The Moeen Ali-All Round Great Guy-Thread

[sanskritsimon]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

When should he have played? Moeen was man of the series in the first series of the summer (the main one) and due to headingley shambles we didn't have dead rubbers vs WI did we? When should they have experimented?

It's shouldn't be called experimentation to pick the best batsmen and bowlers, though your choice of words is understandable. Rashid should have played every test since last year's India tour, in place of first Dawson and then the inevitably surplus fourth seamer. Moeen should have played as a top six batsman, though he'd probably have been dropped for some other batsman by now.

[billyguntheballs]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

When should he have played? Moeen was man of the series in the first series of the summer (the main one) and due to headingley shambles we didn't have dead rubbers vs WI did we? When should they have experimented?

Rashid should play as a front line bowler, none of that means he should play instead of Moeen. There's at least 3 or 4 players that have been tried all throughout last year who shouldn't have been tried ahead of Rashid or Mo (As middle order batsman).

It's not rocket science.

[sharky]

We played four quicks plus Moeen and Dawson at the start of the summer. Rashid could easily have fit in that team instead of Dawson, so it's not like an experiment that they weren't willing to try.

[geoff_boycotts_grandmother]

Originally Posted by sanskritsimon

It's shouldn't be called experimentation to pick the best batsmen and bowlers, though your choice of words is understandable. Rashid should have played every test since last year's India tour, in place of first Dawson and then the inevitably surplus fourth seamer. Moeen should have played as a top six batsman, though he'd probably have been dropped for some other batsman by now.

By bowlers do you actually mean spin bowlers?

Because Rashid isn't one of England's top 10 bowlers. He may though be one of England's top 2 spin bowlers.

[billyguntheballs]

Originally Posted by geoff_boycotts_grandmother

By bowlers do you actually mean spin bowlers?

Because Rashid isn't one of England's top 10 bowlers. He may though be one of England's top 2 spin bowlers.

How many active England bowlers have 490 FC wickets?

[sanskritsimon]

Originally Posted by sanskritsimon

It's shouldn't be called experimentation to pick the best batsmen and bowlers ...

Originally Posted by geoff_boycotts_grandmother

By bowlers do you actually mean spin bowlers?

Because Rashid isn't one of England's top 10 bowlers. He may though be one of England's top 2 spin bowlers.

Geebes, I think this is about the fiftieth time you've tried to make that very same point, and it was a desperately rubbish point the first time round. Obviously by picking the best batsmen and bowlers I mean picking the best group of batsmen and the best group of bowlers for the task in store. So if all the best batsmen you have are middle-order players you'd still pick at least one and probably two openers because even though you may deem them lesser players in the abstract they'll probably do a better job against the new ball. Likewise if you were to pick your world XI to play against Mars at Chester-le-Street you probably wouldn't pick all of Murali, Barnes, and Warne. The abstract comparison of seam bowlers and spin bowlers is a vain exercise because they have very different roles to fulfil and so their statistics aren't straightforwardly comparable. If your point is that you don't rate spinners, we already know that.

[Bestie]

Originally Posted by sanskritsimon

It's shouldn't be called experimentation to pick the best batsmen and bowlers, though your choice of words is understandable. Rashid should have played every test since last year's India tour, in place of first Dawson and then the inevitably surplus fourth seamer. Moeen should have played as a top six batsman, though he'd probably have been dropped for some other batsman by now.

Surely that would have depended on his performances had he been selected? Given Moeen's performances in the summer he probably would have had to produce some quite remarkable performances to keep himself in the side.

Which of our four seamers over the summer did you deem surplus, out of interest? Woakes in his one test didn't perform but you'd be hard pressed to make an especially compelling argument against the inclusion of Roland-Jones even with hindsight. Stokes was the fourth seamer in terms of workload and I think most would agree in terms of quality, too, and I don't think too many people were calling for Broad to be left out for Rashid in the SA series.

I said before the start of the summer I would have given Rashid a shot, and probably for longer than it has taken most people to write off Dawson's test chances. Other than as a direct alternative for Dawson - and maybe in place of Woakes when he was clearly unfit and selected, although I believe TRJ was also fit for that game and just wrongly dropped - I don't see where there was a gaping hole in the side that Rashid would have filled. As it is, it seems his main use is as a discussion point here where he has contracted Mark Wood levels of godlike ability through inaction to an ardent band of followers.

As for his 500 FC wickets meaning he deserves selection, on that basis Moeen should be ahead of Crane for another good few years.

[sanskritsimon]

Originally Posted by Bestie

Surely that would have depended on his performances had he been selected? Given Moeen's performances in the summer he probably would have had to produce some quite remarkable performances to keep himself in the side.

Which of our four seamers over the summer did you deem surplus, out of interest? Woakes in his one test didn't perform but you'd be hard pressed to make an especially compelling argument against the inclusion of Roland-Jones even with hindsight. Stokes was the fourth seamer in terms of workload and I think most would agree in terms of quality, too, and I don't think too many people were calling for Broad to be left out for Rashid in the SA series.

I said before the start of the summer I would have given Rashid a shot, and probably for longer than it has taken most people to write off Dawson's test chances. Other than as a direct alternative for Dawson - and maybe in place of Woakes when he was clearly unfit and selected, although I believe TRJ was also fit for that game and just wrongly dropped - I don't see where there was a gaping hole in the side that Rashid would have filled. As it is, it seems his main use is as a discussion point here where he has contracted Mark Wood levels of godlike ability through inaction to an ardent band of followers.

