Sir Ian Botham: England must look to youth after Ashes tie with Australia

Sir Ian Botham says England must appear to bed in a few young talent as they build for the future and plan for the Ashes time.
Australia retain the urn together with the 2-2 tie, although later clinching a 135-run triumph in the fifth and final Test at The Oval england attracted that summer’s Ashes series.
Botham believes the result is a reflection about the show, including that Steve Smith and his staggering 774 runs for the series has shown the gap between both sides.
“Things swung from that first Test at Edgbaston,” said Botham. “Australia were 122-8 and then built those partnerships with the tailenders.
“Steve Smith has been glorious. And he’s become the standout for the whole series.
“I really mentioned, if he doesn’t fail today, he is not human. He did fail [scoring 23] however he has been awesome.
“If you take a look at the two sides, batting was an issue for both, especially the top order. Ben Stokes has been the exception for England and Steve Smith for Australia.
“I believe that the pace attack of Australia has been superb. They’ve played better cricket.
“However, England are in a pretty great location normally, they just need a little bit of fine tuning.
“Together with the bowling, we’re in a similar scenario to Australia, we’ve got lots of young talent coming but England need to look at the batting line-up.
“Are they really going to look at younger players, which I think they have to do? It is two or three years till we are back in Australia to the Ashes – and – you are going to want to have a side that is settled, so now’s the time to start looking at that.
“In New Zealand, it is a great opportunity to experiment, take a look and see exactly what these young men can do. Zac Crawleyplayers like this, who everybody was talking about.”
Botham was speaking in amazing and his partner David Gower’s closing stints as broadcasters to get Sky Sports after 25 decades of service, and he represented fondly on his time behind the mike.
“It has been interesting,” he added. “It had been the beginning of Sky and that I stated at the moment,’what are we going to perform? Where are we going to proceed for this?’
“They said, we want to bring the sport to the living room of those folks at home viewing. I believe we have got fairly close to that.
“It has been a terrific trip. Time to move on, there is youthful blood available. But it has been wonderful; the parts of the world we have seen, the matches we’ve seen and the players that have surfaced.”

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