Olly Stone of Warwickshire has taken 8 for 80 against Sussex. One for the selectors to watch?

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Jake ball takes 9 wickets at old Trafford. One for the selectors to watch?

The 4th round of the county championship fixtures today. Here's the scores of the England batsmen. Cook 0, Stoneman 28, Westley 0, Vince 5, root 0, malan 13, bairstow 7 and ,50(opening) . Hameed was dropped by Lancashire after a string of single figure scores. Meanwhile Trescothick scores a hundred at old Trafford. Easily the best batsman in the country.

Jennings, Clarke and Pope have gotten off to decent starts. Northeast was starting to look good too until he got injured. Cook has hit a couple of 50s now so hopefully he is finding his touch before the first test.

In someways it could be a very interesting summer.
We haven’t got a settled side. Many places up for grabs and even a couple of potential of retirements a real probablty.

India are pretty strong. They have some decent pacers nowadays who I think will cause us trouble.

Pakistan early doors I’d expect to beat but you never know with their bowlers and our batting capitulations.

Interesting summer indeed and definitely no cakewalk

And the end of it I would like to think two new batsmen may have made some decent claims for long international futures for England. And a spinner—man we need one of those before we travel again with any realistic hopes

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One thing about Pope and they were saying this when I was listening the the Surrey v Yorkshire match - He seems to get big runs when it matters under pressure.

As we know that shown a mental strength for Test cricket. As Vaughan said on 5Live it's not about picking a batsman with the best average but the ones who meet the requirements of Test cricket.

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There's speculation in the papers that Foakes will come in to keep wicket and Bairstow will move up to 5.

comment by Greatteamswinit4times- a terrible enemy (U6008)
posted 12 hours, 52 minutes ago
Leach is seemingly out of at least the first test as he has had to go to hospital today. I wonder if Virdi will get a look in. Surely it's way too early but as I mentioned, he has got some huge names out on pitches that aren't even offering too much spin yet.
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I'd love to see that, I've heard good things about Virdi for a while now. Seems to be the only spinner along with Harmer taking wickets now.

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I'm reading that Bess is set to come in for Leach with Butler to come in for Vince. 12 man squad is rumoured to be Cook, Stoneman, Root, Malan, Stokes, Butler, Bairstow (WK), Woakes, Bess, Broad, Anderson, Wood. Seems Butler might be getting the nod due to his recent IPL form. Only decision to really be made is where he bats and who is the 3rd seamer.

Yeah, that's the squad. Maybe Buttler will be asked to biff the ball around in the middle-to-lower order, we'll see. Can't say I'm keen on someone who's not been playing red-ball cricket being picked but it might work....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/44105904

Looks like Moeen is done for a while now and will have to try and win a place back in the side as a batsman.

Interesting squad. Buttler can count himself lucky butility an exciting pick.

Stoneman very lucky.

Jennings is batting well for Lancashire. Could be back if stoneman or cook fails this summer.

England cricket is doing alright.

These two Tests against Pakistan might be a last chance saloon for Stoneman and maybe some others. There could be some changes by the time the India Tests come around (or even sooner!), but we'll see how things go....

With Bess being asked to speak to the press yesterday, you'd assume he's nailed on to start. There was a lot of talk about him being 12th man but we don't need 5 seamers.

Hopefully we'll stick with Wood rather than bring Woakes back in.

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It's really interesting that since Moeen's absence from the team, we've seen Crane, Leach and now Bess be selected. England have finally woken up to wanting a specialist spinner. Great to see that Bess's role model is Graeme Swann as we've had a big Swann shaped hole in the side ever since he retired.

Agreed about the balance of the attack, you feel that England have finally woken up that we need someone with pace alongside Stokes to give us two guys capable of bowling 90mph. Add a specialist spinner and we have an attack more capable overseas especially if we see the likes of Leach and Bess bowl in tandem in the subcontinent.

Looks like the weather is set to be a bit gloomy first up but as always with Lords, look down not up, I assume the pitch won't have too much grass as we've had decent weather. Fortunately, the weather after that looks pretty decent for the rest of the weekend so hopefully we see a result.

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He flights the ball more to give himself a chance to get more drift and turn. Bess made some interesting comments, not necessarily referring to Moeen but it's definitely to consider about him, that one day and T20 spinners for the most part try and fire the ball in a bit quicker which is easier to play against as you're not trying to smash every ball to the boundary. Him and Leach predominantly play first class cricket as Somerset have other spinners like Van der Merwe to play the shorter formats.