stoneman copped some ridiculously bad decisions, including given out off one flicking his wrist pad when it wasn't in contact with his gloves. for most of the series he was levels above cook who padded his stats with one innings in melbourne and unlike every english opener since he pretty much always got a start, and didn't look entirely incompetent against the new ball
guys like crawley and hameed got picked way too young and got exposed, pope has been dicked around bigtime, bairstow is the big one who traded being good against a red ball for white ball success, buttler has been mediocre forever in tests and should be behind foakes at least
what they really need is to see what marnus did to get given the luck of the gods, bloke has got way with everything for the better part of 3 years, i've never seen anything like it
From what I have read over the years , agree what you say about Pope , he seems to be the one who misses out when they keep try to play 2 All-rounders and 2 wicket keepers in specialist batting positions.
Actually think with Pope @ 6 and WK @ 7 they have finally got their structure right , probably the wrong keeper.
Foakes should be keeping and will never understand the logic of playing 4 Quick's all similar paced to Stokes.
I guess the fact Parkinson is not even in the Squad shows that Silverwood doesn't rate him at all.
3 + Parkinson & Stokes would make things a lot better.
Obviously were hoping Archer was here (Stone was in their planning and Wood was always going to be managed)
Problem they have now (like all touring teams) is they don't have any meaningful games before or during the series so their batsmen can try and get some confidence and scores , so very limited in what they can do moving forward , Bairstow & Crawley the only options unless they do select from outside the Squad.
Can't understand why the Lions came out here for essentially one game , although with Big Bash hard to schedule anything else , really need a Lions v Australia A game around the Boxing Day or New Year's Test as well.
As much as I want Australia to win , certainly hope their batting improves dramatically otherwise could lose interest very quickly.
