England

[The Passenger]

no wonder they are becoming the joke of the cricketing world.

Given a minimum of 126 overs (which ended up being 140 overs) they didn't even go after a win.

Admittedly 368 is a huge total to chase down especially in Sri Lanka, but scoring 285 from 140 overs is nothing short of ordinary, especially given the 196 runs of 104 overs on the final day.

If they want to get back to the level that Australia is at, they have do have a major change of attitude!

 

[Pedro]

Murali 4/64 off 56 overs. Must have been exciting viewing.

 

[Fall Out Boy]

A rabble

 

[Zeke]

That is a joke. I think we sometimes forget how good the Aussies are... We sit back and watch our boys smash 400 in a day, and it's business as usual. At the rate England have been scoring runs, they would struggle to post 400 in a whole test match.

 

[marcuz]

England are playing murali like they play warne. With absolute fear. I suggest they get a tape of lara and watch how he took murali apart. You cant let him bowl that many overs for to few runs. Use your feet and hit him out of the attack.

Apart from Vaughn and flintoff the rest of their batsmen are as boring as hell.

 

[Zeke]

I'd like to see Ronnie Irani have a crack at Murali - as much as I hate the chucker, that would be entertaining cricket.

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by Black Thunder
no wonder they are becoming the joke of the cricketing world.

Given a minimum of 126 overs (which ended up being 140 overs) they didn't even go after a win.

Admittedly 368 is a huge total to chase down especially in Sri Lanka, but scoring 285 from 140 overs is nothing short of ordinary, especially given the 196 runs of 104 overs on the final day.

If they want to get back to the level that Australia is at, they have do have a major change of attitude!

I'd love it if we had the batting line up to take Murali apart but let's get real Murali bowling on a worn last day pitch is bloody hard to survive against let alone score runs off.

It's a 3 match series it's level at the moment & we've lost the toss in both Tests, I think we can be reasonably satisfied to be going into the last Test with a chance of winning the series.

Id we'd have won the toss in either of the first 2 Tests I think we would have won but it's tough to bat last in those conditions,5 or 6 years ago we would have got steamrollered in a series in Sri Lanka but we've learnt how to survvie in those conditions & tough it out, we won the last series there & we have a chance this time.

It's ok going on about how the Aussies would have done this & that but I seem to remember them going out to Sri Lanka & getting beaten a few years ago so it's no cakewalk out there.


We can all look at the run rate & say it's pathetic but if you'd seen any of the game you'd have knwown that it was a worn pitch that was getting slower & lower, if you tried to force the pace against the spinners you were going to get out & Sri Lanka would always have been able to shut up shop if we even remotely looked like getting close to making it, let's be clear here it would have been England's largest ever total to win a Test match.


Talking of getting to the level that Australia is I think that maybe you're alreay getting a taste of what Australia's level will be post McGrath & Warne in this series.

 

[lufc618]

Dipper is spot on. very well said.

 

[Cooldude]

Originally posted by marcuz
England are playing murali like they play warne. With absolute fear. I suggest they get a tape of lara and watch how he took murali apart. You cant let him bowl that many overs for to few runs. Use your feet and hit him out of the attack.

Well I suppose if you're as good as Brian Lara you can just about hit any bowler outta the attack, but the whole England team can't make more runs than Lara makes in an innings, and bear in mind Vaughan usually makes half of England's runs.

England's still England, poor Vaughan, he better write up his resignation speech for the next few years.

 

[DaveW]

Re: Re: England

Originally posted by DIPPER
It's ok going on about how the Aussies would have done this & that but I seem to remember them going out to Sri Lanka & getting beaten a few years ago so it's no cakewalk out there.

We lost the first test with 9 men and the remaining two tests were rain affected draws.

 

[The Passenger]

Re: Re: England

Originally posted by DIPPER
I'd love it if we had the batting line up to take Murali apart but let's get real Murali bowling on a worn last day pitch is bloody hard to survive against let alone score runs off.

It's a 3 match series it's level at the moment & we've lost the toss in both Tests, I think we can be reasonably satisfied to be going into the last Test with a chance of winning the series.

Id we'd have won the toss in either of the first 2 Tests I think we would have won but it's tough to bat last in those conditions,5 or 6 years ago we would have got steamrollered in a series in Sri Lanka but we've learnt how to survvie in those conditions & tough it out, we won the last series there & we have a chance this time.

It's ok going on about how the Aussies would have done this & that but I seem to remember them going out to Sri Lanka & getting beaten a few years ago so it's no cakewalk out there.


We can all look at the run rate & say it's pathetic but if you'd seen any of the game you'd have knwown that it was a worn pitch that was getting slower & lower, if you tried to force the pace against the spinners you were going to get out & Sri Lanka would always have been able to shut up shop if we even remotely looked like getting close to making it, let's be clear here it would have been England's largest ever total to win a Test match.


