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In this Discussion
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The cricket thread
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Comments
Press a month ago: are Robinson and Overton quick enough for Test cricket?
And now we're being pasted by fast-medium seamers.
Really pleased Bracey got off the mark.
edit :
oh and that chap Wood, we should let him have a go at opening i say
Yes we can look at issues with the balance of the team and no spinner - But a question for you - Central contracts are awarded so we can ensure the key players are available in tip top order to perform as and when required - They are paid for such work - Yet they can swan off to earn additional personal via Big Bash and/or IPL which is fine - But the IPL was cut short, and yet players under a central contract are still not available - Yet many are now playing for their county - Appears to be might silly
Plus shows lack of respect to NZ in that we'll field a 2nd team and hopefully win
A lot to be looked at IMO off the pitch as well
There has been some brain-dead batting this innings. Someone needs to get Boycott in to show them how to defend.
Remember that two people who would have played aren't doing so because of injury, namely Foakes (slippyovertime) and Stokes (bust his finger in India). Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Chris Woakes, Jason Roy, Sam Billings and Sam and Tom Curran were the first batch back from the IPL. Morgan, Malan, and Chris Jordan were the other three. With the no spinner policy, Moeen was not going to play Tests, and most of the others aren't Test players either or were dropped for shit form. Realistically, Woakes, Sam Curran, and Buttler were the only three who might have played.
Buttler for Bracey would have strengthened the side. Woakes in for Broad? Curran for Robinson in the First Test? Far less convincing that swapping them over would have done much.
In fairness to the allegation of us playing a 2nd team, NZ have made major changes for this Test. They've fielded a rookie in Conway, Young is making his way. Patel isn't an established spinner, Matt Henry's a bit like Woakes in that he is good but finds it hard to cement that spot with Southeee and Boult. Kane isn't playing, Watling is missing, Colin the Mullet was out for a long time with injury, Daryll Mitchell isn't into double figures in the Test stakes...
Actually between them in terms of completed Tests: Conway - 1, Young - 2, Patel - 8, Blundell - 10, Patel - 8 Mitchell - 4 = 33 Tests.
Sibley and Crawley have 32 Tests between them. So in Test experience terms, I don't think we've got a 2nd XI compared to a prime NZ first XI even when making allowances for the lower number of Tests that NZ play.
Outside of Stokes, we aren't missing any batsmen in this side today through IPL or injury problems. That top six is the best top six in the country according to the selectors excluding Stokes. It's been threatened in the first Test on a pretty placid wicket and it's been absolutely dismantled here on a wicket that isn't quick or loaded with excessive or uneven bounce. For fear of sounding boring, the England management asked for more placid wickets this summer to help the batsmen. If this is what we do on more placid Lords and Edgbaston wickets, then fuck knows what we'll do on a helpful Gabba track.
It also makes you wonder what the management will ask for regarding the India series. A few years back we beat them on some turning home tracks with Moeen taking a hatload. We've proven how shit we are against spin (should be noted how Patel thus far has taken 4 of the 17 English wickets to fall. Always a role for spin here) so turning decks against Virat and Ko (sic) would be mad. Seaming tracks would allow Bumrah, Siraj et al to bum us (double sic). If we go with tracks that last, then they've got the ability to bat us out of the game: we've barely got the ability to bat out a day.
All of this is happening because our entire domestic structure is so utterly fucked. We've being pasted by a country that knows how to maximise talent.
But who cares when we've got the Hundred to look forward to. Sod orthodoxy, to hell with tradition and technique. Never mind the Ashes, here's a load of bollocks.
personally (grumpy old man) I don’t like waggling unorthodox batting styles, although I do like both Burns and Sibley, I think because I think they are mentally strong. they both show signs of good stuff
id be interested in peoples’ thoughts on who might be better batting at the moment. Personally I would drop Pope and Crawley and say go back to wherever and get your form back.
