genuinely, can we have a Substack of the flaws as a Christmas treat

agree with lots of this, though think a lot of the stuff around prep/planning is mostly just window dressing. fundamentally England have once again turned up with a significantly inferior team and not sure the approach has too much impact, given the last three tours have also yielded the same result

Yeah, definitely had its moments. I think overall for me it just got the balance a bit wrong: didn’t really have enough for Daniel to do either. Would have maybe just been better entirely separated from the Knives Out straitjacket

I mean…yeah, it does flatten out a lot in Perth in some games. But hard to know if that necessarily was the case at that point in the Test because the bowling imploded so spectacularly (giving due credit to Head). At the very least I reckon the bowling should be getting equal criticism

Yeah, I don’t disagree that the first innings of bowling was great. But equally England were probably ahead (or at least evens) going into the fourth which we lost in a session. Hard (for me, anyway) to look past that and the second day at Brisbane as where we’ve lost the games

Exactly. You can do what you like to the batting approach but that doesn’t stop Brydon Carse forgetting everything he ever knew about Test match bowling

They bettered the Aus first innings in Perth, and if we hadn’t dropped a thousand catches in this one Aus would have made a similar first innings total. Some frustrating things about the batting but it’s got us into competitive situations in both games

The bowling has gone weirdly under the radar compared to how worked up everyone is about the batting. Conceding 511 was basically unforgivable and there’s just no coming back from that

Lot of people have turned ‘this Australia team is not as good as some other recent versions’ into ‘this is a poor Australia team’ in their heads

just nowhere near enough of a romp was my issue (and if not a romp what are these films *for*?) the bit where the Cats soundtrack auto-played in Benoit’s car was gold, but there should have been one of those moments every five minutes

It’s basically the same I believe. The model compares a delivery to the most similar historic deliveries and considers how often they took a wicket. Doesn’t take into account batter quality, but a decent measure of ‘if you bowl these 60 deliveries, how many wickets would you take on average’

I think expected wickets is great tbh. In cricket it is often actually hard to know in a game ‘did they bowl poorly or were they unlucky’, and xW is an interesting way to look at it

not sure I quite get the point of Julie on gut strings, but who am I to question it

well this is terrific

I expect at least a week of glorious hope around the end of October before it all comes crashing down

I reckon they’ll pick your concluding attack at least once in Aus, if only because they will hope they can get at least three Tests out of both of Wood and Archer (four might not even be unrealistic for the latter at this stage)

Genuinely don’t see why August is the key month is the thing. June, July, August are all great months for cricket, but we’re not going to play throughout. Finishing now has also meant that the Tests haven’t been competing with the Premier League. Enjoy your day too

Why does it matter that there are no Tests in August? There were six Tests to be played; you’re not going to have wall to wall Tests June to September

Think Wood will get in before Carse/Tongue as much as fitness allows tbh; reckon they’ll hope they can get four Tests out of Archer