Talking of getting to the level that Australia is I think that maybe you're alreay getting a taste of what Australia's level will be post McGrath & Warne in this series.

fair enough comments, and I do acknowledge our bowling will have a down period for a little while post McGrath-Warne, but I can see plenty of talents in the youngsters coming through. Rofe, Noffke, Bracken (although not his biggest fans) and Inness are the youngish ones who could step in and do a reasonable job (although probably not as good as McGrath - Rofe may go close in the future)

after that though I reckon we've got plenty coming through, we'll just have to wait 4-5 years. Scott Brant has genuine talent, Beau Casson turns the ball miles, Damien McKenzie is someone who has caught my eye every time I've seen him play, whilst I really enjoy watching Shaun Tait bowl. Cameron White is another one who has impressed everyone.

Aaron Bird is coming along beatufiully and will play for NSW before the season is out, whilst 16 year old Moises Henriques has just made the Australian under 19 team. Mark Cleary from NSW is another who has made an impression.

But we could really do with stretching McGrath's career out for another 3-4 years. Another Warne won't come around for ages, but we always hope someone like White or Casson will defy the odds.

Back onto England, I still believe they were negative from the beginning, even whilst they still had their top 4 or 5 at the crease. Coming into an innings, requiring 2.5 runs an over to win, I'd expect to go into it after the win, and assessing the situation as each wicket falls. Not just flat out play for the draw.

 

[DaveW]

Re: Re: Re: England

Originally posted by Black Thunder
Mark Cleary from NSW is another who has made an impression.

Have I missed something?

 

[The Passenger]

Re: Re: Re: Re: England

Originally posted by DaveW
Have I missed something?

sorry SA

typo cause i was talking about NSW bowlers so it just came out naturally.

 

[Cooldude]

Originally posted by Pedro
Murali 4/64 off 56 overs. Must have been exciting viewing.

What makes it more exciting is the sight of Vaughan kicking 6 out of 6 balls away with his pad every over.

 

[Dipper]

Re: Re: Re: England

Originally posted by DaveW
We lost the first test with 9 men and the remaining two tests were rain affected draws.

So what you're saying is that you lost the series, that's the bottom line isn't it?

I mean for this series we're working with a threadbare fast bowling attack, obviously we've lost Gough & Caddick plus Harmison & Jones are injured & Anderson has only just recovered from injury, so that's all our best fast bowling talent out of the equation.
But no-one will give us any credit for that, the argument is won or lost on results.

At the moment I think we've shown a bit of fight in this series so far, there's no doubt though that we can barely score a run off Murali but unlike with Shane Warne we can at least survive against him in helpful conditions & that's what we're doing.

 

[red+black]

fact is England was, is and always will be - England. The country, the youth, the players don't have the desire, commitment or talent to win. Everyone talks about Australia's impending demise. Yeah maybe to #2 or #3 in test cricket, for a finite period. Will there ever be light at the end of the tunnel for England?

Don't get me wrong, we'd all love to see a competitive England, and the RUWC win shut us up, but cricket? Won't happen. Can't happen. If they ever picked a team of Englishmen, I'd have a touch more respect for them.

 

[Cooldude]

Re: Re: Re: Re: England

Originally posted by DIPPER
So what you're saying is that you lost the series, that's the bottom line isn't it?

I mean for this series we're working with a threadbare fast bowling attack, obviously we've lost Gough & Caddick plus Harmison & Jones are injured & Anderson has only just recovered from injury, so that's all our best fast bowling talent out of the equation.
But no-one will give us any credit for that, the argument is won or lost on results.

At the moment I think we've shown a bit of fight in this series so far, there's no doubt though that we can barely score a run off Murali but unlike with Shane Warne we can at least survive against him in helpful conditions & that's what we're doing.

Nah, I reckon you guys have a chance if you win the toss in the third Test, Giles is bowling well with the conditions and Batty isn't bad either, so your spinners will definitely be your key.

But you gotta score runs first, don't think England have gone past 300 in the series yet, some of their batsman needs to stand up.

But yeah, England batsmen are playing Murali well in the second test, seems like some of their batsman can read his topspinner and knows how to use their pads. Gee, if you use your pad against Warne, you'd die painfully.

 

[Dipper]

Re: Re: Re: England

Originally posted by Black Thunder

Back onto England, I still believe they were negative from the beginning, even whilst they still had their top 4 or 5 at the crease. Coming into an innings, requiring 2.5 runs an over to win, I'd expect to go into it after the win, and assessing the situation as each wicket falls. Not just flat out play for the draw.

