The Ashes Winter 2017/18 Thread

Heartfeltdawn

When the Sky cash came rolling in, salaries went up and expenditure went up. Bidding for games went through the roof. Then the recession hit and some mistakes were made. Headingley lost shitloads on the Australia-Pakistan neutral venue Test. Glamorgan and Hampshire got bailed out by the taxpayer. The IPL came along and suddenly we had to compete. Money kept on going to the top end whilst at the lower end participation in cricket for amateurs has decreased. 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/490227/cricket-participation-uk/

I know for league sides around Bristol and Wiltshire that many have stopped playing Sunday cricket. They were struggling to put out sides and so people who could only play on Sundays now don't play at all. Now within the top clubs, things are dandy but it's the clubs lower down the structure that are struggling. You see this even more in the women's game, how the cash explosion was thrown to people at the top and so little was spent on the domestic structure of women's cricket. In Australia, they did both and they are reaping the rewards. 

We should take a leaf out of the New Zealand board's notebook. They revamped the game over there, pulled NZ out of the muti-use concrete stadiums, put them into smaller venues that felt better for cricket, figured out a first class and limited overs structure, let players go to the IPL, and suchlike. In some ways they downsized (size of stadiums for Tests), in other areas they expanded. Over the last few years the team has gotten better and it's been really good to see. 

And one thing New Zealand does have? Free to air coverage of cricket. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_broadcasting_contracts_in_New_Zealand#Cricket

Prime will be showing highlights of NZ-West Indies next Saturday at 1130 for instance. MOTD has been instrumental in keeping football alive for people who don't want to pay through the arse for Sky: a cricketing equivalent is something the ECB should have demanded years ago but I suspect weren't going to get because Sky wouldn't allow it. 

VimFuego

agreed on the free to watch cricket. Won't say many good things about John Major, but he said that events like the Grand National, FA Cup and test match cricket should be sacrosanct and always be free to watch. It was Bliar who gave cricket to his mates at sky.

EDIT: tho free to watch cricket almost cost me my degree, cos I would spend all day watching it rather than revising.

crunchman

The problem is that sooner or later the Sky money will dry up.  I've cancelled my subscription to Sky Sports this year, and I'm planning to get rid of BT sports after the Ashes.  I don't think I'm the only one.

I'm not convinced that the younger generation is as into sports as my generation is.  We grew up having it on free to air.  They have grown up not watching it in a lot of cases.  A lot of them don't even have conventional TVs to subscribe to Sky Sports.

It's not just here.  NFL viewing figures are down in the States.

I think there is a shift in what people want to watch.  There are people who would rather watch some idiot on Youtube with his head stuck in a microwave than watch decent quality sports.

They have to get it back on free-to-air TV - or maybe the government should step in.  Test cricket should never have been removed from the reserved list in the first place.

Heartfeltdawn

I agree, young people have very different tastes. Seeing the number of parks in Bristol over the last four years where nothing really happens was sad. My friends and I would spend hours on cricket, football, general outdoors life. Not just after school, within school as well. Playgrounds aren't as busy as they used to be and some schools don't allow ball games. I don't know how I'd have gotten through secondary school without the respite from lessons and shitty fellow pupils without a good hour of bowling each day. 

The younger generations will not subscribe to the sports channels as their elders do. This is one of the moronic elements of T20 cricket, in particular in some of the articles by Freddie Wilde on Cricinfo. He considerd it a betrayal of young cricket fans if the ECB didn't enact a franchise system. Well, the young fans aren't the ones paying for county season tickets, they aren't the ones filling corporate boxes, they aren't the majority of Barmy Army fans overseas, they aren't the ones paying for Sky/BT subscriptions, and they aren't the ones who have been paying since 2005 for subscription channels. Cricket in this country has started to shift to this new younger generation that by most metrics will be ruddy poor over the course of their lives thanks to loan repayments, housing costs, and post-recession blues. Aiming the whole course of your cricket strategy at this market when it looks like this market is going to be pretty broke is ludicrous. 

