particularly useful anyway so he should keep it for now.


The bowling however...
Harmison it seems is still bowling shockingly at test level (I can't find it now but on one of the BBC commentaries it showed Harmison's career split into 10 test sections, and other than 2004 his average and number of wickets taken is actually extremely ordinary)
Hoggard, Broad, and Lewis are all injured while Jones isn't fit.
While Mahmood/Plunkett/Anderson are all too inconsistent to be considered international standard yet.

So I'm going to take the easy option and say I don't really know who I would play at the moment. The ones I would are all injured and I don't follow enough county cricket to know who is good or not, though David Harrison at Glamorgan has looked quite good in a shit team over recent years.

The interesting part for me will be though when Trescothick returns. His form for Somerset this year has been really good, and in one day cricket especially he provides a much more attacking option to open with. Stick to test matches though, personally I would drop Vaughan (his form his just way too bad to justify his place at the moment, no matter how good his captaincy is, but I don't think that Strauss isn't that much worse).

Sorry if this post is a bit disjointed as been trying to write it in work where unfortunately they actually expect me to do something so I have to wander off all the time. Will try and tidy it up back home later if so.