Sport The Hangar Cricket Thread IV

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EnolaGay said:
Gives you a bit of the Finch feels


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Finch was sold down a river when they picked him to open for the test team, and against what was the best team in the world at that point

Was never a test opener, but rather much more suited to the middle order at test level.
eth-dog said:
I guarantee that most countries would know of his technique flaw already (very susceptible to LBW).
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True, but McDermott has something that no one in the current test XI except steve smith has - a century this summer againt indias current bowling attack.
 
TheGrizz said:
Finch was sold down a river when they picked him to open for the test team, and against what was the best team in the world at that point

Was never a test opener, but rather much more suited to the middle order at test level.

True, but McDermott has something that no one in the current test XI except steve smith has - a century this summer againt indias current bowling attack.
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Finch was also a fringe player in the Victorian XI too.

And whilst that's true, I don't see him lasting very long at test level the way he currently is.
 

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eth-dog said:
Rabada will eat him alive.
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Yeah, cause outside of Travis Head, the rest of our batting lineup has looked impervious to quality fast bowling this summer....

It was touch and go when the selectors dropped him for Wade, and Wade has hardly done anything this summer to warrant selection over him since (a score of 48 against India's 3rd string bowling lineup notwithstanding).

He at least makes the squad. In reality the only spot in contention is number 5 and it is a battle between him and Wade for it. People tend to forget Head has a test average of 40, with the bulk of that coming against India and an away Ashes tour.
 
TheGrizz said:
Yeah, cause outside of Travis Head, the rest of our batting lineup has looked impervious to quality fast bowling this summer....

It was touch and go when the selectors dropped him for Wade, and Wade has hardly done anything this summer to warrant selection over him since (a score of 48 against India's 3rd string bowling lineup notwithstanding).

He at least makes the squad. In reality the only spot in contention is number 5 and it is a battle between him and Wade for it. People tend to forget Head has a test average of 40, with the bulk of that coming against India and an away Ashes tour.
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Travis Head has serious issues and needs to work on them. Recalling him into a SA tour does him absolutely no favours.

It really wasn't. Wade has outperformed him since returning to the side, and Head had one start the entire series. Nic Maddinson deserves to be in the squad at the very least and Moises Henriques probably deserves a second go at it.

And also, his average is so high because he averaged 42.6 against New Zealand and 152 against Sri Lanka. He had 191 runs in 4 games in the Ashes, averaging 27.28 and with one fifty. He averaged 33 against India the last time they were here.
 
eth-dog said:
Travis Head has serious issues and needs to work on them. Recalling him into a SA tour does him absolutely no favours.

It really wasn't. Wade has outperformed him since returning to the side, and Head had one start the entire series. Nic Maddinson deserves to be in the squad at the very least and Moises Henriques probably deserves a second go at it.

And also, his average is so high because he averaged 42.6 against New Zealand and 152 against Sri Lanka. He had 191 runs in 4 games in the Ashes, averaging 27.28 and with one fifty. He averaged 33 against India the last time they were here.
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Head has the third most runs in the sheffield shield this year (455 in 4 matches)

To compare, Maddinson has 88 runs in 2 matches, yet you believe he deserves to be in the squad before Head?

Haha, righto Eth
 

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TheGrizz said:
Head has the third most runs in the sheffield shield this year (455 in 4 matches)

To compare, Maddinson has 88 runs in 2 matches, yet you believe he deserves to be in the squad before Head?

Haha, righto Eth
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Maybe you should watch the Shield instead of blindly quoting stats.

Maddinson has come in at 2/539 against SA and smashed 22 off 9 balls, 2/362 against WA in the first dig, again going after quick runs with 27 off 30, and then in the second innings, by the time he got in it was clearly going to be a draw

Since moving to Victoria Maddinson has scored 1431 runs at an average of 75, but nah, definitely doesn't deserve a spot on a South Africa tour whilst most of his competition isn't performing.
 
Phone said:
Months without long form domestic batting is an opportunity to sit down and identify the best batsman available, without resorting to the inherent variability of batting performances, if the selection panel is inclined to do so
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So they can properly identify that Usman Khawaja should be nowhere near the side, right? After all, he averages 24 in South Africa.
 
