[themaclad]

Flakes does he crumble under pressure??

[jjamez]

Meant to be foakes

Speaking of flakes. Apparently they can't melt, perfect if you want chocolate in a warm climate

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Looking a big ask right now in Visakhapatnam, 234 still needed with six wickets left, but credit to Zak Crawley: he's become the first England batsman to hit half-centuries in both innings of a Test in India since Andrew Strauss in 2008. Since last summer he's really turned into the opener England have needed for years.

[Lord Snooty]

Big ask for Stokes now. Two sessions to get a double century.

[themaclad]

We lose with four session left by 106 runs, more application in actually staying in and grinding it out could have won but Bazball let's pummell it

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

India 445 all out at Rajkot, in reply Ben Duckett hits the fastest Test century by an Englishman against India and we close on 207-2. Still a good batting pitch, avoiding the follow-on should be a formality now, and provided Bumrah doesn't get on one of his reverse-swing rolls we're looking well in the game.

[themaclad]

High svoringh draw onthe cards

[themaclad]

Baz being bowled 304-7

[themaclad]

The creek of s**t has been reached the paddle has sadly been misplaced 50-5

---

50-6

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

It's got to be the death-knell, if not for Bazball overall, then at least for the one-dimensional way they've been playing it. There'll be the usual petulant, passive-aggressive remarks from whatever team spokesman they send out ("you weren't complaining when we were winning!"), but when your rock-paper-scissors strategy is to play scissors every time, your 33% win record before you got sussed out is no defence against people asking you to adapt and evolve.

The Achilles heel of Stokes as captain is that he wants to keep things as simple as possible on the batting front, because simplicity breeds self-confidence, and self-confidence can take you a long way, which is why the team for the last two years has been behaving like a self-help group for divorced dads: all bucket hats, bro-hugs and keep-it-real mantras. Complexity breeds self-doubt, so they've tried to banish it altogether, but in the long run you just can't do that and expect to keep rolling sixes. Two years into the project, it's not unreasonable to expect some ability from the captain to use common sense, assess the match situation and change approach accordingly.