The Official Cricket Thread

[Saint]

I’m watching the hundred

I feel dirty.

I tried 5 minutes, but had to stop. With only one working eye I can't risk retinal burn in

[OomStruisbaai]

Aus 46/6 against Windies

[Slick]

No one watching the test today?

Don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching a bowler as much as Bumrah today, individual and superb. Seems to be almost a composite of lots of different types of bowlers.

I’m embarrassed at being the only person in the world, and potentially the known universe, not to have noticed Roots squad number before… made me giggle

[ScarfaceClaw]

No one watching the test today?

Don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching a bowler as much as Bumrah today, individual and superb. Seems to be almost a composite of lots of different types of bowlers.

I’m embarrassed at being the only person in the world, and potentially the known universe, not to have noticed Roots squad number before… made me giggle

I don’t know whether it was the bowling, the lack of technique or application from the batters but there just seemed to be an utter apathy from most of the team. Curran had a swing at the end to nudge the score along but the rest (Root 66 - how can you have not see that! - aside) just didn’t seem to care enough to try.

[JM2K6]

No one watching the test today?

Don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching a bowler as much as Bumrah today, individual and superb. Seems to be almost a composite of lots of different types of bowlers.

I’m embarrassed at being the only person in the world, and potentially the known universe, not to have noticed Roots squad number before… made me giggle

I don’t know whether it was the bowling, the lack of technique or application from the batters but there just seemed to be an utter apathy from most of the team. Curran had a swing at the end to nudge the score along but the rest (Root 66 - how can you have not see that! - aside) just didn’t seem to care enough to try.

Most of them haven't played red ball cricket in ages and everything is about the shorter formats now. They're a weird mishmash of players with bizarre techniques, rank newbies, and experienced pros with major flaws.

[duke]

I’d be curious to know how much red ball cricket that England side have played this Summer. They looked undercooked against the Kiwis and they look, if anything, even worse now.

[JM2K6]

Fuck all, basically. From a Guardian comment I just saw

Last red ball innings for England's top order:

Burns July 11-14
Sibley July 11-14
Crawley July 4-7
Root June 10-13
Bairstow March 4-6
Lawrence June 10-13
Buttler February 5-9

[duke]

Fuck all, basically. From a Guardian comment I just saw

Last red ball innings for England's top order:

Burns July 11-14
Sibley July 11-14
Crawley July 4-7
Root June 10-13
Bairstow March 4-6
Lawrence June 10-13
Buttler February 5-9

That’s an indictment of the season’s structure, selling out for hit and giggle

[Slick]

Are we saying this is the beginning of the end or just a COVID blip?

[JM2K6]

Are we saying this is the beginning of the end or just a COVID blip?

The inevitable consequence of the marginalisation of the county championship. Covid has accelerated it a bit, but this is almost entirely self inflicted.

[ScarfaceClaw]

Are we saying this is the beginning of the end or just a COVID blip?

The inevitable consequence of the marginalisation of the county championship. Covid has accelerated it a bit, but this is almost entirely self inflicted.

Saw something on BBC earlier where some of the batters have faced 11 balls in red ball cricket since the last test. Most of them are sitting on the bench for the hundred.

[Slick]

Not just rugby that’s going to shit then

[Hal Jordan]

England are longer a 90s tribute act, this team has taken the influence and put out a whole new type of shiteness of its own.

[inactionman]

It's not all doom and gloom.

At least we've still got 35 year old Broady and 39 year old Jimmy, eh?

[Paddington Bear]

Possible to overstate the end of test cricket, England have been shite before.

A few points for me:
1) NZ have shown the way in marrying up success in both formats. Watch say Williamson compared to Bairstow/Buttler etc. He plays the ball late and close to his body. Largely classical shots in both formats. Successful in both. Bairstow in fairness worked hard yesterday but Buttler looked all at sea then prodded at one in a manner that probably gets you four against a white ball.
The point here is that England have prioritised white ball cricket, which is fine, but it doesn't necessarily have to lead to the neglect of red ball cricket. Good technique works in both.
2) The Hundred, love it or hate it, is showing what a good product on field English domestic cricket can be when you rationalise the teams. Same principle will have to be applied to long form cricket at some point. I love watching Middlesex whilst 'working from home' with a few hundred like minded saddos at Merchant Taylors School, but most Premier League club sides would give them a run for their money. An 8 division Premiership is long overdue. Even if the test players aren't regularly playing in it, the standard will rise for everyone else playing in it.
Put simply, you can put the Champ in the middle of the season, you can encourage the test players to get involved, you can prioritise it over white ball cricket but the standard is still crap. England does not produce 18 teams worth of pro cricketers.
3) English 'elite' cricket, from the private schools and junior county set ups upwards does not prioritise shot selection. The go to of coaches and analysts at all levels I hear is 'they need to hit some balls'. At uni we'd train at the Rose Bowl after Hampshire would, they'd spend an hour absolutely creaming cover drives off a bowling machine. Great, but what happens when the pitch is doing a bit and the ball is swinging?
Any player on any pathway is encouraged to play a lot of shots and to look good doing so. People will deny this but it is absolutely true. If you get out it's because the umpires/the pitch/the sport is shit/fucked. There is no discouragement from playing rash shots. This has been the case for 10 years plus and have to say this is the natural conclusion.

