General Cricket Thread ...

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prasen9
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

So what does it say? What I can glean is that we are mildly bad although not as bad as England and West Indies when it comes to the tail at home but we are pretty good abroad while bowling. While batting, our tail is fine too overall and abroad.

Other interpretations? Findings from the data?
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

So the Ashes is over. Australia seemed to be the slightly better team because it has two greats. Smith and Cummins. And, this is England's home ground.

Smith was out of the world in this series. Labu played superbly too. Wade was barely okay. Two centuries and eight nothings. I say under par. The rest did not turn up with the bat. Marsh was excellent with the ball. Cummins was superb throughout. Hazlewood was very good too. Beyond that Starc, Lyon, and Pattinson were okay. Siddle was crap. They should have played Hazlewood in T1 and Starc or Pattinson instead of Siddle.

For England, Stokes was great, Burns was decent to good. Denly and Root were Wade-ish barely okay. The others did not turn up again. Archer was superb. Curran was good in his only test. Leach and Broad were pretty good too. Woakes was just about passable and Stokes, Ali, and Overton totally crappy with the ball.

The find was possibly Archer. West Indies' loss, England's gain.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by rajitghosh »

https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles ... sts-194978

Sharing the link of a very interesting article I came across. Real food for thought. Compared to the meaningless tests held today comprising Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan these matches that were not given official status were of a far higher standard and played with a lot more intensity. Some of the author's comments regarding performance of Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Chauhan etc. is also though provoking. But one can always argue that even the West Indian and Australian 2nd teams in those days were world class. West Indies had Kallicharan and deadly fast bowlers like Marshall and Clarke with Vanburn Holder as backup while Australia had Border, Thompson and Kim Hughes. In fact when the West Indian teams went for the rebel tours to South Africa, South Africans claim they got a real exposure to deadly fast bowling with the likes of Croft, Clarke, Moseley and Julien.
Coming back to these matches the 254 Sobers scored in the 1971-72 series is considered by Bradman as the greatest innings ever played in Austalia. This after Sobers and the rest had been terrorized by Lillee. The story goes that Sobers went and told Lillee he can also bowl fast at Lillee that apparently broke his confidence.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

Imran Khan is back playing for Pakistan!

75-0 to 78-4. Quintessentially Pakistan!

And, a sixteen year old kid bowling fast debuts. Wonder if his age is fudged too. He is from Khyber Pakhtunwa or some of the remote areas, I think. Age there is whatever you feel like. I should not complain. My dad went to school first as a 10 year old and the principal recorded his age as 5. Even though he placed in a higher class. Grade 3 (or 4).
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

Surprised to see Fakhar Zaman not part of the XI. That Fakhar had a bad year in T20Is, although small sample size. And, that was enough for him to lose his spot in the test squad. I think mixing the formats and using form in one to select people in other formats is a bad idea.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by PKBasu »

rajitghosh wrote: Tue Nov 19, 2019 4:13 am https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles ... sts-194978

Sharing the link of a very interesting article I came across. Real food for thought.
I'm not a fan of this type of analysis. The reason the South Africans were kept out of international cricket was because of the abominable system of apartheid. When Basil D'Oliveira (a "coloured" man, although he looked pretty white to us!) was picked to play for England on a tour of SA in 1969, the apartheid government refused to let him come. THAT is why South Africa were banned from cricket from 1970 onward, and the ICC tried to compensate them by putting them into these World XIs to play England and Australia. One of the South Africans, Tony Greig, was clever enough to switch his affiliation quickly to England, and went on captain his adopted country.

Barry Richards, Garth Le Roux, Mike Proctor all seem fabulous on these grounds. But they weren't playing with the full pressure of a test series against a fully competitive opponent. We saw what happened with the brilliant county cricketer Graeme Hick, who proved to be a mediocre test player. Similarly Alan Lamb was far better at county cricket than at test cricket (although he was pretty good at the latter). Clive Rice too seemed a better all-rounder than Richard Hadlee, his county team-mate, but didn't do much (albeit at an advanced age) in international cricket when given a chance. And Keppler Wessels was spectacular in the Sheffield Shield but never replicated that dominance in tests, either for Australia or South Africa.

