Paul Collingwood has to go

He’s crap

and out of form

Collingwood’s figures are massaged by good scores in big innings totals on easy pitches. In his career he has nine test hundreds, and exactly three of these have come in an innings where he was the only centurion (in those the next best scores were 60, 77, and 94). His average, if you exclude these piggy-back centuries, is 34.

Half of the job of a top-six batsman is to contribute to big totals when scoring is easy, but the other half is to be the mainstay of an otherwise disappointing effort, turning a 250 all out into a 350 all out. This is the bit that Collingwood cannot do.

What might save him, though, is that there’s not exactly a queue of obvious candidates for the 3-4-5 spots. KP gets back in as soon as his ankle is up to the job of bearing the weight of his ego. Trott is hard to drop right now, but who else – Bopara? Bell?

Key?

I just wished England could axe him for a real player. But he’s always doing enough to hang in there.

Are his stats any worse than Flintoff’s?

It’s because he’s not blond, that you don’t like him.
Blonde’s, especially dumb blondes, always have more fun in cricket.

He’s just outa form……..but remember tat in 2007 he was England’s lone batsman……..I remember him scoring more than 50% of the English total as the other batsman all were bowled over by Mc.Grath and Warnie…..

i don’t buy all this talk about piggy-back centuries.
a hundred is a hundred, doesn’t matter if the pitch is flat you’ve still got to do it.

collingwood is just one of those players who when he isn’t scoring runs he looks shit, and when he is scoring runs he looks shit.

Scoring hundreds on flat pitches is about 95% of a Test batsman’s job.

Pitches are always flat. Cashing in and making the most of friendly conditions is vital.

It’s hard to disagree with any of these opinions. After all, subjectivity is, inherantly, subjective.

So in the spirit of diplomacy, you’re all wrong. And idiots, to boot.

95% of the job of an England #5 is rescuing a bad start.

KC – even by your own yardstick, an average of 42.44 hardly smacks of someone who regularly cashes in on flat wickets.

In this day and age of run-fests, that’s not good enough from a guy who comes in once the shine has gone from the ball. I stand by my original statement, he’s crap; and we must have someone better.

Bell is even worse in regard to scoring centuries when it matters least. Maybe Bopara could do the job, but aside from him I’m not sure who the next best candidate is.

For me, Key is a Cook back up, although they’re clearly going down the Denly route, and most other stand outs – Carberry, Suppiah, Horton – are also openers. Shah’s time has gone, rightly or wrongly, and I can’t think of anyone else coming through.

Maybe the answer is 3 openers, especially if Cook plays, KP still at 4 as he’s too scared of 3, and Trott at 5.

I can’t believe we (well you) are discussing cricket

Pah! load of tosh and snobbish rubbish. I discard the whole boiling lot of you (except Kendal King Pin who is undoubtedly a good egg)

Vital innings? He surely played the most important innings of the whole series for England, in that first test. The Ashes would have been over there and then if not for him… and don’t you forget it!

None of you have put his fielding and bowling into the scales.

I think he needs a holiday. His fielding form is suffering as well as his batting though his bowling is still great. I think they need to run a bigger squad so people can have breaks without being dropped. It is so bad watching batsmen like Ravi playing carefully and painfully to stay in the team especially when it helps to lose the game. Could they rotate them so that they could also play for their counties more and have time to make improvements? It has done wonders for Cook and also for Harmison. Counties might be better at bringing on young English talent if they could share it with England.