It's The Ashes (again)

[Cheshire East Baggie]

Perfect opportunity to bring Foakes in.

ECB: "England will not call up a replacement for the third Ashes Test, which starts at Headingley on Thursday."

FFS.

That is an utterly disgraceful decision.

Wait until they announce a team unchanged apart from the addition of Lawrence for Pope  

Surely all those pundits calling for changes in the bowling attack must have realised the risk they were running? Baz'n'Ben will probably do the opposite of what the pundits say.

Fact is, this Pope injury doesn't change the Bairstow/Foakes situation. There's a spare batter in the squad, so in he comes. The fact that he's useless is a disgrace, I agree.

---

So the injury that the umpires deemed minor so he had to field is a lot more serious, why don’t they listen to the Dr’s.
Pope showed what this England side is all about playing on with a serious injury.
As for the Aussies thinking we’re whinging poms, pot kettle black springs to mind there the proven cheats not us.

I think there's a grey area here. It was an impact injury, but it exacerbated a known long term shoulder problem. After he scored 42 runs in the first innings, it was probably reasonable to suggest that he was recovered to some extent and should therefore field if he wanted to bat up the order.

The umpires had a poor match. Half the referrals seemed to result in changing the on-field decision. The two catching incidents showed inconsistency. They could have been more strident over the stumping and put Cummins under pressure. I also think they let a lot of head-high deliveries from England go without calling them as bouncers. Maybe they just weren't impressed by the pace (or lack of) in most cases. Umpires have had a good game when we aren't talking about them afterwards.