[themaclad]

It's the five day version of the 100 scoringb at over 5 an over

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Boult the first man to bowl the England top three single-handed since 1949, and Overton/Bairstow now the highest England seventh-wicket partnership of all time, surpassing the 197 set by Mike Smith and Jim Parks at Port of Spain in 1960. Never a dull moment!

[theo_luddite]

Helluva'n innings from Overton, shame he was 3 short of the ton but he's helped put us back in a game we'd all but surrendered again in a session and a bit of bloody good NZ bowling.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

NZ lead by 137 with five wickets remaining at the end of day three. Whichever way it goes from here, this really has been an enthralling series.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

He'd already set the record in his first innings of the match, but Daryl Mitchell's final total of 538 runs is comfortably the highest number in a single series between England and New Zealand on English soil, surpassing Len Hutton's 469 scored in summer 1949.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Genuinely incredible stuff at Edgbaston this weekend. Largest run-chase in England's Test history knocked off at a canter. Coincidentally, I'm currently reading Hitting Against The Spin, the excellent book published last year about data and innovation in cricket, and how risk vs reward drives new tactics in sport. I'm still not 100% convinced that Baz-ball is a long-term solution or a substitute for breeding a generation of red-ball batsmen who can occupy the crease, but as things stand, it does look like the start of something very revolutionary in Test cricket.

I guess the acid test will be what happens when teams get wise to England's strategy and begin to adapt.

[theo_luddite]

We're often good a home on wickets made for us. Proof o't'puddin' will be chasing down 350 anywhere else in t'world where tracks are made for them, not us.
Bloody good watching Johnny B and √66 notching up tons though.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Yeah, I think this summer feels so good because we've been iffy or downright bad even on home soil for at least three years now. And during Root's captaincy we cycled through two ways of batting with four outcomes:

1. Occupy the crease and score too slowly (= draw)
2. Occupy the crease and get out cheap (= lose)
3. Attack the bowling and get out cheap (= lose)
4. Attack the bowling and score quickly (= 50/50 win or lose)

It seems Stokes & McCullum have simply decided to put all the eggs in basket 4 (at least partly out of necessity) and given the players full backing in taking risks, which they may not have had under Root, when different people were pulling in different directions in the dressing room and among the backroom staff. No idea how it'll work when we end up batting first in a match, and as you say, foreign tours are a different world. And there's a possibility that this summer is basically another 1990: warm weather, flat pitches and a bad batch of Dukes all combining to make fortune favour the bold. But there's no denying that this style has a psychological effect on the opposition which will have teams on their guard for a while to come: India just went to pieces in the field once Bairstow came in (though I don't think it helped that Bumrah had Kohli in his ear; you have to wonder whether the wheels would have come off to that extent if Virat was still calling the shots).

Guess we'll just sit back and enjoy the ride!

[themaclad]

This might be slightly against the upbeat rise of England but I've actually found the run chases boring, prefer an even contest between bat and ball however the balls they are using are awful.

[themaclad]

Eng 116-6 close cannot beat playing red ball cricket pity the vast majority of them havenot in the last five weeks