Quote Originally Posted by Mark_Ross View Post
That was one crazy game, eh? When the wickets were tumbling yesterday we were all thinking "here we go again". Hopefully it will help Root not having the extra burden of captaincy. He is the spine - it seems that for England to succeed Root must succeed.
To be honest, Joe Root has successfully papered over the continuing huge cracks in England's batting line-up, and if relinquishing the captaincy helps him to continue doing this then it can only be to our benefit. Something's got to be done about that top order though. We keep swapping the personnel but getting the same thing: batsmen who can look reasonable in the comfortable surroundings of "first class" English cricket but whose technical flaws and impatience get horribly exposed at Test level. They spend far too much time playing short-form cartoon cricket.

I feel sorry for our bowlers. They performed brilliantly to bowl New Zealand out for 132 in the first innings, but then most of our batsmen just threw their wickets away and ended up only 9 runs ahead. You could excise the likes of Broad, Anderson and Potts for feeling de-motivated after that!

Still, we won in the end, and it's something at least to build on.