The cricket thread

Heartfeltdawn

Quite right, there shouldn't be the demolition job going on that occurred in the last Ashes series. Their batting doesn't have the fear factor in it other than Warner and Smith. I really don't think England will worry about Clarke that much. 

If the groundsmen do produce flat wickets, then the push will be for Australia to play an extra bowler. If so, then the Harris/two Mitch/Hazlewood combo with Lyon will be there, Haddin at six, rely on the top five for the runs knowing the tail bats all the way down to number 11. Shane Watson is the slightly odd shaped peg in the lineup, not for the first time. Flat wickets will render his bowling impotent. Wickets will be what matter.

Heartfeltdawn

A lot of talk about there about Buttler as a future captain. Interesting... another reason why taking the gloves from him might be a good option. 

crunchman

If they take the gloves off Butler then I think you need to look at a better keeper.  His missed stumping quite possibly cost us the second test in the Windies.  If Windies are 5 down at that point I think we go on to win.  His 26 byes in an innings at Lords might cost in other circumstances as well.

If you have Stokes and Moeen/Rashid playing as all-rounders at 6 and 7 then you could pick someone like Foster at 8.  He averaged 25 in test cricket as a raw youngster years ago.  He'd be better than that now.  He's had a couple of seasons where he averaged 50 in FC cricket.  Given the depth of the batting, and the difficulty of taking 20 wickets I'd go for the guy who wouldn't miss the stumping.  And even if someone like Bairstow might make 20 runs a match more, if he gives 15 of them back as byes, and misses a stumping of a guy who makes an extra 80 runs, then the net gain isn't worth it.

If you don't have decent all-rounders, and have a long tail then picking an inferior keeper who can bat may be an acceptable compromise, but with the depth of England's batting someone ends up getting stranded with the tail.  You need to go for a better keeper.  Obviously if you have a really good keeper who can bat as well, versus a really good one who can't bat you go for the one who can bat - e.g. Alan Knott / Bob Taylor.

Heartfeltdawn

I quite agree. I'd be more than happy with Foster in there. The success of Haddin at a more advanced age is similar to the situation with goalkeepers in football. Better fitness levels means they last longer in the game. 

Heartfeltdawn

Another near 400 per innings game. Another perfect pitch. No swing. No reverse swing. Naff all turn. A pathetic boundary size. Bats so good, Liam Plunkett can hit shots like Viv Richards. 

ODI cricket is not a bat versus ball contest. Botham and Lloyd have been using a phrase all afternoon: great entertainment. That is what it is, a staged version of the game. 

iseverynamegone

Would have been interesting without the rain .

scrumhalf

Heartfeltdawn said:

ODI cricket is not a bat versus ball contest. Botham and Lloyd have been using a phrase all afternoon: great entertainment. That is what it is, a staged version of the game. 

You may as well get rid of bowlers and have bowling machines, it's gettng so one-sided. I think they are going to get rid of the batting powerplay, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Heartfeltdawn

scrumhalf said:

You may as well get rid of bowlers and have bowling machines, it's gettng so one-sided. I think they are going to get rid of the batting powerplay, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

I don't think it'd have that much effect. I get grumpy when I see mishit shots going for six over a short boundary. Increased player strength coupled with better bats mean mishit shots are not punished. I had the same feeling watching today as I get when watching the IPL. 

scrumhalf

Uh-oh, 6 out, all out.

Not batting your overs is very poor stuff. I'm all in favour of allowing the bowling team to extend its innings by the number of full overs that were not bowled.

scrumhalf

I know he's a Kiwi, but I want Jeremy Coney to be a permanent part of the TMS team. I think he lives in England. He's great to listen to, and can get a bit feisty if necessary - he gave Charles Colvile a rough time the other week on Sky which is always entertaining.

