County vs Country... Cricketers That Couldn't Quite Make The Cut

"Promising player" "The future for English cricket" "English Crickets next here" 

Some of the titles associated with some county cricket legends given the chance to thrive for England... But struggle to transfer their domestic form onto the bigger international stage.

After the opener nearly produced 9000 runs the promising 29 year old, Adam Lyth made his first England Test appearance May 21st 2015 against New Zealand. However the left arm batsmen could only manage and average of 20 and was then dropped only 3 months later. Moving onto 2017 hes still scoring runs for Yorkshire after making another textbook century against Lancashire.

Michael Carberry is next on our hit list. with 13,505 runs in first class cricket, the Croydon born opener was made for international cricket right? WRONG.

 

His first test in 2010 against Bangladesh looked semi-promising scoring a fairly quick 30, Carbs managed to get a decent starting score, being helped along after scoring 6 4's. However Michael was not to improve. Only scoring 1 half century for England his innings was coming to a close as he played his last test in 2014 against Australia. In them 4 years Carbs only managed 345 runs in 6 matches.

Lets move on to our Aussie. Sydney born Englishman Sam Robson looked to be the next superstar so to speak. After rising through the ranks playing for Australias under 19's. Moving his way up to taking part in the England Performance Programme, England Lions and of course getting his England call up in 2014 where he played against Sri Lanka. The right-hand opener was put on trial for 7 games, scoring 336 runs, 1 50, 1 century, 42 4's and 1 maximum. But it wasn't to be.

Amjad Khan... Who? Well with 1 test under his belt the Danish "Right- arm fast- medium" clearly didn't exceed in international cricket. His debut and well his last game was against the West Indies in 2009. His best figures were 1/111. He then went on to play yet again all of 1 game but this game in the 20 over format for England, he performed a little better with stats of 2/34. He was then released from the England line up. Why is it that we haven't seen Amjad Since? is it because of his incredibly poor bowling figures or is it because he just wanted to go on to do bigger and better things for Denmark...

With every 1 successful international player there seems to be a teams worth of unsuccessful players. But without county cricket we wouldn't be breeding and helping players evolve to become some of the best players in the world! We have seen some of this incredible talent  this year but there's still a long way to go in 2017 and plenty more talent to come.

Battle Of The Big Gloves

The 3 B's Buttler, Bairstow and Billings but who should the gloves go to?

We've all heard recently about who the discussion entailing who the gloves should go to. Its been announced that Lancashire player Buttler will be taking his stance behind the wickets for the T20 side. The big hitter Bairstow will plant his feet firmly behind the stumps during England's Test games. And Finally new kid on the block Billings will be taking the gloves during the One Day Internationals.

However should this be the case? A few years ago many people believed that Bairstow wasn't pulling his weight, however that all changed and now we're spoiled for choice. I think its now inevitable that Buttler is and should be our T20 wicket keeper. But the real controversy comes with the ODI gloves.

Looking at the most recently played ODI's against Ireland, it was said that Bairstow wasn't best pleased that Billings had the gloves in the first game. However Jonny went on to take Billings's place in the second game scoring 72* from 44 balls, clearing the ropes 10 times, with 7 4's and 3 6's. 

Does this prove the point that if we were to pick out of the two we should be picking Bairstow as our man as hes producing the runs and being successful behind the stumps.

Bairstow has now played 25 matches taking 16 catches and 2 stumpings. But then looking at Billings's statistics he has played 11 matches, taking 11 catches and 0 stumpings for England. Hes about on par with Bairstow having played less than half of the games the Jonny has but taking 50% of the amount of catches that Bairstow has but... the Kent player isn't producing consistent runs, with an average of 27.33.

Has Sam just not had enough time to prove himself into the side yet or do you think the ECB have decided to give Billings a few opportunities recently because they believe he has the potential to become a more promising wicket keeper than Bairstow. So instead slowly pushing out Bairstow of the role to purely be a big hitting middle order batsmen and test keeper,

Should Billings just be there purely to get a few big shots in? Should Bairstow be content with just being the test keeper ? 

You decide

Joe Root To Stem The England Test Team

But will holding the England in place prove too much for the cheeky chappy as he faces the axe from the England T20 Squad.

The Yorkshireman seemed to be an easy choice for the board to be the next test skipper even at the young age of 26. After playing 53 matches, scoring a total of 4,594 runs with an average of 52.80 and now coming into his own with the ball, surely Root is the answer to allow England to climb up from 4th in the ICC rankings.

However will Root have a price to pat as it seems that England want to ease the recently crowned captain from the 20 over side, so he can focus on his new role. This is not the only reason why... The board seem to think that he doesn't have the same ability to clear the rope as some of the other big hitters in the side.

With the World ICC T20 tournament still a hefty 3 years away the viking is still determind to fight for his spot in the short format of the game.

" I will continue to look to improve that side of my cricket. There are definitely areas I will continue to work on in terms of power and clearing the ropes"

" But over a relatively short international career I've found ways of adapting and developing different ways of scoring runs quickly. I don't see why I won't be able to do that in the future as well."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-4488812/England-s-Joe-Root-ready-fight-Twenty20-place.html

So what do we think? Should the future legend concentrate on his captaincy, as stress has proven too much for many a captain of the years, or is he the bright future for all formats of the game.