And West Indies in 1979 were no pushovers -- with Sylvester Clarke, Malcolm Marshall (albeit raw), Norbert Philip doing the bowling, and Kallicharan, Larry Gomes, Bacchus, David Murray with the bat and gloves.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

We can never really compare feats across eras anyway without doing a whole bunch of analysis and adjustments to keep confounding factors out. So whatever this guy wants to do, let him do it. We read it and may agree on some points and not on others. It starts discussions with "what-if"s and maybe even educates the young (not named PKB) to look up the history. On the balance, I like the article, imho as long as he is selling it as an opinion and not a definitive conclusion.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

So Pakistan dropped Mohammad Abbas for a 16 year old. He has been outstanding in his first few tests averaging 18 per wicket! Dropped!

Australia decided that performance matters and brought back Joe Burns. Easy opposition but still he had to stay at the wicket and score the runs. Burns-Warner have been solid.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

Test cricket should have two divisions. The top six teams play in Division 1. And the bottom-six play in Division 2. Add maybe some A-teams in that the top two teams can have their A-teams play Division 2. Two teams relegated from Division 1 to Division 2 and two teams move up from Division 2 to Division 1 every 1-2 years. That would make things a lot more interesting.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by PKBasu »

David Warner (335*) was deprived of the opportunity to go for Brian Lara's world record of 400* (or even Matt Hayden's Australian record of 380, an innings which I actually saw at the WACA :) ) by an unnecessary declaration at the Adelaide Oval. The declaration worked, in that Pakistan were reduced to 96/6 by the close. But with 3 days and a session to go, there was no real need to declare so much before the end of the second day.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by Sin Hombre »

Lara's innings was pathetic. Australia have a tradition of not going for personal records, even when arguably time is permitting.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

There is rain forecast the next few days. So, it was the right decision. I do not know how much rain is forecast and whether they should have declared at 500.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by Rajiv »

Being a traditionalist,  never a fan of T20 and all the recent changes that have happened in the game.
However this Pink Ball  combined with a Day/Night session seems a very welcome change for Test Cricket.

The amazing speed which the pacers generate, the pronounced movement in the air which they get  ,and  the visible wobbling during the twilight  period .
And ofcourse the spinners having to raise their own  game to match their abilty, adjusting their style to get a proper grip.
In no Test match a accomplished spinner had to wait for a very long time , as did Nathan Lyon had to wait till the 44th over to bowl his first ball.

Just like, Grass, Clay,Hard courts in Tennis this Pink Ball , Day/Night brings a welcome variation to Test Cricket and adjustment a Batsman /Bowler needs to make to adjust to the conditions
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by prasen9 »

Pakistan thinks they have an infinite number of fast bowlers. They bring in three teenagers for a tour of Australia. Pretty bad idea, imho. They should have played Abbas, Afridi and Imran both matches and let them settle and figure things out. Or else, give them a few more series and then chuck them out. You can't just pick and chose based on hope and think that people will perform. The three teenagers may be prodigious but genius alone cannot cut it. If we think our selectors are stupid, they cannot hold a candle to Pakistan. Our selectors have been stupid in the margins, I suppose. See the treatment of Rayudu and preparation for the WC wrt a finding a MO bat. But in the test matches, they have been reasonably fine. I would differ on the margins but that is my (self-appointed) job anyway.
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Re: General Cricket Thread ...

Post by Rajiv »

Mark Chapman, becomes the 4th Hong Kong cricketer after , Dermot Reeve, and Holioake brothers, to play international cricket as he is chosen to play 2 ODI's for NZ against India.

The very first international tour which Mark undertook as a 13 year old was the ACC championship in Katmandu where Mark and my son debuted in that tournament, Both of them them played alongside each other in many International tours for Hong Kong, until Mark's migration to NZ.


https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id ... india-odis
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