The thing that should be taken into the equation is that the Sri Lankan captain is extremely cautious, he wouldn't have declared if he'd thought that we'd had even a sniff of victory, in fact even with us chugging along slowly he was still posting a few men on the boundary which would have made scoring the runs difficult even if we had gone for it.

It should also be remembered that we lost 2 earlyish wickets in the final session of day 4 so it's ok going how we should have attemtped the win but we had only 8 wickets left for the final day so common sense would say that if we went for it we probably would have lost.

You can't have it both ways, you can't say that England are crap & then have a pop at us for not attempting to make our biggest ever winning total in Test cricket on a worn asain pitch against the most destructive bowler in Test history.

We're not that good, we admit it, but we've improved since the 90s, we're tougher to beat, especially in Asia & we have imporved when playing spin.

Warne & Murali still terrorise us, but back in the 90s average spinners would destroy us but now in this series you can see that the rest of the Sri Lanka spinners have been seen off pretty well & in fact Ashley Giles has caused their batsmen a lot of problems, he's got 16 wickets in 2 Tests.

Bascially we're just trying to get better, in some ways we're on a gentle improve, but whether we can ever make significant progress is debatable.

But to be honest I was pretty impressed that we held out for a draw in this Test (& the first one) when even our own commentators were backing us to lose.

If we can win the toss for the final Test I fancy us to win it.

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by red+black
fact is England was, is and always will be - England. The country, the youth, the players don't have the desire, commitment or talent to win. Everyone talks about Australia's impending demise. Yeah maybe to #2 or #3 in test cricket, for a finite period. Will there ever be light at the end of the tunnel for England?

Don't get me wrong, we'd all love to see a competitive England, and the RUWC win shut us up, but cricket? Won't happen. Can't happen. If they ever picked a team of Englishmen, I'd have a touch more respect for them.

I have my doubts that we'll ever be a force in world cricket again, as you say the country doesn't really have the desire.Not that many kids play the game or follow it, the bottom of the pyramid isn't really there with a thriving club game & the county game is poor.

They've tried to work on improving both the current England players & the standout youngsters with the academy & it has improved things but county cricket is still weak in structure.

The wickets in country cricket don't help, they hardly lend themselves to producing bowlers who will thrive in Test cricket & even the weather is against us, it's pretty hard to motivate yourself to go & play any level of cricket when you realsie that you'll spend at least half the day in the pavillion & the rest freezing your nuts off when play is going on.


As for picking Englishmen to play for England I think we're doing that now, in the current side there's none of the Australian or South African elements that they're used to be.

The only player in the team who's even half way debatable is Nasser Hussain, & although he was born in India he's lived most of his life here, he's got a London accent & essentially he's British so who should he be playing for?


Anyway having seemed a bit pessimistic I have to add that that's me comparing us to Australia who to theri credit are streets ahead of the pack but in relation to the other Test sides we're not that far off any of them in terms of results.I'm not saying we're no2 in the world but there's no toehr team bar Australia who can go into a series expecting to beat us a fo right.

The main cause for hope is that if we get Harmison, Jones & Anderson right that could be a pretty good fast bowling attack who all complement one another in terms of style & who are all pretty young.If you've got 3 good quicks then you're always going to be a chance.

 

[Cooldude]

The country cricket system doesn't help England cricket, the idea of having around 20 teams playing in a first class competition is just plain stupid, there are a lot of average cricketers who are obviously not good enough for that level, but is playing at the level.

It's good to hear that the cricket reform group is trying to change all that by asking for more funds provided from the government and try to bring cricket back to all the schools and restructure the county system and reduce it to 8-10 teams.

But still, the England Selectors haven't done a particularly good job in the past decade, there are a lot of players in county cricket that are better than some of the current England players that are not selected, and they aren't good at handling young players.

But we wish England can play well, cricket needs England to do well, and at the very least it'd restore some meaning to the Ashes, where the amount of Pom-bashing in the past decade is just getting boring (but of course, the fun is still there)

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by Cooldude

But still, the England Selectors haven't done a particularly good job in the past decade, there are a lot of players in county cricket that are better than some of the current England players that are not selected, and they aren't good at handling young players.

This is an intersting point mate & I'd like to know what players from county cricket that you think are better than those in the England side.

When I was young(80's) they used to bring in players from county cricket who were riding high in the averages, it might be some medium pacer from a county that plays on bowler friendly wicvkets & then he'd get smacked all over the park & never picked again.

The present England set up seem to have learned to use their eyes to go for genuine potential rather than limited players who thrive in county cricket.

The most obvious cases are Vaughn & Trescothick who both averaged in the low 30s for their counties but have managed to average over 40 in Test cricket.