[JM2K6]

Hmm. Buttler's actually shown pretty good technique in Test cricket in the last few years. His problem is simple: he's completely out of form. Dunno if you watched his last showing for England in the T20s, he couldn't buy a run.

The Hundred's been pretty shit so far IMO - "exciting" but some godawful play and a fair number of one-sided dross. More importantly it's going to fuck the counties entirely and ensures England's Test cricketers (and future Test cricketers) barely hit a red ball in anger in the core part of the season, while also binning off the 50-over format. The CC standard was good enough to produce some bloody good players in very recent history.

Isn't the whole point of the repetitive work with the bowling machine to groove shots so they come naturally? For as long as I've paid attention to cricket, analysts at all levels have remarked upon players needing to feel bat on ball, to hit a few runs in order to get back into the swing of things. I don't think that's a negative, and I don't think it's actually a counter-argument to what's happening now - if these players had been hitting a lot of balls in real first-class matches, maybe they'd be more comfortable.

[Paddington Bear]

Not saying there's no place for hitting balls, but that is basically the sum of what is expected of pathway players. Shot selection is not prioritised, talked about or rewarded in English cricket. It's just a fact - watch any game from club Premier Leagues up.

Re: The Hundred we'll have to disagree. I'm surprised at myself how much I've enjoyed it and viewing figures suggest I'm not alone.

[JM2K6]

Given it's a new and heavily marketed tournament that's got free-to-air coverage I'm not sure the figures are all that hot, but we'll see how it goes.

[ScarfaceClaw]

England are seemingly terrible at using their reviews. There’s the second one lost in this innings.

[Paddington Bear]

Just to pick up on a couple of CC points as well:
There needs to be a recognition of what English domestic cricket can achieve in the context of the slow decline of cricket from being a national game to a reasonably popular niche sport. When this started is open to debate (state school cricket started having the axe taken to it in the 80s, the 90s saw cricket in the absolute doldrums on all fronts, 05 onto Sky exacerbated rather than created this issue IMHO) but we're now at the point where it can't be pretended away. The Lord Maclaurin reforms were in general much needed and professionalised a pretty terrible structure, which hid the rot setting in lower down for some time.
As I say, we're now at the end of that. The reforms at the top end of club cricket failed on their own terms which has required counties to keep academies and 2nd XIs they can't afford, the tv money has helped professionalise the top end of cricket but has taken an axe to player numbers which reduces the options available to produce the 300 or so needed pros.
The pro game is increasingly reliant on the public schools which have their own priorities and pressures, and the whole thing is kept going by a tv deal that may not last.
The CC was helpful to an extent in the success of England over probably a decade, but it is important to caveat this with
1) There was a two division format which there now isn't
2) A number of England's star players of the period learned their cricket abroad
3) England rose as others declined. Doesn't detract from the success, but no point pretending Australia/Pakistan/West Indies were as strong as they were before this period.

[JM2K6]

Hang on, the CC being two divisions has only very, very recently changed - long after England's current problems set in.

This is the worst England batting lineup in a very long time. Go back to 2015. Who were England's batsmen? Cook, Root, Bairstow, Ballance, Bell, Buttler, Lyth, Ali, Stokes all featured. How many of them learned their trade overseas? Er, one. Go back to 2020 - Trott and KP in there, but also Strauss, Prior, Collingwood, Bresnan. KP was a spinner when he came to county cricket.

It's really not a coincidence that as soon as the county championship was moved to the margins of the season, we started struggling to produce Test batsmen.

[Paddington Bear]

It's a factor but will not be a magic bullet

[JM2K6]

Dobell with another great article on this: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/engl ... em-1272148

[JM2K6]

It's a factor but will not be a magic bullet

It is the biggest factor. How can it not be?

[Paddington Bear]

It's a factor but will not be a magic bullet

It is the biggest factor. How can it not be?

Because it doesn't change the fact that the standard is woeful in a lot of the games, giving no realistic practice for a test player. England can no longer produce and sustain 18 teams worth of pro cricketers. Also doesn't account for where you fill the financial hole of not hosting the marquee fixtures in better weather, so within 5 years we'll end up back where we are.

[JM2K6]

It's a factor but will not be a magic bullet

It is the biggest factor. How can it not be?