Heartfeltdawn

Jeremy Coney is awesome. A fan of the guitar as well:

"Coney made his first-class début - for a New Zealand Under-23 XI against Auckland - when he was eighteen, a tall, gangling, youth who dressed as the flower-power children did at that time. His shoulder-length hair prevented him from being selected for Wellington in one age-group team. When he arrived in Australia as a replacement for an injured Glenn Turner in December 1973, his cricket gear consisted of a yellowing and heavily plastered bat, which bore the name of his club, Onslow, in large letters on the back. The team manager, R. A. Vance, now Chairman of the New Zealand Cricket Council, gave Coney some money and told him to go and buy a new bat. Some hours later Coney returned with a guitar and made do with other players' cast-offs. His love of music is still with him and he frequently enlivens bus tours by playing his guitar. Today his hair style has changed markedly and his only problem with cricket clothing is that the trousers are not always long enough"

Just enough time for a quick round of Spot the Future England Captain...

http://st1.criclife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cook-right-gained-a-scholarship-to-Bedford-School-thanks-to-his-clarinet-playing.-Photo-Daily-Mail.jpg

jpttaylor

What an end to the series. I thought the D/L method would have absolutely screwed us with the delays. Full credit to Bairstow for a fantastic innings.

iseverynamegone

We have been saying stick Bairstow in the team for some time haven't 'we' :-)

I thought the D/L target was easily doable in the context of the series but the boys almost screwed it up.

scrumhalf

If you pick Bairstow, who do you drop? I don't think he's a better keeper than Buttler (or Billings, for that matter).

Maybe it's between him and Billings as a pure batsman. Maybe you open with Root instead of Roy and put Bairstow in, but then who would bat at 3?

I suspect that after the Ashes and a winter in South Africa we'll know a lot more, but in the meantime it's nice to see an England ODI team get rid of the nurdle as a primary scoring shot.

Heartfeltdawn

@scrumhalf Bairstow is a better keeper than Buttler and Billings. Now if England are going to go with Rashid for the Tests, Bairstow will knowhow to keep to him. Buttler on the other hand won't have that same experience. Billings isn't quite ready for international cricket. Bairstow is.  

Buttler could average 50 plus in Test cricket as a front line Pietersen-level batsman. He's got that level of ability. Bairstow could be a 40+ keeper. but isn't someone who would get in there on batting ability alone in my view as he's a bit weak against the slow bowlers (he's got hard hands, reminds me a lot of Robin Smith when he props forward to the slowies). 

crunchman

By all accounts Bairstow's keeping has improved.  I'm not sure there is room for him in the test team at the moment.  Even if you play Buttler as a pure batsman, who do you drop?  If Bell and/or Ballance keep on playing as they have been then there may be room later in the summer.

In the one day team I'd probably leave out Billings for him.  He's better than Billings at the moment.   The question then is who keeps wicket out of Bairstow and Buttler.

The other change I'd make in the one day team is to drop Roy - he looks out of his depth at the moment.  I'd move Root up to open and bring in Taylor at 3.

That's still not an ideal balance to the team though.  In an ideal world you would have a batting allrounder batting 7 to give you a bit more flexibility with the ball.  At the moment Root is really the only option outside of the 5 front line bowlers.  If one of the frontline bowlers has a problem you don't really want to be forced to bowl Root for 8 or 10 overs.  The most obvious candidate is Ravi Bopara.  Luke Wright might be worth a look but his bowling seems to have fallen away.  On the sub-continent I guess you could play Moeen in that slot to give you a second spinner.

Snap

I went to Trent Bridge last Wednesday. Had a great day. Amazing. Watching the Kiwis hit boudary after boundary and then the odd six, I thought we had no chance.

Mind you, that bugger Greene King knackered up my view of the game after about 7pm.

Heartfeltdawn

crunchman said:

By all accounts Bairstow's keeping has improved.  I'm not sure there is room for him in the test team at the moment.  Even if you play Buttler as a pure batsman, who do you drop?  If Bell and/or Ballance keep on playing as they have been then there may be room later in the summer.

In the one day team I'd probably leave out Billings for him.  He's better than Billings at the moment.   The question then is who keeps wicket out of Bairstow and Buttler.

The other change I'd make in the one day team is to drop Roy - he looks out of his depth at the moment.  I'd move Root up to open and bring in Taylor at 3.