Also we're picking bowlers(or trying to) who are quick, who get steep bounce & who get reverse swing, rather the typical English seam bowlers who may take loads of wickets on English green tops but who are useless on good batting wickets, or dry wickets in Asia ect.

In fact after some recent bad series there was a backlash last summer towards picking players who've done well in county cricket.

They picked Ed Smith from Kent who'd hit 7 consecutive tons, me & mate watched him come out to bat for his Test debut on the telly & before he'd even taken gaurd my mate said 'This bloke'll never make any runs in Test cricket'-I broke up lauhging but knew what he meant & was in even more agreement when I saw him take gaurd & then it become even clearer after he faced a few balls.
He actually somehow made a half century (on a good pitch) but then barely made a run after that & was dropped with teh thought pretty much that he'd never play Test cricket again.
It was just obvious that he didn't have the technique, skill or temperament for it & yet there he was riding high in the 1st class averages.
We also picked a few bowlers with better averages than the likes of Harmiso/Jones but once again they were typicla Englsih seam/swing bowlers who don't ahve the weapons to dismiss Test batsmen.

That's why I think we've done well in moving away from slavishly selecting according to the averages in county cricket.

 

[Freo Big Fella]

Originally posted by DIPPER
I have my doubts that we'll ever be a force in world cricket again, as you say the country doesn't really have the desire.Not that many kids play the game or follow it, the bottom of the pyramid isn't really there with a thriving club game & the county game is poor.

They've tried to work on improving both the current England players & the standout youngsters with the academy & it has improved things but county cricket is still weak in structure.

The wickets in country cricket don't help, they hardly lend themselves to producing bowlers who will thrive in Test cricket & even the weather is against us, it's pretty hard to motivate yourself to go & play any level of cricket when you realsie that you'll spend at least half the day in the pavillion & the rest freezing your nuts off when play is going on.


As for picking Englishmen to play for England I think we're doing that now, in the current side there's none of the Australian or South African elements that they're used to be.

The only player in the team who's even half way debatable is Nasser Hussain, & although he was born in India he's lived most of his life here, he's got a London accent & essentially he's British so who should he be playing for?


Anyway having seemed a bit pessimistic I have to add that that's me comparing us to Australia who to theri credit are streets ahead of the pack but in relation to the other Test sides we're not that far off any of them in terms of results.I'm not saying we're no2 in the world but there's no toehr team bar Australia who can go into a series expecting to beat us a fo right.

The main cause for hope is that if we get Harmison, Jones & Anderson right that could be a pretty good fast bowling attack who all complement one another in terms of style & who are all pretty young.If you've got 3 good quicks then you're always going to be a chance.

Don't count yourselves out, the thought of Harmison, Jones and Anderson all on-form scares the hell out of me, all three of them have huge potential, Jones can be bloody fast when he's fully fit, Harmison can generate steep bounce and a lot of pace, but he needs more self confidence, and Anderson has the look of being a real fast bowling talent with some more experience. The batting still needs work though, you need to listen to Rod Marsh and start blooding young talent as opposed to useless geriatrics.

 

[Cooldude]

Originally posted by Freo Big Fella
Don't count yourselves out, the thought of Harmison, Jones and Anderson all on-form scares the hell out of me

One reportedly has a bad attitude, one is injury prone, and the last is badly handled by England and being overplayed.

I like the look of Anderson, but they're just playing him too much and burning him out, his action is deteroriating and getting worse and worse, and he's losing that outswing and the pace. Typical England management.

 

[Dipper]

Originally posted by Freo Big Fella
Don't count yourselves out, the thought of Harmison, Jones and Anderson all on-form scares the hell out of me, all three of them have huge potential, Jones can be bloody fast when he's fully fit, Harmison can generate steep bounce and a lot of pace, but he needs more self confidence, and Anderson has the look of being a real fast bowling talent with some more experience. The batting still needs work though, you need to listen to Rod Marsh and start blooding young talent as opposed to useless geriatrics.

Well we've got rid of a couple of geriatrics in the last couple of years in Atherton & Stewart.

The thing with the young batsmen is that they're aren't that many who look up to it, the present battign line up have done all right lately.Trescothick's fallen away from what he was though but Butcher has picked up lately.Thorpe fits into the geriatric class but I still think there's a lot more runs in him at Test level & he's still better than nearly everyone else.Maybe Hussain needs the chop but he'll retire next summer anyway by all accounts, to me a big problem is backing the wrong horse for wicketkeeper but Read is Rod's pet though.

 

[The Passenger]

the basic problem for england stems from the county system.

- too many counties
- too many proffesional cricketers (england have crossed the line between providing loads of opportunities for youngsters, and only allowing the elite to have the chance to get paid for it)
- too many competitions
- too many pointless games against low standard opposition in low intensity environments