England v New Zealand Test Series 2026

[sussexpob]

Duckett leaves the first ball... WOAH WOAH.

Maiden over also

[sussexpob]

Gay starting his test career unfurling a couple of picture perfect drives. Jamieson responds with a jaffer that nearly kisses his edge. Good contest this, hang in there Emilio...

[sussexpob]

Kiss of death... those two drives are all she wrote, gone for 8.

Good length from Jameison, bit of nip away, Gay forced to play on the back foot, gets the edge, slip does the rest

[sussexpob]

And then rain.. which apparently is going to be around for 2-3 hours minimum... boo

[Durhamfootman]

In his short (ish) Durham career, Gay has seemed to get out early or score big. Doesn't seem to bother with anything in between

[Durhamfootman]

Not going so well

[Durhamfootman]

Just as well that Stokes has moved down to 7 or he'd be facing the new ball right about now

[sussexpob]

Bethell looked sharp after the bench and bash.... blood bath after the break. The ball hasn't done that much either

[sussexpob]

Brook's classic bazball counter attack already nearly brainlessly over...dropped at point

[Durhamfootman]

I was listening to Dobell yesterday and after several months of England talking about all the lessons they'd learnt, he was questioning just how much. Yes Crawley had gone, but only after he'd become unselectable. As for the rest of the side, England selected two players who bat 3 for their counties to open, picked a player to bat 3 who hadn't played any red ball of any kind since the last ashes test, moved Smith who bats 3 for Surrey and doesn't keep wicket to 6 as wicket keeper, picked a spinner in no form at all and only selected one naturally opening bowler to open the bowling..... so how many lessons had they actually learnt?

[andy]

Just seen the wickets 4 awful shots but at least they're on the field forecast was shocking for today

[sussexpob]

I have absolutely no idea what Smith was doing then, he just left a straight one....

[andy]

This new dawn is off to a great start!

[sussexpob]

This new dawn is off to a great start!

There is a saying that I can't quite remember. Something about "insanity", " doing the same" and something about "change"?

[sussexpob]

Look , you are entitled to your views. I do shake my head a little at your assertion that all the England management (people who have actually played , coached etc at levels far beyond any of us on here ) are totally brainless fools with no understanding of the game ; but let that pass...

Even taking this one example in discussion, let's just transfer this for one moment into a scenario you might encounter in any professional environment.

You work for a huge global powerhouse corporation, with the resources and institutional facilities to potentially dominate your market globally. The job of delivering the strategic goal of becoming market leader falls to you; your company has invested millions in market research, millions in marketing, its conducted every study imaginable by the best experts available in your field to give you data to every single question you could possibly conceive, you have literally whole departments working churning that data and modelling how to use it to your end goal, you have world class tools and facilities at your disposal with no cost sparred to your end goal, you have established working models and plans that took years for experts to meticulously set out on how you were going to do things, you have an inner core of experts hired based on their update knowledge of events and trends.....

And then, you turn up to the first project meeting and say "Guys, I have seen all the reports, all the data, all the recommendations, all the plans.... but I was on YT last night listening to "Dave does Business advice" and his 1 minute short video viewed by 13 people has convinced me to ditch new AI tech, and focus our efforts on the egg peeler market".....

You think you'd survive the end of the next sentence with a job?