Because it doesn't change the fact that the standard is woeful in a lot of the games, giving no realistic practice for a test player. England can no longer produce and sustain 18 teams worth of pro cricketers. Also doesn't account for where you fill the financial hole of not hosting the marquee fixtures in better weather, so within 5 years we'll end up back where we are.

The standard is currently woeful because of when the matches are played! The system currently produces players who swing at everything because they know they will not be able to defend against a ridiculously swinging and seaming attack on practically every pitch, and there's no logic or consistency to the season.

There's always been a few too many counties but it simply doesn't matter - it's a sideshow. The problem is that you cannot produce Test batsmen if you're never, ever playing under anything approaching Test match conditions, when the actual format of the game is ignored for long periods of time, and when the demands on modern batsmen are antithetical to honing a Test-standard technique. I can understand the concept of a lower standard not being great practice for a Test player, but there's plenty of quality bowlers in county cricket - including high quality overseas pros - but the problem is here that we're not developing those Test players to begin with. We're developing players who have the technique, application, and mentality that has been produced by a system that has dumped long-form cricket to the margins.

[handyman]

No wickets in the first hour, a worry for England.

[JM2K6]

Even more of a worry - Jofra Archer, who everyone said was being run into the ground, has had a recurrence of his elbow injury and will miss the rest of 2021, including the Ashes & the t20 world cup.

[inactionman]

No wickets in the first hour, a worry for England.

Pinched one out just before lunch, shame didn't get a chance for a few balls at Pujara before the break.

[JM2K6]

"Hey, look after this incredible talent, don't over-use him"

(bowls him for 42 overs in an innings and usually near/above 40 for the match)

[Hal Jordan]

No wickets in the first hour, a worry for England.

Rohit slapped one to fine leg, so there's that.

[inactionman]

"Hey, look after this incredible talent, don't over-use him"

(bowls him for 42 overs in an innings and usually near/above 40 for the match)

I'm sure I recall Freddie trashing his knee somewhere on the subcontinent after bowling for what felt a like a week on a dry featherbed.

Sadly recurring theme.

I'm not entirely sure what to do about this in general from a player and coach perspective - can't blame captain, what's he supposed to do, throw the ball to the part-timers during a test match? Burn out Anderson (who typically puts in a shift in any case)? Can understand the likes of Mitchell Johnson used in short bursts, not sure that works in all contexts. Not sure the rotation selection policy has worked marvellously either (yes, yes, Silverwood could pick a spinner occasionally)

The answer is in sorting the bugger's muddle of competitions, but I'm not holding breath.

[Sandstorm]

If Stokes isn’t playing, then England will overbowl their seamers.

[inactionman]

If Stokes isn’t playing, then England will overbowl their seamers.

Pretty much. There was talk of rotating Broad and Anderson but that doesn't seem to have amounted to a great deal.

[JM2K6]

"Hey, look after this incredible talent, don't over-use him"

(bowls him for 42 overs in an innings and usually near/above 40 for the match)

I'm sure I recall Freddie trashing his knee somewhere on the subcontinent after bowling for what felt a like a week on a dry featherbed.

Sadly recurring theme.

I'm not entirely sure what to do about this in general from a player and coach perspective - can't blame captain, what's he supposed to do, throw the ball to the part-timers during a test match? Burn out Anderson (who typically puts in a shift in any case)? Can understand the likes of Mitchell Johnson used in short bursts, not sure that works in all contexts. Not sure the rotation selection policy has worked marvellously either (yes, yes, Silverwood could pick a spinner occasionally)

The answer is in sorting the bugger's muddle of competitions, but I'm not holding breath.

Root was committing the cardinal sin of treating his as a stock long-spell bowler and his bowler most likely to make something happen, the go-to to change things up. So he barely got a rest during innings.

[Paddington Bear]

I think everyone called Root overbowling Archer, astonished it was allowed to happen.

The funny thing about our batting is that our bowling is so strong they'd only need 275 or so to make a serious game.

[ScarfaceClaw]

Tell your story walking Kohli.

[Mahoney]

It's past time for the regulations to say that you cannot go off for bad light during scheduled playing hours on a ground with flood lights.

[Paddington Bear]

It's past time for the regulations to say that you cannot go off for bad light during scheduled playing hours on a ground with flood lights.

Petty and silly. Test cricket doesn't help itself.

That said, appears to be raining now.

Going tomorrow and looks like heavy rain - anyone know of anything else decent to see in Nottingham?

[inactionman]

It's past time for the regulations to say that you cannot go off for bad light during scheduled playing hours on a ground with flood lights.

Petty and silly. Test cricket doesn't help itself.

That said, appears to be raining now.

Going tomorrow and looks like heavy rain - anyone know of anything else decent to see in Nottingham?

Dinosaur at Wollaton Park