Watching the highlights on Channel 5. Good bowling performances by Woakes and Broad. We would have found it hard to live it down, if Ireland had beaten us. Onto the Ashes now. We have to get it together. As Sir Geoffrey has rightly said, if we don't, it could all be over by the third Test.
Expect plenty of collapses in the ashes. Other than Root, Bairstow, Stokes, Warner and Smith there’s some very brittle players in the top 7 of each team up against 2 seriously good bowling attacks on green pitches.
Devastated at losing to the English. I put it down to playing too many players who were born in Ireland. Ridiculous. You wouldn’t catch England playing too many English born players - quite right! It should be about winning.
Only 2 of the players were actually born in the republic of Ireland. 8 were born in Northern Ireland. Tim Murtagh who bowled superbly is a born and bred Englishman (Lambeth).
That’s 10 players out of 11 actually born in Ireland. Madness! Can you imagine England fielding only Players born in England.
Bit of a cheek being called Ireland though. Northern Ireland perhaps more appropriate. Nice to see you being supportive of this trans- faith team though: diversity is to be applauded
I not supportive of ‘trans faith’ teams. I’ve always thought having changed your sexual orientation should have no bearing on whether you’re selected to play for any sporting team. If it had we’d have never had John Beresford (Lady Di) playing for us.
Well played Norn Iron: let's hope irish cricket moves forward now and we can get more players from the republic playing too: not only the posh boys from their public schools. (Don't really want to end up with loads of english players playing for them like the football team over the last 30 odd years).
Don’t be daft lad. You should have said “Well done England and let’s hope we can get more ordinary kids playing not just the posh boys from their public schools.” Though if a Country has a policy of selling off its school playing fields for development, and not recognising Teachers for their out of hours comittment, then it’s going to be a tall ask. An alternative is just to poach players from other countries and as England only has a population of 55 million, it can hardly be expected to find 11 top players.
I agree. Players aren't being poached though, they are making a personal choice. Plenty of the england team went to state schools but there are far too many statistically who didn't. It's also true however that many who have gone onto grammar/public school education are working class but got a scholarship as a consequence of their sporting prowess. Angus Fraser spoke of this after the win and the hope would be that the ECB will try to capitalise on the success to put developmental programmes into place into our state schools.
And I agree with you though the question of ‘personal choices’ in choosing the Country you play with is a whole new debate. But let’s have that one another day.