Agree with Nas on the batting but that also has a knock-on effect with the bowling. Any old sod can take wickets on seamy or spin heavy tracks. Just as batters have to learn how to play the long innings on a track that is against them, so bowlers have to learn how to bowl on tracks that aren't helping them. With our Championship schedule generally loaded at times of the year where you don't get shirtfront batting decks (New Road excluded which is a turgid deck thanks to the proximity of the Severn and the regular floods), you end up with batsmen who aren't used to batting a whole day and bowlers who aren't used to having to bowl in a good containing manner on a deck that doesn't suit them.
Developing bowlers doesn't mean giving them tracks that suit them. About mid-2010s, there was a change made to more result-orientated wickets in the Indian Ranji Trophy first class competition. End result: shit spinners took loads of wickets. The West Indies had this happen as well. The seamers were given a few overs and then the spinners would come on and snaffle the wickets. Poor wickets help neither discipline.
Playing short form cricket doesn't seem to help either discipline in the long format too. Much is said about why we can't seem to play the long innings but the same is true for bowling too. The influence of limited overs cricket on bowling has seen captains rotate bowlers and chop and change to a near-ridiculous level in my view. I was having a browse through some of the youth age groups for my old county earlier today. Because everything's online now, you can see a player's record through the ranks. Seeing the two lead bowlers and their record floors me. Between them, there's under 500 overs over 2013 to 2019. At U-17 level, I bowled 20% of that in 4 days, and I certainly didn't go on overseas tours like they do now. Also very apparent that there is a massive increase in private school players within my old side compared to my day, suggesting that the look at public schools for talent in the West Country is not just restricted to Somerset.
Change I'd make for the short form game? Easy: restrict the number of bowlers you can use and increase the number of overs they can bowl. Make it 15. Absolutely gets the balance right in my view. I'm sure Gassage might remember league games in the past with unrestricted overs where some sides would bowl the pro for 25 or 30 overs or more depending on format played. A return to that would be shit and completely no-go but offering longer spells in exchange for fewer bowlers used means this:
-the best bowlers bowl more. The best of the younger developing bowlers also bowl and don't have to worry that their day will be four overs and then hauled off so some twunt middle-order tosser can bingle up some crap off-spin because of restrictions on number of bowlers used.
-the batters face the best bowlers more often and either develop and cope with them or they fail.
Right now, the model is fucking up batting and bowling at the highest level.
Stone and Jimmy add another 150 for the last wicket, Jimmy getting his maiden test ton.
We then bowl the Kiwis out for under 130, Woody taking 8-43.
Well, lightning might strike twice.
The same faults come series after series.
Something amis with the coaching or lack of application or just players not good enough?
If you go through many of the best Australians of my lifetime, most got dropped at some point. Hayden, Mark Waugh, even Ponting, Martyn. Faults were worked on or form regained in the domestic game either in England or in Australia, they came back as better players. I'm struggling to think of many players in the last few years who started well, lost form, got dropped, and then came back. I know Burns got dropped in the winter and came back but it's not a Martyn-style explusion from the Test side and return some years later as a better player. Take Matt Hayden as a perfect example: dropped in March 1997 after some success in 7 Tests along with some failures. He carried on playing with Hampshire and points to this county stint as being vital to changing his technique:
"At 21, Hayden toured England and made 1000 runs without playing a Test. It was 1993 and Michael Slater was just establishing himself as Mark Taylor’s opening partner. The next year, Hayden made his Test debut when Taylor was ill on the morning of the Johannesburg match. Early in the second innings, Allan Donald broke his thumb. In the next six years, he played only six Tests, all in the southern summer of 1996/97. So it was that all his first seven Tests were played against the powerful seam attacks of either South Africa or West Indies. It was hardly surprising that his performances were uneven and he could not make a permanent place for himself. He saw this period not as exile, but preparation. “The thing is, you’d have it no other way. Within myself, I knew I was gathering momentum,” he said. “I knew I was good enough, but I couldn’t get the opportunity.” He said he felt frustration, but never despair.
