Bumble reckons Joe Denly could be dropped and wonders whether Australia may regret not playing Mitchell Starc
Friday 13 September 2019 14:10, UK
David Lloyd says Joe Root will be "angry" at failing to turn a fifty into a hundred once again, while he thinks Joe Denly is on borrowed time in the England team...
I know exactly what will be on Joe Root's mind and it's the frustration that he is not turning these fifties into hundreds. He is his own fiercest critic on that score, so will be angry.
Joe had so much luck in that innings, with some un-Australian-like catching seeing him put down three times.
There were glimpses of a return to form. He looked slightly more progressive at the crease but only slightly and you should be confident on a pitch like this.
Every now and again, though, there is no movement and against an attack as good as this one, you will come unstuck.
The ball that got him out, from Pat Cummins, was a belter but it keeps getting mentioned that it's fifty and no more for Root.
There was talk about how captaincy is affecting him after Australia retained the Ashes last week but as a captain you are only as good as your players.
I do think the reinstatement of Ben Stokes will help Joe on that front as it's a good mix - Root is not a demonstrative character who runs around all over the pitch with his arms up, so it's a good combination with Ben.
But, I repeat, you need a team that's good enough and, at the moment, England are not good enough.
They had another batting collapse at The Oval, slipping from 103-2 before Jos Buttler's innings, and they need to search for the answer as to why it keeps happening.
Look at the scorecard - each of the batters got starts on what I would consider a decent pitch but then there were some airy-fairy shots.
You've got to be able to defend and they seem incapable of working out when to defend - the players will look and think 'it's not good enough', I know they will, but they need to do better.
Playing close to your body with soft hands is what the media keeps mentioning and I know Trevor Bayliss is talking constantly to them about that in the nets. It's the thing they analyse and discuss but it needs to be put into practice.
One of those airy-fairy shots was from Joe Denly and I think that will cost him his place. You cannot play something as wild as that as an opener.
I have not seen enough off Dom Sibley and Zak Crawley, who are always touted as the next England openers, but if I'm right about Denly there will be an opportunity for someone.
However, with red-ball cricket played in the autumn and the spring, I have sympathy with the selectors, because it's not an ideal time for the players to showcase what they can do. Selectors are hamstrung by the structure of county cricket and it needs changing.
On Australia, I was surprised they elected to bowl in the morning but if you take eight wickets it's your day.
Peter Siddle's inclusion was also hotly debated but the way Australia looked at it is that they wanted to get control, which is what Siddle generally gives you.
As it transpired, Mitchell Marsh bowled quicker than Siddle, swung it and got wickets, so you then think it should have been Mitchell Starc who played.
He bowls fast and also creates rough for Nathan Lyon to work with, so it now looks as though that would have been a better selection.
England, with Buttler still at the crease, need to get a lot more runs because I think there is an opportunity for a team to score over 400 in the first innings. That has been England's Achilles' heel for quite some time.
The last time they did it was at the MCG in the last Ashes series when Alastair Cook scored a double century. And it should have been minimum here.
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