Pant dropped
No pun intended
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Surprising yeah he played a stupid shot at a stupid time but he hasn’t been the worst
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He has done it a few times and both the coach and the captain (lol) mentioned it. So it probably not that surprising if it is true.
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india’s scapegoat ladies and gentlemen
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Given how Sharma got out both innings, Pant is deadset stiff.
That said, would be good to see Reddy higher up the order. He looks a good bat.
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Assuming it’s that DHRUV bloke who comes in, he’s not bad. I know he didn’t do much in the opening test playing as a bat but I remember he played some key innings against us over in India.
Absolutely shocked that Marsh is dropped! Very well deserved by Webster, better player in all aspects. His bowling in particular creates a good point of difference
Shocked if true that Pant will be dropped, particularly if Rohit and Virat still play
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It’s about time the selectors axed Marsh. Let’s hope Webster can make the best of his opportunities. Marsh should have been dropped some time ago.
How long ago?
He had a good summer here last year and was well and truly deserved his spot.
He had a pretty decent tour of NZ and started this summer against India with a 40 odd so really only the last 3 tests he has struggled
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A name popped into my head before when thinking about Webster’s feats with bat and ball in Shield cricket - Ashley Noffke!
I just remember him having this incredible white hot run of form as basically a bowling all rounder for a season or two. Jumped on his wiki page and saw this. Not bad from just a 6 game season!
For reference Webster played 11 games for his 900+ runs & 30 wickets.
Edit - Did a bit of digging and while those were his stats after the first 6 matches he ended up playing 9 for the season for 686 runs at 46 and 43 wickets at 21.
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He was a very decent cricketer. What prompted his batting surge was an injury that prevented him bowling. So he spent hours in front of the bowling machine working on his batting. Again another victim of Australia’s strength in not getting an opportunity at Test level…
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Yeah definitely you feel like he would have been good enough to play test cricket and if he’d been in another country he’d have probably played quite a bit. I wasn’t aware of the background on his batting uptick. Similarly, you’d have to think that Pat Cummins batting ability is somewhat down to how much time he would have spent focusing on that while he was wiped out with his back injuries for years.
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There is no guarantee that Webster bowls any more overs than Marsh has been bowling.
Marsh was fit to bowl, they just didn’t bowl him much.
Sure he was:
After Perth test:
““He’s (been) battling a couple of little niggles since the UK tour,” Cummins said.
“So the main thing is he’s in there as one of the top six batters in the country and bowling is a bonus.
“He was a little bit sore towards the end of this Test match.”
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Yeah way too simplistic to say he was fit to bowl. He injured his back in the white ball tour to England a few months ago and barely bowled a ball for months and there’s absolutely no doubt they’ve been managing/shielding him from bowling much. They gave him a crack in the Perth Test and he pulled up sore. Since then he was used very sparingly and when he bowled he was down in pace even by his standards.
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So he’s ok to bowl 10 overs in a Test Match but not 20?
You are either fit to bowl or you don’t bowl at all IMO.
That’s not how it works though.
He would be under load restrictions
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Pleasantly surprised that CA have dropped Marsh for Webster.
A genuine 5th bowler is even more necessary now that Starc is not 100%.
Plus we don’t have enough strength in our middle order to tolerate another out-of-form batsman.
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Looks like Rohit is all but dropped. Gambhir took on media responsibilities, and at India’s training he was not in the slips cordon doing catching drills…
That’s a shame for us
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