It'll be interesting watching both cricket and F1 struggle in the future. Again with the NZ model in mind, perhaps it's time cricket at the highest level in this country cut back on the spending a bit. 

VimFuego

/\ /\ on the flip side of that though, I would look to rugby. The clubs are in a pretty healthy position, and many of them actively sponsor local youth rugby. As a consequence uptake of rugby by kids seems to be in a very good state. There has been a lot of effort by both the clubs and the RFU to encourage kids rugby.

scrumhalf

I don't think rugby's doing all that well - look at the number of clubs that need to be propped up by rich benefactors.

I have long advocated letting under-16s and those in full-time education into county cricket games for nothing. You may make a few bob selling food, but it's getting the next generation interested. When I was young if a game at Lords was unlikely to make it past lunch on ther final (third) day you could usually get in for nothing. I saw several instances of late-order batting revivals and some of the best cricket I ever saw was seeing Gordon Greenidge and Barry Richards in a run-chase - tremendous batting.

However, now that the county game seems to be limited to periods outside school holidays it's clearly not going to work.

The ECB have been seduced by the IPL and its money. One day cricket brings in the money, but at the cost of the long form of the game. We've been heading towards franchise cricket for years, your local county will field people from all over the world on short-term contracts for the T20 with no real links to the county. Wasn't it once the case that players switching counties had to be resident in the new county for a while before they could play first-team games?

Rocker

There has been a lot of criticism of the England cricket team.  Further compounded by their loss of the Ashes in the first three of five matches.

In some way this competition is like the Ryder Cup.  No team goes out to play with the intention of losing the match.  In the Ryder Cup most of the team members earn their place on the team by their results during the qualification year, the team Captain picks a few players who did not make the team as a right but who he feels will add 'something' to the team effort.  And the word is team.  The team wins or the team loses.

How is the England cricket team selected?  Who selects the team?  All the pundits seem to have forecast an Australian whitewash of England this time.  So far those same pundits appear to be right.  So what has gone wrong?  Is the 'wrong' team being picked or is English cricket in a serious and uncompetitive place right now?  Has cricket become like football and rugby in bringing in foreign players to play County cricket for short term gain, thus preventing local talent from developing?

I am sure that every player who dons an international shirt is out to do his best.  An international team *should* be the best of the best and if they are not good enough to win, there is nothing that can be done about that.  Few could beat Usain Bolt or Mo Farah but at least the opposition kept on trying.

crunchman

@rocker the team that is there is pretty much the best available.  Stokes would make it stronger if he hadn't been so stupid but he's the only one who would have been expected to make the starting 11 for the first test.

3 or 4 of the established players have not performed to expectations.  Cook is the leading runscorer of all time for England, and he is averaging 13.  Root's batting has been poor as well for a player who is supposed to be one of the best batsmen in the world.  A youngster like Malan has showed what is possible and scored more than both of them put together.  Moeen Ali has also been dreadful but he was injured in the build up.

There were one or two other borderline calls.  You could argue that Adil Rashid or Liam Plunkett should have been in the squad, but neither of them would have been in the first choice starting 11, and I think there might have been some fitness worries over Plunkett.  Gary Ballance is the only one I think you can say definitely shouldn't have been in the squad, but he hasn't actually played.

I think the fact that most people think this is about the best side we can put out is the reason that we are having the discussion about the system not producing the players.

cj73

crunchman said:

@rocker the team that is there is pretty much the best available.  Stokes would make it stronger if he hadn't been so stupid but he's the only one who would have been expected to make the starting 11 for the first test.

3 or 4 of the established players have not performed to expectations.  Cook is the leading runscorer of all time for England, and he is averaging 13.  Root's batting has been poor as well for a player who is supposed to be one of the best batsmen in the world.  A youngster like Malan has showed what is possible and scored more than both of them put together.  Moeen Ali has also been dreadful but he was injured in the build up.

There were one or two other borderline calls.  You could argue that Adil Rashid or Liam Plunkett should have been in the squad, but neither of them would have been in the first choice starting 11, and I think there might have been some fitness worries over Plunkett.  Gary Ballance is the only one I think you can say definitely shouldn't have been in the squad, but he hasn't actually played.