As for his 500 FC wickets meaning he deserves selection, on that basis Moeen should be ahead of Crane for another good few years.

Moeen's performances were premised on us not having played a better spinner, so however well Moeen did, I would've expected Rashid to have done better had he played, and for Moeen to have bowled much less. I'm not a particular fan of Rashid's and I certainly don't think he's anything particularly special, but I do think the evidence of their matches together clearly suggests he's better than Moeen, and I think we should pick the better bowler -- or, if you like, pick the better bowler to invest in and develop. That's not to say there's always a gaping hole in the side without him; on most pitches it's possible to take wickets in several different ways, and when playing against poor teams we'll usually win. But this winter there's obviously been a gaping hole in the side where a spinner should have been, and there will be repeatedly whenever we come across stiff opposition.

As for the seamers, obviously if you decide to play the weaker spinner you're going to need more from the seamers. I think England have been playing Moeen and Stokes as half a bowler each, and in Moeen's case that's because he's a very limited bowler, but in Stokes's case I don't think it is -- rather, it's because he's been batting very well in the top six and that's a more prestigious role. I think he can develop as a bowler -- for example, I think England have missed his bowling enormously this winter -- and I think he's certainly good enough to be the third and last seamer on many pitches, were we to pick our best spinner. Let's face it, most test pitches are rubbish for seam bowling. Obviously, though, if you try to draw evidence just from matches where we didn't pick our best spinner and we had three specialist seamers and Stokes batted at six, he's not going to bowl that much and so is unlikely to shine unless everyone else has failed first. Broad also was ineffective for much of the summer, and I think it's not quite right to try to dismiss the alternative by saying you wouldn't have dropped him for Rashid. In the end I think our bowling attack could look very different were we always to begin by picking our best available spinner on bowling merits alone, and it's hard to argue for incremental improvements when all recent evidence is based on the opposite principle.

Perhaps we could put it like this: I think the groundhog day of England having four seamers and a crap batting unit for season after season is closely related to their decision, some four years ago, as a matter of selectorial ideology, to prioritize Moeen over any and all other spinners. Under normal circumstances a team with five bowlers that regularly loses matches because of not scoring enough runs would be able to try playing just four bowlers sometimes. But that's impossible if Moeen has to be sole spinner. The nadir of the Ali plan was reached when Stokes became unavailable and we had to replace him with a seam bowler.

Obviously we did OK last summer against a surprisingly poor SA side and a predictably poor WI side. But the decision was made once more, and once more unnecessarily, to come into another crucial winter having made no real attempt to develop any better spin option than Ali. And I think we can now say that despite having had a few good tests with the ball last summer, Ali is still, despite all the experience and opportunity, a massively underwhelming test bowler. Who would have expected otherwise?

As for the 500 wickets point, you're talking to the wrong chap -- I never said that, and I don't care about it.

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

Hi jock. I assume you are waiting until the end of the summer to update these stats of yours?

That match vs WI was crap.

Yeah sure


Originally Posted by Jock McTuffnel v3 View Post
His bowling average is on the cusp of being over 40.

By year

2014 : 28.09
2015 : 39.94
2016 : 123
2017 : 31.36
2018 : 85

By season

2014 : 28.09
2015 : 43.65
2015/16 : 48.57
2016 : 52.23
2016/17 : 42.0
2017 : 21.30
2017/18 : 115

Bowling average vs our upcoming opponents :

NZ : 50
Pak : 47.50
India : 37.44
Sri Lanka : 72.20


Perhaps a case to be made for him as a specialist Saffer slayer ?

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

Originally Posted by D/L

I think he may take very few wickets for quite a lot of runs.

[D/L]

'struth, I checked and that prediction was from the back end of August last year.

I never felt I was really sticking my neck out, though.

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZfWZx6X...jpg&name=small

[sanskritsimon]

Nice interview with him in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...-ipl-interview

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

Originally Posted by sanskritsimon

Nice interview with him in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...-ipl-interview

"Moeen has always viewed himself as a batsman first "

....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/...not-a-batsman/

[Sir Virgs and Zamora]

But still been a better option for the team than the other specialist spinners. Off we go again...

[sanskritsimon]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

But still been a better option for the team than the other specialist spinners. Off we go again...

Off you go again, maybe. I don't think it'll be possible properly to assess how we would have got on without Moeen in the team in recent years. Maybe we'll find out if he stays out of the team for a while. But maybe not.

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

But still been a better option for the team than the other specialist spinners. Off we go again...

Our ICC test ranking would beg to differ.

We are 5th and falling.

[Sir Virgs and Zamora]

Originally Posted by Jock McTuffnel v3

Our ICC test ranking would beg to differ.

We are 5th and falling.

Indeed. Despite him demolishing South Africa with bat and ball. Personally I would argue the batting wing crap has been a bigger issue for some time.

[Jock McTuffnel v3]

Originally Posted by Sir Virgs and Zamora

Indeed. Despite him demolishing South Africa with bat and ball. Personally I would argue the batting wing crap has been a bigger issue for some time.

Yes - unfortunately the test rankings are based on consistent performances over time - not one off boot filling on a snakepit.