-
LIVE: Hawthorn v Sydney - Rd 2 - 7:30PM Thu
Squiggle tips Hawks at 58% chance -- What's your tip? -- Injury Lists »
A disasterclass
- Thread starter Franco Vazquez
- Start date
- Tagged users None
🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.
- Banned
- #27
but they were bowling as fast and short as they could. thats good cricket, isnt it?
- Joined
- May 5, 2016
- Posts
- 53,168
- Reaction score
- 59,930
- AFL Club
- Geelong
I think critique and analysis has got to the point where it’s hard to know what to do to please the most vocal critics
As an example: When I was a kid the general attitude towards bowling at the tail was just to put it on the stumps and let them make the mistake.
Nowadays you get the following from commentators and ex players....
‘Just bowl full and straight and let them make the mistake.’
‘You’ve taken 7 wickets bowling line and length, why would you change that for less skilled batsmen.’
‘These guys bat 9-10 for a reason, shorten them up with a barrage and they can’t handle it.’
It’s an incredibly basic way of over complicating things and I’d imagine if bowlers pay any attention to commentary or media it would start to make them second guess what they’re doing.
I’m starting to sense that the flood of expert opinion is confusing the simple issue of bowling in general, not just at the tail.
Which experts are right and which ones are wrong?
As an example: When I was a kid the general attitude towards bowling at the tail was just to put it on the stumps and let them make the mistake.
Nowadays you get the following from commentators and ex players....
‘Just bowl full and straight and let them make the mistake.’
‘You’ve taken 7 wickets bowling line and length, why would you change that for less skilled batsmen.’
‘These guys bat 9-10 for a reason, shorten them up with a barrage and they can’t handle it.’
It’s an incredibly basic way of over complicating things and I’d imagine if bowlers pay any attention to commentary or media it would start to make them second guess what they’re doing.
I’m starting to sense that the flood of expert opinion is confusing the simple issue of bowling in general, not just at the tail.
Which experts are right and which ones are wrong?
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2010
- Posts
- 3,628
- Reaction score
- 5,697
- Location
- Victoria
- AFL Club
- Hawthorn
- Other Teams
- Manchester United
Great points. Sometimes it seems like more tactics and discussion goes into how to get tailenders out than recognised batsmen.
I think quite often too much respect is paid to lower order batsmen. By the time you've fired off a barrage of short pitched deliveries as part of a 'plan', there's a fair chance you haven't got the guy out, but he's also been given the chance to settle into his innings somewhat, potentially without having to defend his stumps and play at a delivery. OK, maybe you've scared the **** him by bowling short (maybe), but you've also allowed his innings to get started. There's certainly a place for bowling bouncers at the tail, but it's overdone.
Log in to remove this Banner Ad
- Banned
- #30
This. Bowl 1, maybe 2, to push him back. Then try to break his toes.
With short balls you are literally hoping they batsman panics and either gloves it straight up or hooks it to square leg. If you target the stumps you open up so many possible dismissals (bowled, lbw, caught in slip off an edge, caught playing a shot in the air, even run out).
Bowling only short is like a basketball team deciding they want to take every shot from where the 3 point arc meets the boundary line.
Franco Vazquez
Senior List
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2021
- Posts
- 233
- Reaction score
- 202
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
- Thread starter
- #31
Back to bouncers I see.
It's hard to tell when your not behind the scenes obviously but I wonder what Troy Cooley really adds to the bowling. He's been apart of the national setup on and off for awhile now hasn't he? He's claim to fame was the 2005 ashes where his team minted the **** out of the ball.
Maybe time to move on from him. Wouldn't mind a bowling coach from outside Australia just for a different perspective.
Maybe time to move on from him. Wouldn't mind a bowling coach from outside Australia just for a different perspective.
- Banned
- #34
Agreed. Would be great to have a bowling coach that hasn't been indoctrinated into the durr hurr fast and short bowling school of Australia
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2007
- Posts
- 19,405
- Reaction score
- 21,855
- Location
- Perth
- AFL Club
- West Coast
- Other Teams
- West Perth
Bowling coaches are their for techniCal work, they don’t decide how they bowl out in the middle. It is all on the bowlers for bowling short when they should of been attacking the stumps.
Coach and captain may have plans for certain batsman but for the tail it is simply up to the bowler. It was simply poor bowling and our pace attack it is on them, no one else.
One of the reasons I think we've had a leadership drought in Australian Cricket is the set up is designed for the coaches to make all the plans whilst the player's job is just to be good PR robots and score runs/take wickets.
While Australian Cricketers are heavily invested in these days I feel like the poorer cricketing nations are producing better leaders simply because the players have more real life perspective compared to a player like Smith who lives and breathes cricket but doesn't seem to have any people skills thanks to the bubble he grew up in (not his fault, it's just how it works here now).
It's telling that when the chips are down on the field, there's zero leadership from the players and they panic. There's no plan B because the coaches haven't given them one and they can't think for themselves.
