County Cricket

[eth-dog]

People here want some players to go over to England to play in county cricket- but is it that good? Yesterday we saw basically the Victorian 2nd XI defeat what could be considered the English First Class team of the year (with players like Chopra, Taylor, Thomas, Stokes in their batting and Coles, Wright and Overton with the ball). My question is if England's key players go down (maybe an Anderson or a Trott) will Australia have a serious chance considering the batsmen that made runs yesterday (Carters and Keath, come on, neither are FC quality yet)? And will going to England help them given what we've just seen?

 

[gbatman]

interesting point, I suppose one thing to consider is that the conditions would have been well in Victoria's favour. The results might have been very different had the match been played in England in english conditions with a duke ball and the long flight and possible jetlag effects being on the Vics instead. I think the main thing to work on is having out top order face a lot of swinging balls and our openers working on improving how they bowl in the first few overs because as good as we have been we have failed to bowl the brand new ball full and straight. Our bowlers, apart from Starc in this one day series have started by bowling the brand new ball too short and too wide of the stumps. That needs to be improved on so that when we get to england, that our bowlers are bowling a very new ball extremely full and despite the large amount of swing, still forcing the batsmen to play in the first few overs. If playing county cricket helps with all this then that's a positive.

 

[Torz]

Carters and Keath belting them around is worth a giggle.

 

[eth-dog]

tbf, Keath should be a v. good FC cricketer, but Carters is shit

 

[The Speaker]

It's more about going over there to get used to the conditions than because the quality of their cricket is astoundingly high.

When you have 18 teams in your league, the quality is going to suffer a bit.

 

[The_Reaper]

Blokes like Chappell and Waugh believe that even playing Lanacashire League helped them improve as batsmen.

 

[Wallaby]

A few years ago, Abdul Qadir played District Cricket here in Melbourne for a season and won the Ryder Medal.

At the presentation, he said the standard of District cricket was comparable to County cricket. The host then jokingly asked if that was meant as a compliment or an insult.

 

[Phone]

When you have 18 teams in your league, the quality is going to suffer a bit.

and doing the stuff the ECB has done in recent years further reduces the quality

 

[Zach Package]

It's more about going over there to get used to the conditions than because the quality of their cricket is astoundingly high.

When you have 18 teams in your league, the quality is going to suffer a bit.

not exactly, they've got a bigger population.

Although I can't really make the call, i don't get around any county cricket at all

 

[The_Reaper]

First Division County cricket is a decent standard but second division- the main reason blokes like Dussey average 50 is quite weak.

 

[usalion]

The real problem is the county game isn't what it used to be. With so much extra crap of one day matches and cups, as well as the emphasis on T20, the idea of a batsman or boler going ver to toughen himself up on playing county fur day matches regularly is a joke.

That was one of the benefits of playing in the counties- you were playing four or five days a week, and the competition was at least reasonable. Yes, you also got used to playing English conditions. Now the players go over ad have such a variety of matches, they really can't focus on one aspect.

 

[western royboy]

The proliferation of International Cricket these days (3 forms - more teams) means that the standard of all domestic competitions will naturally fall. The glory days of county cricket are long gone - Once upon a time you could see Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge open up for Hampshire, with Joel Garner and Botham taking the ball for Somerset. When Somerset batted King Viv would appear and they say that Malcolm Marshall saved himself for those spells.

International Playing Overseas players are usually only available for parts of the season. As a result you get a shuffling of overseas players or in most cases dare i say it 2nd tier overseas players. If you look at all the aussies who have dominated county cricket in recent years, few have played a lot of Test Cricket.

County Cricket is still of high quality, but it's relative to all of the other domestic competitions the world over and if you are honest, County Cricket and all domestic first class competitions have been in decline for 30 years. The gap between international cricket and domestic competitions will continue to widen.

 

[Kram]

I think Mike Hussey once said that he rated it about 70% the level of the Shield, although this was a few years ago.

 

[Wallaby]

The proliferation of International Cricket these days (3 forms - more teams) means that the standard of all domestic competitions will naturally fall. The glory days of county cricket are long gone - Once upon a time you could see Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge open up for Hampshire, with Joel Garner and Botham taking the ball for Somerset. When Somerset batted King Viv would appear and they say that Malcolm Marshall saved himself for those spells.

International Playing Overseas players are usually only available for parts of the season. As a result you get a shuffling of overseas players or in most cases dare i say it 2nd tier overseas players. If you look at all the aussies who have dominated county cricket in recent years, few have played a lot of Test Cricket.

County Cricket is still of high quality, but it's relative to all of the other domestic competitions the world over and if you are honest, County Cricket and all domestic first class competitions have been in decline for 30 years. The gap between international cricket and domestic competitions will continue to widen.

The main reason for the huge number of West Indians (and South Africans) in County Cricket in the 70s-90s was money - they weren't getting paid much in their own countries so this was how they could earn a few bob. Now the top players are well-looked after by their own countries' boards (West Indians still a problem), plus there are 20/20 leages like the IPL and BB around as a way to earn some dosh.

If you were a journeyman cricketer in the 50s-90s - there wasn't much cash around. County cricket, Lancashire leagues, plenty of imports in domestic SA cricket - that was what you did if you weren't good enough to play for your country and you didn't want to go back to a real job.

 

[BluesMan]

I've played against some county players who have come over from england. They talk the talk, yet arent that good. But that obviously is a minority sample.

 

[eth-dog]

I've played against some county players who have come over from england. They talk the talk, yet arent that good. But that obviously is a minority sample.

I have one at my club this season (plays for Gloucestershire) and he's been producing so much that the flogs on BC think that he's our only good player.