ODI Squad?

tricycle wrote:
Even that's not guaranteed though is it. Taking the India series as an example, they only finished one innings 4 down in the series. Cook needn't have a place in the team but they may need another player.

India are a different prospect though, IMO. Their lower order in Ashwin and The First Zombie Cricketer is by far more effective. Their upper order are far more adept at ODIs and take more risks, which don't always pay off. I'm just saying I'd rather 50 overs of 'proper' bowling than 40 - our 10 overs of 'hit me' have proven costly in recent times. Let the shitheaps deal with it in batting innings.

Aye, India's much more adept at 50 over cricket. I was speaking about England's batting though, not India's. It was pretty dire with 7 batsmen in the team, although that was a very dour team for a OD series.

Brass Monkey wrote:

PeterCS wrote:
On that logic, you could say "Shame that Ian Botham is so old, or he'd be a more than useful #7 etc."

Well, nehhhhhh, not really. Reason being that Stokes is the sort of player that could come in a three. He plays uppishly over cover very nicely and takes the attack to the opposition with some big shots. Coming in at seven means the batsman is facing spin more often than not.

But if he's known as positively crap against spin, who would the opposition captain bring on, whether he's batting at 7, 3, 11, 5 or 1?

tricycle wrote:Aye, India's much more adept at 50 over cricket. I was speaking about England's batting though, not India's. It was pretty dire with 7 batsmen in the team, although that was a very dour team for a OD series.

Aye, I'm just saying our batsmen take less chances hence our pedestrian run rates. I could back us to block out 50 overs and at least we'd be in with more of a chance of defending the totals with 50 overs of 'real' bowling.

It's moot, though, I reckon. England want 4 and a half bowlers and six and a half batsmen. My problem with Sammy is that he's better than a number seven but has no place in the top order.

PeterCS wrote:
But if he's known as positively crap against spin, who would the opposition captain bring on, whether he's batting at 7, 3, 11, 5 or 1?

This is England, the oppos will have spin on as quickly and for as long as possible

Pakistan will definitely open with spin, but other countries have cottoned onto Cook's (and previously Strauss') propensity to letting overs fly by against spin.