Burns and Pope out for Crawley and Bairstow.

This reshuffle of deckchairs should definitely prevent the Titanic hitting the whitewash iceberg.

Woakes out and Wood in.

Variation of bowling and gotta stop relying on number 8 for vital runs.

Really hope none of the Aussies would be so rude as to bowl a ball that would go on to hit the stumps at Bairstow. Kinda unsportsmanlike to face a guy with such a weakness and exploit it. That's just not cricket.

The only question is will he be out bowled or reviewing a plumb one

his off stump guard suggests an LBW iyam

England team named.

Bairstow, Crawley, Leach and Wood in.

Pope, Burns, Broad and Woakes out.

No issue with the bowling rotations and think Bairstow is an improvement on Pope considering current form.

Really not sure about Burns and Crawley swap. Burns is ticking upwards and last time Crawley played he was in very poor form.

Time will tell if it was the right move or not...

Boland picked. Expect figures to be returned of none for 100.

Im picking a Bairstow hundred in one of the next 2 tests

Apart from bringing back Woods these changes seem exactly wrong to me. (assuming everyone was available)

Leach isn't good enough. Pope hasn't started well but is potential class whereas Bairstow probably isnt at test level. I might prefer Crawley to Burns but how much cricket has he had? At least Burns has played a bit now and might be less underprepared.

Where's the evidence Crawley & Bairstow > Burns & Pope?

Bairstow for Pope not too sure, but Crawley for Burns, I present you this

https://youtu.be/U46P2Z3ejmk

That kinda ruined my Christmas.

This must be why they brought him in, interview skills and content

I won't hear a bad word said about the man. He's a national hero.

Finally England making a game of it

nek minnit, England 4-31 at stumps, requiring 51 runs to avoid an innings defeat. The Ashes should be won by tea on Day 3, or at the very latest, by stumps.

Root on 12* needs 19 more runs to rise to 2nd on the list for most Test runs in a calendar year. https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/co...ds/284248.html

And England three shy of the record for most ducks in a calendar year: https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/en...s;type=batting

Crawley averages 32 in county cricket, Pope averages 66. While the latter may turn out to be a Hick/Ramprakash - what's the argument for thinking Zac Crawley is test level?

Zak Crawley has a rich dad who got him lots of training and match time all around the world. He has a good technique.

Pope averages 99 at the oval and 31 everywhere else in county cricket. Pope can't play spin.

They are young. They might both come good at test level, neither of them might, one of them might. Time will tell.

The talent well seems to have dried up. No one is knocking on the door anymore. We have a whole generation of batsmen who cant hack it at test level and dont really care. Outside of Stokes and Root there isnt a test level batsman in the country. When they go there will be nothing left.

Very unlikely to happen, but if England fail to make Australia bat again, Australia's 267 would be the =8th lowest score to result in an innings victory.

More dumb questions:

1. My understanding is that an integral part of being a good spinner is getting the ball to bounce right in front of the batsman, so he has the least amount of time to maneuver to make good contact. This way, sometimes you bowl/lbw them, and sometimes you catch an edge. If the ball bounces too early it's easy for the batsman to hit it far, and if it spins too late, the batsman is in a decent position to defend the ball (or take a more aggressive swing). If that's the cas,e why don't batsmen charge a "good length" spinner's ball? The ball isn't going so fast, so seems like they should be attacking those balls more aggressively?

2. I think spinners tend to come on later as the ball is worn out. If that's the case, why have any spinners at all in T20? 20 over doesn't seem like a long time, so maybe teams could just carry 4-4.5 fast bowlers?

3. What's the dropoff in quality between a guy below the international level and international? In the NZ T20 league, I see a couple of familiar international names (Trent Boult, Colin de Grandhomme). If you took a league average player from that league and put them on the NZ national side, would the difference between that player and the average national player be obvious? What sort of sample size do you need to figure out if someone is bad vs just running bad?

For example, in MLB, if you replaced a league average player with a good AAA player, you'd probably need at least half a season, if not more, to see a discernible difference.

1. Batsmen do charge spinners, its risky because if they miss the ball they get out stumped but it does turn good length balls into good balls to hit.

2. Spinners have done very well in T20 cricket. I'm not an expert to tell you exactly why but playing a spinner in tests is a lot different to playing a spinner in T20, in tests batsmen don't have any pressure to score quickly so playing a spinner that isn't spinning the ball, either because it's new or the pitch is flat, is a lot easier. a batsman can adjust to what the bowler is doing and put away bad deliveries. In T20 the batsman is under constant pressure to score quickly so has to be on the attack against spinners, this puts their wicket at greater risk and it doesn't take huge deviations in the path of the ball to turn a big hit for 6 into a mishit that gets caught.

I think it depends on a lot of factors but you'd notice it a lot slower in T20 which is a higher variance format. There's plenty of players who look like world beaters in T20 and get a lot of big money contracts that over time regress to the mean.

I may as well keep listening at this stage as it'll be done by lunch