Sport The Hangar Cricket Thread IV

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maybe he was a hybrind, he was pretty proper but looking form the side view he had a sling, hence the chuck calls from some
He did have a whipping action over the top. He broke 160 a few times in an ODI against NZ IIRC
 


look at him go!

straight over that front leg then wooshka

It really was the perfect action to bowl fast for a long period of time, technically correct whilst very whippy at the same time.
 

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So we can take England on an Australian pitch, clearly. We've seen it over and over now, yet we struggle to work our magic on English pitches.
We've seen also how good English bowlers are on slower, swinging wickets yet struggle here.

We seem to have a number of bowlers playing state cricket who are great swing bowlers. Chad Sayers among them.

Should we take a swing friendly team to England?
 
Dec 14, 2008
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How's this sound?

So we can take England on an Australian pitch, clearly. We've seen it over and over now, yet we struggle to work our magic on English pitches.
We've seen also how good English bowlers are on slower, swinging wickets yet struggle here.

We seem to have a number of bowlers playing state cricket who are great swing bowlers. Chad Sayers among them.

Should we take a swing friendly team to England?

Terry Alderman says hi
 

Pweter

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How's this sound?

So we can take England on an Australian pitch, clearly. We've seen it over and over now, yet we struggle to work our magic on English pitches.
We've seen also how good English bowlers are on slower, swinging wickets yet struggle here.

We seem to have a number of bowlers playing state cricket who are great swing bowlers. Chad Sayers among them.

Should we take a swing friendly team to England?

We'd be mad not to include someone like Sayers in the squad if fit.
 
How's this sound?

So we can take England on an Australian pitch, clearly. We've seen it over and over now, yet we struggle to work our magic on English pitches.
We've seen also how good English bowlers are on slower, swinging wickets yet struggle here.

We seem to have a number of bowlers playing state cricket who are great swing bowlers. Chad Sayers among them.

Should we take a swing friendly team to England?
Our bowlers weren't the issue last tour of England. Their average team score was a tad over 260 and the runs/wicket was 29, which really isn't great from them. Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood, Bird and Sayers/Tremain/Pattinson is good enough from a fast bowling perspective, along with Lyon.

It's our batsmen that are the issue. Warner can't be trusted in English conditions but hopefully he'll have retired by then. Bancroft I can trust given he's gone over there the past couple of winters, Renshaw I'm sure will be fine.

Usman is a worry. Marsh probably has retired by then. Paine is bad against a swinging ball, as is MM. The only one I have confidence would be Smith. Handscomb has been solid over there in county cricket so hopefully he's worked out his technical difficulties by then.
 
Anyway, what do you reckon the South African test squad will be when we fly over there? There's only one or two Shield games between now and then, so I reckon they've got the 16/17/18 worked out already. For me it would be something like:

Batsmen: David Warner, Cameron Bancroft, Usman Khawaja, Steven Smith, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Joe Burns, Glenn Maxwell
Keepers: Tim Paine, Alex Carey
Bowlers: Mitchell Starc, Patrick Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Jackson Bird, Chadd Sayers, Nathan Lyon, Ashton Agar

I generally think when it's not to India or New Zealand, maybe Sri Lanka/UAE/Bangladesh, you take over the reserve keeper. I like taking over two reserve bats, two reserve quicks and a reserve spinner too.
 

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So Lisa Sthalekar only rates Cook's innings as a 9/10 because "the series is over"

Says a lot.
I think 9/10 is fair enough, if he had done it in any of the three preceding tests people would remember it for a lot longer than scoring it in a dead rubber draw. Generally I don't pay much attention to the ratings anyway.
 

BrunoV

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I'm all for weighting innings based on whether it matters. How does Cook's innings not become significantly better if it had been made in a live series under that extra pressure? What made Cook's innings special is that in the context of his career he was under enormous pressure which he liberated himself from in order to succeed. It wouldn't surprise me if he was to have a prolonged purple patch now to the end his career in a few years time.

If he'd gotten out for 50 I would have ranked Warner's second innings as better than his first. That he made 86 puts it comfortably ahead.

It's the thing about cricket that I can never really get my head around. Is batting so difficult that there is no such thing as consistently making runs unless you are playing your natural game or in favourable conditions? Is most of batting premeditated meaning that you can't just shift gears between defence and attack? It might be that the ability to make runs under adversity what separate the greats from the rest (who are basically all just first class players with varying degrees of opportunities).

I tend to think that it is really just excuses and the fact that Warner could turn his ridiculous natural ability to defence, making the game look easy in the process, is a good example of it being mostly about application. It's why I find Warner so frustrating. He hardly ever gets bowled out. You wont see him bowled or LBW very often. More often than not he doesn't respect the conditions and throws the bat when the shot is not on.
 
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BrunoV

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Good to see Muirhead back and playing. He's the forgotten man as far as the ranks of international spin bowling are concerned.