He admitted to quirks in his technique, but no more than any other left-hander. “Even today, if a guy is swinging the ball into your pads, and you’re trying to play straight, it’s really hard to make the adjustment.” Three seasons of county cricket, batting day in day out for Hampshire and Northants, helped refine his method. “The guys were bowling straight at my pads. It’s the way the English bowl: at the pads and stumps and look for the LBs,” he said. “Gradually, it became a strength, to the point now where, if I was to say what was my favourite shot, it would be through mid-wicket, forcing off the back foot. To get anywhere, you have to face your weaknesses.”
That summer of 1997 saw Hayden top the Hampshire averages in 17 FC games and 30 innings. Hampshire site says he scored almost 2,500 that summer. He came back to Tests after three years out and formed one of the greatest Test opening partnerships in history, playing over 90 more Tests after that first stint. Michael Hussey was undoubtedly helped by the long period that he played county cricket. Closer to today, look at Marnus Labuschagne and his time at Glamorgan.A guy like Dominic Sibley doesn't get that sort of opportunity to hone technique. If you drop him from the Test squad now, he's not going to get the same opportunity that Hayden did to work on flaws and to overcome them. With the Test schedule as it is and with county opportunities limited, he needs to work on technique in the nets rather than the first-class game, even more so now we're into T20 mode. He then isn't going to go to an overseas place and play the equivalent of an 18-match first-class season as Hayden and many Aussies did. Really he's trying to change on the job.
So if you look at some of those great Aussie players and see how they got dropped and returned, and then you look at players over the last decade for England, you don't see the same pattern. Someone like Sam Robson comes to mind. Perhaps the pointer is Dawid Malan. Test ton in Oz, gets dropped... comes back as the world's best T20 batsman.
So I wouldn't point the finger at the coaching per se for England. It's more that the avenues for development, which is the first-class domestic game, are much reduced for the modern player.
One aspect is that our international schedule is packed, thus impacting on player development outside of international matches. NZ play fewer Tests and it gives the players a gap for recovery and development. Ross Taylor versus Root is a perfect example of this. Taylor has played 106 Tests. Root is two behind Taylor despite making his Test debut over five years later than Taylor.
Hard luck on the half ton. I was never a batsman, a childhood featuring a brother who always demanded I bowl to him and then who would run off when the roles were going to be reversed sorted that out.
ONE FUCKING BALL!!!!!
Make them wear their spikes on the inside of their boots.
We're at such a low level right now with the openers that even moderate success is translated into something more. After his dreadful fifty at Lords in a dead match and scratching around in the first innings here, you had articles coming out calling Sibley a cult hero. Mentally strong, the right stuff for Tests, that kind of thing... and yet he's averaging 31. You sometimes get this thing with some players that they stay around not because of what they do on the pitch but how they do it. They're perceived as being the right stuff for Tests, having the right mental approach. So Sibbers scores his rubbish 50, he gets his 35, and then back to failing but he's secured a little spot as being the right kind of chaps for the trenches in people's minds. It happened in the winter, his half century against Sri Lanka erased the abject failures of the previous innings, and his 87 on an absolute Indian road in the First Test gives him a bit of credit in the bank that glosses over the big failures. I'd say Dominic Bess was another like this because he's a busy fielder, offers something with the bat, and this approach makes some favour him over Leach. It's different for Crawley because he's been dismissed on the drive more than the defensive snick. Getting out on the attack is perceived as being worse than the defensive snick. I remember that attitude in the days pre-Fletcher being about and it's odd to see it coming back in again in these times.
The runup to this series made a lot of a previous Eng-NZ series where we did attack and it set the template for how things would be. In this one, we've gone the other way. We've opted for conservative pitches because our batting is shit. We've gone for conservative selection (tons of batting, unbalance the bowlers). We're out of ideas and Root's innings yesterday really sums it up.
If you look at the Championship averages as a form guide for who might come in, I wouldn't bother. You've got Pope, Burns, and Lawrence in the top 15. So the choice is whether you drop them and continue the merry-go-round or whether you stick with them probably through to the end of the Ashes. There's no point having a wholesale clearout now. You may as well do it after we've been destroyed this winter.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.