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OMG you are a F**king genius!
so what you’re saying is pick cooper connolly
Lucky for us you're not a selector. We've only ever had one other paceman to have taken more wickets than Starc.
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It's a don't bother situation. Does my head in. You can change an opinion particularly when the player does clearly improve. Starc was a flawed one dimensional bowler a decade ago and he's developed fabulously to be a threat whose had success in a huge range of conditions. He's become one of our greats. From what I've seen it would go: Lillee, McGrath, Cummins, Starc in terms of career.
Mate, he could get a 10 wicket haul with the red ball and you'd have another excuse to throw shade on his performance. You've been hating on the guy for well over a decade now. Must really shit you no end he's still in the side.
Thanks, but it was 40 years ago and more from fitness and enthusiasm than actual skill, plus a huge dose of luck, since I'd never had any formal training/Coaching until I was pushed into A1 out of Club desperation --- a dearth of bowlers at that level.
).I had a good mate (Dave, above) who took me to his Cricket Club after we'd had a me-bowl-him-bat session out of boredom in the Brighton High School nets. Like Jeff Thomson but nothing like him really, I just used to "shuffle in … and go WHANG!" but with no idea of what I was doing. Literally, NO idea.
<<rave twitch>>, but I am in a Motel in Cobar NSW having spent hours today dodging wandering goats while getting here. Just. from 4-to-7p.m. and I'm wired-awake now. The Motel TV only has cable with 10,000+ channels but no free-to-air TV except ABC24, so I have time on my hands..
It'd be ruthless and a definite anti-Boys-Club defiance, but I like it.
Thanks, but it was 40 years ago and more from fitness and enthusiasm than actual skill, plus a huge dose of luck, since I'd never had any formal training/Coaching until I was pushed into A1 out of Club desperation --- a dearth of bowlers at that level.
I missed the first game of that second Season from Bronchitis which flattened me for nearly all of September. Silver lining, I lost about 8 Kgs. in weight and that extra leanness + fanatical Squash training got me superfit.
6/43 in my B-Grade return game prompted the Captain (he told me years later) to go to Selection and demand I be promoted.
The A1 Captain/Coach was an earnest and talented Cricketer himself; Alan Gibbs, a big, L-arm opening bowler who could swing and cut the ball both ways. I liked him, a lot, and I remember his huge hands (and gorgeous 17yo daughter whom he warned me away from in bluntest terms, ha!
Gibbsy took me under his wing (a bit like the "watch-the-ball" bloke who introduced Forrest Gump to table tennis) and told me explicitly what he wanted --- for me to bowl a line at fourth, or wider, outside off stump.
When I say "outside" he meant as wide as just-under-Wide-call.
Frankly, I was shitting myself, but I did pretty much as he asked.
A1 back then was a pretty good level of Cricket and I did not think I was good enough.
First game, I can still remember hearing the oppo players catcalling "Wiii-iiii-iiiiide", ball after ball, as I obeyed Gibbsy to the letter while he stacked the offside field, clapped every delivery and called out "Well bowled".
Simple tactic, effective.
Every time I bowled at the stumps or wide down leg side, he ran up and reminded me, seriously:
"Outside off stump!".
Oddly, in that first game, fielders dropped 4 catches (Karma, a bitch) off me and my 4 wickets were all ...
...
... bowled, by my one-and-only party trick which was a change-up ball delivered wide of the crease and slanting in.
Batsmen, surprised by a ball coming in at them full, had a crack and either missed or it was bat-pad-bowled.
True story: I got both openers then took the last 2 wickets in 3 balls after a dropped catch (ironically by the mate who'd taken me to the Club, Dave Kay) and we won by a single run.
To that time, it was the sporting moment of my life. A real high.
I had a good mate (Dave, above) who took me to his Cricket Club after we'd had a me-bowl-him-bat session out of boredom in the Brighton High School nets. Like Jeff Thomson but nothing like him really, I just used to "shuffle in … and go WHANG!" but with no idea of what I was doing. Literally, NO idea.
I had pace, but no control at all, and like I said no idea, so when the ball swung on occasion one way or another he was as surprised as me.
His best mate was one of the Club's selectors, so I had a nepotism-style IN.