He bowls the best pure leg break of any of the spinners I've seen (who are all purely one day bowlers) from an action that is genuinely Warne-like. It's the round shape of the action that give the leggie the ability to bowl a trajectory to drift the ball up while ripping spin into the delivery which is what it takes to have a sustainable stock delivery. Warne was not renowned for variation late in his career but he had 6 or 7 deliveries which he ended up abandoning due to injury so I don't think that the rounder action is a limitation.

If the decision makers at cricket Victoria had half a brain between them, and it's not clear that they do, at least in terms of producing test players, they'd dry the s**t out of the MCG pitches (or do what it takes to turn it into a spinner's wicket) and select Muirhead with Holland if they want to persist with Holland (who it would seem the Australian selectors have no regard for). I don't see how you can become a good spin bowler unless you are consistently bowling to first class batsmen (we've seen Lyon become a test bowler playing test cricket starting from a base that was hardly first class). If that means doctoring the pitches to help develop a once in a generation talent, so be it.

I reckon that Handscombe ought to take the gloves on a full-time basis as well. He would only have to play half a shield season at a time so batting at 4 or 5 and keeping is probably a manageable work load. Paine is safe for now but he's 32 and he's hardly got a stack of work behind him.
 
Good to see Muirhead back and playing. He's the forgotten man as far as the ranks of international spin bowling are concerned.

He bowls the best pure leg break of any of the spinners I've seen (who are all purely one day bowlers) from an action that is genuinely Warne-like. It's the round shape of the action that give the leggie the ability to bowl a trajectory to drift the ball up while ripping spin into the delivery which is what it takes to have a sustainable stock delivery. Warne was not renowned for variation late in his career but he had 6 or 7 deliveries which he ended up abandoning due to injury so I don't think that the rounder action is a limitation.

If the decision makers at cricket Victoria had half a brain between them, and it's not clear that they do, at least in terms of producing test players, they'd dry the s**t out of the MCG pitches (or do what it takes to turn it into a spinner's wicket) and select Muirhead with Holland if they want to persist with Holland (who it would seem the Australian selectors have no regard for). I don't see how you can become a good spin bowler unless you are consistently bowling to first class batsmen (we've seen Lyon become a test bowler playing test cricket starting from a base that was hardly first class). If that means doctoring the pitches to help develop a once in a generation talent, so be it.

I reckon that Handscombe ought to take the gloves on a full-time basis as well. He would only have to play half a shield season at a time so batting at 4 or 5 and keeping is probably a manageable work load. Paine is safe for now but he's 32 and he's hardly got a stack of work behind him.
Muirhead has played the majority of the year in St. Kildas 2nd XI.

Also if you'd seen Hank keep in the long form you'd shut your trap about that very quickly. Horrible keeper.
 

BrunoV

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Muirhead has played the majority of the year in St. Kildas 2nd XI.

Also if you'd seen Hank keep in the long form you'd shut your trap about that very quickly. Horrible keeper.


Keeping is the most overrated skill especially if you can average 40 with the bat. Keeping only needs to be competent and it can be improved. How much worse than Wade is Handscombe? Just out of curiosity.

On Muirhead, isn't he on the come back trail from a wrist reconstruction? I should have been clearer on that. Assuming that he gets through the Big Bash bowling well they should be looking for ways for him to play Shield cricket as opposed to usual 'tough love' approach.

Remember that this is a state that in James Pattinson has produced 1 genuine test player in about 20 years. Warne, Hodge and Elliott are the most recent players and they were 'produced' in the early-to-mid 90s or even earlier. Wade was poached from Tasmania ironically enough because he was behind Paine. Rodgers was selected as a County player (and was well and truly established as a West Australian).

The rest have played a few games here and there either as fill ins for powerhouse teams or as the Australian selectors were looking for players. Handscombe is unlikely to be re-visited as a lower order player because he doesn't score freely enough.

Muirhead was one of the better T20 spinners in the country when he last played Big Bash and that's not something you just lose. We also know that the Australian selectors took to him immediately. If we look at how these guys select teams you could only assume that they value talent more than anything else, certainly performances.

There are two requirements for a spinner for CA: to have the talent and to turn the ball in the opposite direction to Lyon. Muirhead has both of those if he is fit. If we were concerned with producing test players we'd help him on his way not do the same thing in the same way and then complain when the results continue to go against us.



Edit: There has been two players developed by Victoria. I had forgotten about Siddle. That says it all, really.
 
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Keeping is the most overrated skill especially if you can average 40 with the bat. Keeping can be improved and he only needs to be competent.

How much worse than Wade is Handscombe? Just out of curiosity.
He's far from competent. He doesn't even keep for St. Kilda when he plays there.

Wade is a decent 7/10. Hank is a 2/10 at best.
 
If Wade is 7/10 what does that make Healy or Berry? 15/10?
Wade's glovework has improved measurably. He's become a solid keeper, and was gloving them well in India and Bangladesh. It was his batting that was an issue
 
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