I think the fact that most people think this is about the best side we can put out is the reason that we are having the discussion about the system not producing the players.

Malan's hardly a youngster.  Isn't he like 30 odds?  

VimFuego

@Rocker ; don't forget this was the team that won 2 home series over the summer and beat the aussies last time they came here. They don't travel well, but by the same token not many teams come here and win. Cricket is an odd game, it heavily favours the home team as conditions from the major test countries can vary so much; damp swingy conditions in England right down hard, fast tracks in Aus.

crunchman

cj73 said:

crunchman said:

@rocker the team that is there is pretty much the best available.  Stokes would make it stronger if he hadn't been so stupid but he's the only one who would have been expected to make the starting 11 for the first test.

3 or 4 of the established players have not performed to expectations.  Cook is the leading runscorer of all time for England, and he is averaging 13.  Root's batting has been poor as well for a player who is supposed to be one of the best batsmen in the world.  A youngster like Malan has showed what is possible and scored more than both of them put together.  Moeen Ali has also been dreadful but he was injured in the build up.

There were one or two other borderline calls.  You could argue that Adil Rashid or Liam Plunkett should have been in the squad, but neither of them would have been in the first choice starting 11, and I think there might have been some fitness worries over Plunkett.  Gary Ballance is the only one I think you can say definitely shouldn't have been in the squad, but he hasn't actually played.

I think the fact that most people think this is about the best side we can put out is the reason that we are having the discussion about the system not producing the players.

Malan's hardly a youngster.  Isn't he like 30 odds?  

He is.  Didn't realise he was that old.

He's only played 8 tests though, so he's a newcomer to the team.

Heartfeltdawn

VimFuego said:

/\ /\ on the flip side of that though, I would look to rugby. The clubs are in a pretty healthy position, and many of them actively sponsor local youth rugby. As a consequence uptake of rugby by kids seems to be in a very good state. There has been a lot of effort by both the clubs and the RFU to encourage kids rugby.

And in this country, you have plenty of free to air rugby on television. The Six Nations really does sell rugby in this country in a way the Premiership and suchlike don't. 

Seen a few reports about Australian participation going down, Gassage might have some thoughts on that. Rocker said:

There has been a lot of criticism of the England cricket team.  Further compounded by their loss of the Ashes in the first three of five matches.

In some way this competition is like the Ryder Cup.  No team goes out to play with the intention of losing the match.  In the Ryder Cup most of the team members earn their place on the team by their results during the qualification year, the team Captain picks a few players who did not make the team as a right but who he feels will add 'something' to the team effort.  And the word is team.  The team wins or the team loses.

How is the England cricket team selected?  Who selects the team?  All the pundits seem to have forecast an Australian whitewash of England this time.  So far those same pundits appear to be right.  So what has gone wrong?  Is the 'wrong' team being picked or is English cricket in a serious and uncompetitive place right now?  Has cricket become like football and rugby in bringing in foreign players to play County cricket for short term gain, thus preventing local talent from developing?

I am sure that every player who dons an international shirt is out to do his best.  An international team *should* be the best of the best and if they are not good enough to win, there is nothing that can be done about that.  Few could beat Usain Bolt or Mo Farah but at least the opposition kept on trying.

Few sides do well in Australia. Remember we get Ashes hype though. Nobody complains about England as much if we get whitewashed in India compared to Australia. A touring side gets so little time to acclimatize now. It's why India come here and get tanked, we go there and get tanked, why India tend to lose in Australia and why Australia usually get stuffed in Australia (remember even the Warne-McGrath era Aussies only won one series out there). 