That's still not an ideal balance to the team though.  In an ideal world you would have a batting allrounder batting 7 to give you a bit more flexibility with the ball.  At the moment Root is really the only option outside of the 5 front line bowlers.  If one of the frontline bowlers has a problem you don't really want to be forced to bowl Root for 8 or 10 overs.  The most obvious candidate is Ravi Bopara.  Luke Wright might be worth a look but his bowling seems to have fallen away.  On the sub-continent I guess you could play Moeen in that slot to give you a second spinner.

For the Ashes, you choose one out of Ballance and Bell, and I would retain the former. 

For the ODI side, I'd happily give Buttler the gloves and let Bairstow run around the outfield. He's one of the quickest cricketers in England and has a decent arm on him. For Tests, Bairstow takes the gloves and Buttler fields. I'm quite aware this sounds utterly bonkers but the sheer volume and variety of cricket now requires some left-field management approaches. Remember when Mitchell Starc got pulled from the Aussie side not so long back in order to be rested? The press absolutely shat the bed about that. Now that decision to rest him looks good as it aided his development. Even if Buttler stays as ODI and Test keeper, he can't do it all the time and will need resting. People will say that Gilchrist and DHoni have done it: both of those batted lower down the order and frequently came in after a day and a half with their feet up watching the top order stick to 400 to 500 on the board! As all England fans now, we're not quite that ruthless with the bat...  

For the Cardiff Test:

Cook (capt)

Lyth

Ballance

Root

Buttler

Stokes

Bairstow (wk)

Rashid or Ali 

Broad

Wood

Anderson

scrumhalf

Well, that's the first tour of the summer over and done with.

Three hearty cheers for the Black Caps - some excellent games and cricket played the way it should be played.

And now for something completely different...

Heartfeltdawn

scrumhalf said:

Three hearty cheers for the Black Caps - some excellent games and cricket played the way it should be played.

S'funny though. A few years back there were a lot of debates about 'the spirit of cricket' and how people would mention this in terms of how to play the game even though there were no rules defined. It was mocked in some circles: Broad not walking when caught against Australia was against the S of C, Bell not being run out against India likewise. NZ running out Murali back in 2006 was also cited. 

Now we have a different Spirit of Cricket being bandied around. The facts of this tour are: New Zealand drew the Test series, lost the ODI series, and lost in the T20. That's more defeats against England than they won. This apparently groundbreaking team couldn't win a Test series against a mashed up England with no coach and a media-savaged captain, couldn't win an ODI series against a team who didn't even get out of the group stages of the World Cup, and lost a T20 game to a team who barely have an IPL representative. 

Thew new Spirit of Cricket says victory at all costs isn't important: entertainment is. In terms of victories, the NZ renaissance is a failure. In McCullum's Test captaincy era, they've won a single series outside of NZ against the sodding West Indies. Great, they reached a World Cup Final. Still not hitting the victory line. 

What has happened in cricket since the arrival of the IPL is that winning is not everything. Entertainment is King. Who cares if you lose, there's no relegation in the IPL or in the various T20 leagues. You turn up, get paid well, and really there's no punishment for bad results. If you get knocked out in the group stages of the IPL, you know there's another one in 11 months time along with opportunities in the CPL, Big Bash, T20 Blast, the Kiwi and South African and Sri Lankan and Bangladesh T20 leagues... 

Compare that to the County Championship. I can't think of any other professional cricket league with promotion and relegation. The Sheffield Shield doesn't do it and I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen anywhere else. Too often the CC is mocked for dull cricket. Having watched a few games at Bristol this year, I would heartily dispute that.  

If everyone played cricket the way it was meant to be played and that purpose was to entertain spectators, we'd never have had Bodyline. Arguably we might never have had the West Indies pace attack of the 1980's or Lillee and Thompson together in 75-76. We'd never have had Mike Atherton's rearguard action with Jack Russell against South Africa, Graeme Smith battling away, Jacques Kallis batting. There are other ways to entertain than through watching batsmen hitting sixes with ridiculous bats on tiny outfields.