I bowled all over the place in the Nets but pretty quick, caught and fielded well, and started in C-Grade whose Captain didn't know me from Adam and had his bowlers worked out.
I was not one of them.
After that fateful, first 4-drop game when I was picked again, the unlucky bowler was so pissed off that he left the Club.
To be fair, for 3 of the dropped catches I barely got a hand to very late and reflexively, but one was an absolute dolly that I snatched at.
So, next game, I got a bowl.
I bowled 20 overs in two 10-over spells from one end, uphill and into the breeze, for 2/23. Back then, a 3-to-4-over spell was unheard of. If you got dragged after 3 or 4 overs, you were bowling shit.
One of the other bowlers from the other end with slower, but metronomic-loopy inswing took 6 or 7/60-odd and we won. The other bowler; Ian Goed ... "Godee" ... was rightly celebrated by the team and Captain, but I got a few slaps on the back too.
Not just naive, but Cricketing-dumb, I was very disappointed with the 2/23. Like I said, I had no idea, but the 'keeper (who had scrapes and bruises down his lhs from rescuing my wilder down-legside deliveries) explained to me later that I had basically held up one end while batsmen took chances at the other end. I was clueless.
Apologies for the rant
I slept sitting up in an armchair
Good memories
eddie, what you failed to grasp is that "he could get a 10 wicket haul with the red ball" is a hypothetical and not a statement of fact, you know, hyperbole-for-effect (<== Google that, for better understanding).
Calm the farm, mate, I only said I liked the idea.
.
Didn't Anderson play until he was like 60?
As a pure every-cell-of-my-ample-body Aussie, it's impossible for me to be objective.
Calm the farm, mate, I only said I liked the idea.
1) Lyon bowls well in Oz conditions
2) I don't want him dropped unless it's a Jamaican-like greentop with a pink ball (not playing him was the right selection for that Test)
3) I know that the selectors won't drop Lyon and rely on Webster et al for spin.
Hypothetical. Discussion, you know, kicking tyres and speculating
I faced Thomson, terrifying doesn't come close. Hogg as well. But the scariest MF I ever faced was a young bloke in the Sri Lanka A side before Sri Lanka even played test cricket. Horrifying. Sprayed it everywhere. Hogg would let one go and it would pass your ear but you knew where it was going. This Sri Lankan bloke it was like playing Russian Roulette. Zero control.
You faced Thomson?
You couldn't pay me, to face Thommo at age 50, let alone at his peak.
Depends on the conditions. I don't think a specialist spinner is the way to go in all conditions like the current philosophy that we've only just dropped for a test. But we would have won the Ashes in England last time if Gaz stayed fit and he's still a must for the subcontinent and more traditional Aussie conditions.
Yes, true, I'd forgotten about that injury, bugger.
That and the McGrath rolled ankle were the big away Ashes killers.
Hogg and the Sri Lankan guy were on the same day. But Thomson was an exhibition thing at Waverley park. It was during Packer Cricket. They had a short session out in the middle on a pitch beside the one Australia were about to play the west Indies. They got some young promising cricketers to face Thompson for an over, if you lasted an over, some amount got donated to a charity. (He wasn't actually trying to get us out because it was for charity. But I remember facing a bowling machine at 160, but I wouldn't stand in front of it until I saw five deliveries, so I KNEW where the balls were going, and it was under bright lights in an indoor centre. This was under VFL park lights during an innings break in a OD game. (Desmond Haynes destroyed us and got a century by the way). Every ball was just outside off and so bloody quick you moved your bat well after it was passed. I kept thinking "If he actually bowls this at my body I am going to die." My biggest problem was "does he know I'm a leg spinner? - Not a recognised bat? And he knows this isn't for real right?" Scared the shit out of me, but I am bloody glad I did it, because up until that point I really thought I had a shot at test cricket, I'd troubled Graeme Yallop in the nets the same year he scored 268 at the MCG facing Mushtaq Ahmed. But after that over from Thomson,I thought, it's not worth it, and I developed a HUGE respect for number 11's that go out and stand up to the super quicks. For example the entire England batting order in that Mitchell Johnson ashes.You faced Thomson?
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I was a big fan of Rodney Hogg.