For cricket, we've taken steps to reduce foreign imports. A few years ago counties were docked £1,100 per Kolpak player per game. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2017/04/05/ecb-plan-kolpak-crackdown-offering-counties-financial-incentives/

Our game was best in the period leading up to 2005. Some Kolpak signings made young players better. Good hard cricket at county level helped to develop a side that played well. 

crunchman

This is a good article:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/21805721/ecb-decade-errors-led-ashes-failure

Heartfeltdawn

George says much of what I've said on this thread. He does overlook Trescothick as another who scored a half century on debut. The hatred toward Loughborough is hilarious with the mention of Stuart Meaker (the Indians used to have the same hate of the MRF Academy, a place that took young quick guys like Munaf Patel and turned them into carthorses). 

One aspect that is harsh is the criticism of pitches. I can't recall a long hot summer for some time. We have had dribs and drabs but the consistently dry warm summer has eluded us. We were above the rainfall average compared to 1981-2010 last season. 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/2017/summer

It's impossible to expect groundsmen to produce dry hard wickets if you schedule so much of the CC at the start and arse end of the season. And if someone does produce a turning wicket, as was the case at Taunton for the Somerset-Middlesex game which was absolutely thrilling to listen to and attend as both sides fought to avoid relegation, you end up up before the pitch beak on charges of the wicket being unsuitable. 

If we need three divisions, then do it. The CC needs to be played constantly, not fitting in a game here before going to 50- and 20- over cricket. Just stop fucking around with this game and pretending to value the long form whilst simultaneously fucking it up. 

Rocker

Living as I do in Ireland, I don't know much about County cricket in England.  But my late father played the game when he was young, the GAA introduced a 'ban on foreign games' whereby if you even attended what was described as a foreign game [Cricket, Soccer, Rugby etc.], you were automatically ineligible to play any GAA game.  When faced with such a choice, young players followed their peers and opted for GAA games.  But my father loved the game of cricket and it had the advantage, one not shared by the GAA, of giving older men a sporting outlet well into their 40s and beyond.  Such inward looking thinking is no longer tolerated in Ireland, and everyone is all the better for it.

In the late 1970s I spent a considerable time as a patient in a Dublin hospital and, while there, I watched a lot of cricket on the BBC.  It is a game that interests me even if I don't know much of the subtleties of the play.  So please pardon my ignorance of the team selection, I would have difficulty in naming more than a few of the England cricket team.

My post above was triggered by the slating of the England team by former greats of the game.  Every player needs some support when defending his wicket, sniping from afar is bound to affect the performance of the team.  I am also surprised at the apparent lack of acclimatizing time given to the players.  This is remarkably similar to the unprepared state of the B&I Lions tours of the Southern Hemisphere.  I commented on this in the Rugby Union thread and there is no need to repeat myself.  

scrumhalf

Heartfeltdawn said:

Our game was best in the period leading up to 2005. Some Kolpak signings made young players better. Good hard cricket at county level helped to develop a side that played well. 

What helped to a significant degree was the quality of the captaincy. I think Vaughan was the last top-class captain we had, one who was ready to try things out and keep the batsmen on their toes. Given how few county games they play these days our test captains tend to learn on the job, whereas in years gone past they would have had quite a few games under their belt (except maybe the summer of four captains, 1988).

We go through this self-flagellation process after most overseas tours, it's as regular as Chris Waddle's rants when our football team gets knocked out of the Euros or the World Cup.

Heartfeltdawn

scrumhalf said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

Our game was best in the period leading up to 2005. Some Kolpak signings made young players better. Good hard cricket at county level helped to develop a side that played well. 

What helped to a significant degree was the quality of the captaincy. I think Vaughan was the last top-class captain we had, one who was ready to try things out and keep the batsmen on their toes. Given how few county games they play these days our test captains tend to learn on the job, whereas in years gone past they would have had quite a few games under their belt (except maybe the summer of four captains, 1988).

We go through this self-flagellation process after most overseas tours, it's as regular as Chris Waddle's rants when our football team gets knocked out of the Euros or the World Cup.

Vaughan was a good captain with a decent batting line up around him, some reliable openers, a good allrounder, and, for all too briefly, one of the best pace attacks we've ever had. I'd still put Nasser Hussain above him. Where they both succeeded above the like of Gooch and Atherton is that they could handle the bowlers and understand them. 