While Australian Cricketers are heavily invested in these days I feel like the poorer cricketing nations are producing better leaders simply because the players have more real life perspective compared to a player like Smith who lives and breathes cricket but doesn't seem to have any people skills thanks to the bubble he grew up in (not his fault, it's just how it works here now).
It's telling that when the chips are down on the field, there's zero leadership from the players and they panic. There's no plan B because the coaches haven't given them one and they can't think for themselves.
Gethelred
Moderator
- Joined
- May 1, 2016
- Posts
- 35,106
- Reaction score
- 66,382
- AFL Club
- Carlton
- Staff
- #37
This, only a lot, and you can go a reasonable distance towards extrapolating that against the rest of the commentary.
During the third test, Mark Waugh spent a good half an hour criticising Ashwin's bowling and the field placements to it. The same Mark Waugh who took 46 wickets in tests at an average of around 45, from Australia the place where off spinners go to die, and only have a single role: that of keeping the runs down and getting through their overs quickly. He's critiquing Ashwin's bowling, despite it being ostensibly exactly the same as it was in the first two tests; middle to leg line, changing pace and spin using variations, trying to get them to hit it to that leg trap they had going, and he's critiquing the leg trap.
Ashwin's one of the fastest people ever to get to 100 test wickets, he's taken over 300 of them as an off spinner, and is fresh off his best tour here ever bowling to these plans and this field.
And this is a gentle example; Mark Waugh at least used to bowl offies reasonably well. Where exactly does someone like Michael Slater get off talking about fast bowling? I can remember the hilarious dissonance of listening to Mark Taylor discussing when or how to bowl reverse swing, as though he's some kind of expert. And then you get to the worst of it, the people in the box who should know better: Brendon Julian and Isa Guha. Julian has - for ****ing years - been a yes man in the box. He's not there for special comments, he's there as a cricket-eloquent version of Howey; he's there to agree with the quirky special comments of whoever else is in the box with him, whether it's Flemming or Warne. And Isa Guha - for all that, when away from ****ing Howey, is an excellent caller - has steadily as the series has progressed gotten worse at openly dissenting with the rest of the box.
Used to be that you could get away from parochialism by jumping over to the Grandstand coverage, but now they've got Ian ****ing Chappell on there and it's rearing its ugly head again. In this test at the end of day 1, they're discussing how they think that Sundar, Seini, Thakur, Natarajan won't be able to back up how they went on day one, and surely they won't be able to match Australia's score either, there's a difference between test players and net bowlers. It echoed the nonsense which is my first memory of cricket on TV, watching VVS's ton in Perth and hearing these holier-than-thou commentators telling me sagely that 'you can't bat that way in Australia, it goes beyond mere technical flaw that will get you out or prevent you scoring but will get you hurt!' and the bloke went on to average 50+ against Australia in test matches.
Thing is, most people worldwide don't actually watch that much cricket, only their home series and maybe some T20. They only hear the 'experts' that are local to them, and they probably don't or haven't played to a decent level themselves, so they don't know the difference that is borne out before their eyes. We are just so, so reliant on game day commentary to shape how we view or how we feel about the game now.
Not every shot is a 'sensational shot'. It could be a heave; it could be a bunt; it could be agricultural; it could be businesslike. It could - frankly - just be a hack. If someone plays a genuine half volley through a massive gap for 4, it could be a pretty shot, but it's also a bit of a gift. If someone picks a gap through mid off in a 7-2 field driving on the up, that's a ****ing good shot. If someone is getting it to swing to the shiny side of the ball, that's reverse swing; if someone is getting it to swing conventionally, that's what they're doing. Someone could be playing an English cut or an Australian one; someone could be playing in a correct way, or have a Carribean or a Subcontinental flavour to their batting.
The game used to be rich in description, once upon a time. Now, it's 'sensational', 'masterful', 'fantastic'. We've lost our ability to describe the game, the most performative game on earth.
These drop in pitches are a f...g disaster for cricket. As soon as the shine goes off the ball, there is no turn, no seam and no swing with the old ball.
Bowling short is not the answer on these wickets. I really pine for the old days when Warnie or McGill could actually win a test with spin on a 4th or fifth day.
Bowling short is not the answer on these wickets. I really pine for the old days when Warnie or McGill could actually win a test with spin on a 4th or fifth day.
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2014
- Posts
- 12,814
- Reaction score
- 18,548
- AFL Club
- North Melbourne
It's funny. First innings, O'Keefe and Hussey and so on were saying there wasn't enough short ball use. Now it's too much.
If you don't bowl a team out there's always the wrong use of the short ball in hindsight.
If you don't bowl a team out there's always the wrong use of the short ball in hindsight.
You shouldn’t have to be Shane Warne to bowl a team out on the last day. With these wickets it’s a disadvantage to lose the toss.
Similar threads