Did you not see the "inherent variability" thing. The fact of the matter is batsmen fail more often than they succeed. Steve Smith has failed (using dismissed under 20 at the metric) in 25% of his test matches, so 1 in 4 innings is a failure. That's not going into the in-between areas of 20 to 49, etc. Sometimes these failures come in a rush, sometimes big scores come in a rush. the whole skill in being a selector is identifying what is just a good run of form from an average player, and what is a bad run of form from someone that is actually in your best batsmen. Increasingly I've come to consider this whole "he was good against this team 5 years ago! he has a bad record in that country!" when it comes to batsmen to be the most pointless form of selection discussion, unless you've come equipped with really good analysis, which it never does, because you're inevitably dealing with a fairly small sample of work, potentially loaded with variables.

And so the great thing about no shield cricket is that the full time selectors should be able to take advantage of the resources at their disposal to make selection decisions based on what they know about a player over the long run, not over 5 innings. That is, the selectors can actually prove their value, instead of being no better than a piece of code. The starting point, it seems to me, is obviously just the FC average. We don't have a good track record of plunking guys with mid 30s FC averages and making them work. Ferguson, Quiney, Cartwright, Bailey, Doolan, Finch, Bancroft, Henriques, MMarch, Burns Handscomb are a list of guys with FC averages from 30 to 38 who have not worked at test level. A couple of them have slipped to mid 30s since they got picked, Handscomb and Cartwright the most notable of this lot, and some of them only got 2 tests or less....but that's more than they should have got. In addition to just looking at the career performance, they've got video tapes, they've got people who should be turning those tapes into digestible pieces of information, and those same people should be providing statistical analysis that digs deeper than the number on the scorecard. They've got the resources to think about this.

But since you brought him up... Usman's first test in South Africa was in 2011. In that time, only David Warner has an average above 50 (i could further dent some averages by including the game before Usman's first match - the 9/21 match), and even Smith has a disappointing average of 44. This general trend of poor batting obviously speaks to the strength of the South African attack over this time. Thankfully, they're not picking a team for yesterday but for tomorrow, which is something people often forget, and so frankly I'm not concerned one bit about any of those records, non that David Warner would be a certainty to score lots of runs because of his good record. But if anyone wants to recall Cameron Bancroft because he averages 37 in SA, be my guest.

And since he's been mentioned, if anyone seriously thinks that anyone in the following list of players who have played a test match over Usman since the fourth test of the 2019 Ashes is a better batsman than Usman, they are absolutely insane. These players are (in order): Harris, Wade, Head, Burns, Wade (as an opener). None of them have got First Class records superior to Usman, none of them have got test records superior to Usman. And of course none of them have subsequently performed in such a way that suggests that they are better than Usman. Which might just suggest that they're not better than him...or it could suggest some of them just haven't had their share of luck just yet.

At the end of the day, I don't expect the selectors to actually pick a team that I would, and non should I. I'm not a full time selector, I barely get to watch NSW shield games, let alone the rest of them. But one thing I do expect is that selectors should pick who they think the best player is, and stick with them. An under-rated, disgraceful selection episode was when Bancroft was dropped for Harris. Bancroft was picked ahead of Harris for the 2019 Ashes, which fine, whatever. It was presumably done because he was considered better than Harris for x, y z reasons, and so those reasons shouldn't change anytime soon. Instead he got dropped for Harris two tests later, and then Harris got dropped for Burns, who had been dropped for both of them.What changed? Nothing. Australia just had some disappointing performances and things had to change.

And so if they think Matthew Wade is truly the best option at 5, good for them, I think they're nuts and there's little reason for that sentiment, but when the time comes for Wade to be dropped, hopefully it's done on reasoning better than "australia had a disappointing series. we need to drop people because. who esle we got? oooo that guy we like the look of has scored a ton or two in the shield!"
 
Phone said:
it's also an absolute no brainer to take Wade to SA even just so he can be back-up keeper, allowing Alex Carey to actually play some shield games
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Carey will be in New Zealand for the first 2 or 3 Shield matches for SA
 
The awkwardness of the rain delay filler is cringeworthy. The lack of chemistry is palpable. AB doing Darth Vader and Isha looking liked she would like to crawl into a crack and hide while Gilly and Warnie pretend that they are mates.

I thought Heals and Slater were bad but seriously, come back soon... All is forgiven.
 
Saved by the Lyon interview.
 
Someone needs to remind the bowlers that the quickest way to get tailenders out is to knock over the 3 wooden things
 
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