David Kelly

I thought this felt like a stand alone story personally. The rest of the Batman universe isn't really relevant to it. Bruce Wayne's father is a significant character in this story and there is a scene right near the end that I suppose could lead this on to tying up with Batman but the rest of it could have pretty much taken place within a world completely separate.

I worry we'll be calling him the new Lualua in the future. He's a definitely threat but his decision making looks like it leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully I'm wrong though. I thought Schar was class yesterday. Admittedly he lost Slabhead when he should have scored but he made 3 class interventions to stop certain goals for them.

Enjoyed Joker a lot. I thought it was a bit slow for the first 40 minutes or so but Phoenix was superb. After that it cranks up a notch. More like a cross between Taxi Driver and King of Comedy than any other comic book film that's gone before it. Surely there's been multiple origin stories for the Joker character? Jack Nicholson's version had an origin and the Killing Joke (which I think this film takes some bits from) given an origin to him. The fact that none of these origins taken as the definitive one means you don't really lose any of the mystery,

I don't think you can really keep both of them in the team if Butler is going to bat at 7 and not take the gloves. The solution has to either be Butler keeping and Bairstow at 5 or Bairstow keeping at 7 and Butler not in the team. Of course you could Argue that Foakes should keeping whatever is decided with those two.

The possible problem you have with limiting Stokes to just batting is he seems to want to be involved all of the time and this inspires him to do better. If you took the bowling away from from (which I realise you're not totally suggesting) would his batting actually suffer. Totally agree about Bairstow and Buttler though, they need to be deserving of their spot as batsmen on merit and they've both only averaged mid 20's this series. At the moment I don't think you can justify them both being in the team.

I'm not much of a horror fan either. I thought the best aspects of the two films were the friendships between the kids. Those bit were a bit like Stand By Me and much more interesting. Watched Booksmart the other night. Billed as a sort of female Superbad. I don't think it was a regularly funny as the likes of Superbad but it did have some really funny stuff in it and was boosted by a cracking Dan The Automator soundtrack.

It Chapter 2. Another film that's a good hour too long. It's ok but just like the first part you can spot the jumps coming a mile off. How it's getting five star reviews is beyond me.

Can't see anything online about Hameed retiring, just about the release from Lancashire. He's actually averaged towards 30 this season which isn't great but is a massive improvement on his 9 from last season. Durham are still struggling with their batting so maybe they can take a punt on him. Canny drop of Root by Siddle.

Surely it's a good thing that they don't do convincing brummie accents? It's comfortably the worst accent in the world.

Should the main core of players be the same though? Is picking too many white ball players instead of red ball specialists weakening our test team? Or is it just that we don't have the quality in red ball players. We'd hoped the likes of Stoneman, Jennings and Hameed would come through and be fixtures in the test team but they've not been able to step up.

There's not many batsmen showing it at test level at the moment, whether that's down to conditions, bowler or (my personal belief) the focus on white ball cricket around the world meaning batsmen aren't used to playing the way they need to. As Stokes said, the flip side of that is we're able to see innings like he produced at Heddlingley. Mind the way it's going we aren't going to be able to see the first part of that innings from many players. I definitely think we should be splitting the red and white ball coaching duties. I don't blame the ECB for focusing on white ball these past few years because winning the world cup was massive for us, but it does feel somewhat overdone when you look at how are test team are performing now. And what happens now? Do we switch it back around and lose our standing as the top odi team or fail to prepare for the T20 world cup? Surely having someone focusing on the white ball game solely would be the better option. Obviously they need to be looking at the make up of the county championship season too but with the hundred starting next year I don't imagine there's going to be any immediate changes with the program.

Don't think the weather will save us. We need Stokes to dig in for another 300 balls.

The talk yesterday morning was that the pitch suited the taller bowler so that's why Overton was picked instead of Curran. But that opinion seems to be on the way the Old Trafford pitch used to play rather than how it does now. It seems obvious that once Wood and Stone were ruled out and Anderson was struggling, the selectors have been all over the place. Fucking sick of Smith now like, we were desperate for Archer to hold onto that caught and bowled.

It's an odd film for sure. All of his other efforts have been clear genre films but I'm not sure this one knows what it wants to be. But I did enjoy it, particularly Pitt and particularly at the end. That Weinstein documentary that was on BBC2 last night was really good. What a horrible cunt he is.

Denly has apparently confirmed he will be opening and Roy will be at four. Personally I'd like to see him in after Stokes but they obviously don't want to put too much onto Stokes with his bowling as well. Hopfully the top three will be able to take the shine off the ball before Roy comes in. Two new umpires in for the last two matches too.