On this tour, it wouldn't have mattered if Mike Brearley had come back. We spent so long trying to find someone to back up Cook that, when we did, Cook was bang out of touch. Likewise with number three where, for all the praise for his half century yesterday, James Vince now averages 23 after 10 Tests. Root's position has been under scrutiny, there's little middle order consistency, we're fucked about with wicketkeepers for ages playing a guy like Bairstow who, without the gloves, would be top four for England without a shadow of a doubt, Moeen started the summer last year as the second choice spinner to Liam Dawson, someone like Mark Footitt who would have offered variety got shuffled out without much fanfare, and we've relied on right arm fast medium folk for a bit (Roland Jones to Woakes). 

No captain can sort that out because the problems aren't restricted to squad selection and attitude. It's way deeper than that.  

crunchman

Vince has shown some promise, but I'm not convinced he will do well in New Zealand (or in the home tests in England) where the ball will swing a lot more.  it would be harsh to drop him at this point though.  He has the talent but, as we've been discussing, the County game isn't tough enough and it's a big step up.  He'll need time to adjust.

I'm with you on Bairstow playing as a batsman.  I've said it before in the main cricket thread, but if you look at Alec Stewart's numbers where he averaged 46 when playing as batsman and only 34 when keeping wicket it's ridiculous to play one of your best batsman as a keeper.  I can't remember them off the top of my head, but Sangakarra's numbers showed an even bigger difference.  I think his average might have been close to 30 runs better when playing as a batsman.  Also, Foakes is definitely a better keeper.  Bairstow has improved as a keeper from what he was, but you don't want a crucial missed stumping next time we tour India.

With Stokes back, I'd have the following top 6:

Cook

Stoneman

Root

Bairstow

Malan

Stokes

That would be pretty good.  I know Root doesn't want to bat 3, but Bairstow, Malan and Stokes aren't suited to it.  You still have too many left handers there, but I think it's the best we have.

If you play Foakes as keeper then that leaves 4 bowlers to select. 

The spinner is an issue.  In England, New Zealand, or South Africa, where it will swing for our fast bowlers, you might get away with Ali, and it would stiffen the batting a little bit.  Anywhere else, and you would need a proper spin bowler.  I'm just not sure we have one.  If Crane isn't ready then Adil Rashid is probably still the least bad option for now.  If Rashid struggles and you want a few overs of non-penetrating off spin to give the fast bowlers a rest, then Root can do that pretty much as well as Ali.

As for the fast bowling, Broad has to go.  Anderson is still there for the moment, and Woakes does stiffen the batting.  You don't want to go back to the days when you had Alan Mullaly batting at 9!  Woakes would be ok as a 3rd or 4th seamer.  I think you play Anderson, Woakes and then one of Wood, Jamie Overton, George Garton etc.

Teetonetal

Was reading a few bits this morning, and for me this feels nothing like as bad as the last tour. Steve Smith has had two fabulous innings, England haven't dealt with Lyon and Root made the wrong decision in the 2nd Test. Mooen has been out of form with ball and bat, I wonder how much his injury has affected his confidence and he makes a big difference to the team when he is on song. No 7 is a great place for him to come in and I think he has missed Stokes and not enjoyed being no 6, with the added pressure,  But it's not been a horror show, there have been times in each test where we competed, 

I would like to see Broad dropped for the last two tests, but otherwise stick with the same team. 

joneve

Teetonetal said:

Was reading a few bits this morning, and for me this feels nothing like as bad as the last tour. Steve Smith has had two fabulous innings, England haven't dealt with Lyon and Root made the wrong decision in the 2nd Test. Mooen has been out of form with ball and bat, I wonder how much his injury has affected his confidence and he makes a big difference to the team when he is on song. No 7 is a great place for him to come in and I think he has missed Stokes and not enjoyed being no 6, with the added pressure,  But it's not been a horror show, there have been times in each test where we competed, 

I would like to see Broad dropped for the last two tests, but otherwise stick with the same team. 

I was in Brisbane during the 2013 whitewash. That was not fun times.