The cricket thread

UnclePsychosis

Just as well they hadn't prepared a lifeless pitch that was impossible to take wickets on or else that could have been really embarrassing for England. 

For once I actually agree with Boycott---I just do not believe Cook when he says they didn't ask for that pitch. The groundsmen at Lords know what they're doing, they wouldn't have done that by mistake. 

Sarge

Bell, ballance, lythe, and cook should all hang their heads in shame, can't take away from the Australians, superb all round.
But... Anderson is one of the best bowlers in world cricket, couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo this test!

UnclePsychosis

England's problem is that they don't really have any realistic replacements. They need at least two batsmen (including an opener), a spinner, and a new captain. Hard to see where any of those actually come from. 

crunchman

Agreed they need an opener and a spinner but I'm not sure we have any better options at the moment. 

They also need to get Bairstow in.  He's averaging over 100 at the moment in county cricket.  The problem is that he's another guy who would probably slot in better at 5, and the problems are Lyth, Ballance and Bell at 2, 3, and 4.

There are no openers doing much in county cricket at the moment.  Robson wasn't impressive when he was in the side.  Carberry and Compton would be a backward step at this point in time.  Neither of them is setting county cricket alight at the moment either.  They are both averaging around 39.  Westley is averaging 57 at Essex but that's in division 2.  Lyth is probably the best we have at the moment.  He scored a century against NZ so he has potential if he can tighten up his game a bit.

In the short term I think have to leave out Ballance.  He just looks like a walking wicket.  He might do better if you moved him down to 5, but I think you have to get Bairstow in.  You bring Root or Bell up to 3, and slot Bairstow in at 5. 

On the spin bowling front I don't know what you do.  Panesar is a complete mess.  Essex aren't even selecting him for their seconds.  Rashid would be better than Moeen in some ways, but he chucks in a good selection of long hops and full tosses.  Even in county cricket he often goes at 4 or 5 an over. If you could rely on Root to bowl 4 or 5 reasonably tight overs to give the quicks a rest then Rashid might be better option.  There are one or two youngsters around but looking at what happened to Kerrigan I wouldn't be chucking them in the deep end.

To be honest, to be successful we need our fast bowlers to take wickets - and as @Heartfeltdawn pointed out above they aren't.   Again, the problem is that I'm not sure there is anyone better in county cricket.  Wood doesn't seem to be able to play 2 tests back to back at the moment.  They probably would have been better off playing Finn at Lords.  Footitt might be worth a look, but I think they are marginal calls.  I don't think they will bring a massive improvement.

The big worry for me is the form of Anderson and Broad.  Anderson doesn't look penetrating at the moment.  I know there were drops off him, but he hasn't looked all that dangerous.  He still cranks the odd ball up to 86mph so he still seems to be ok physically, but he didn't seem to be swinging it as much as the Aussies were.  I don't know if there is something awry with him.

Broad was our best bowler, but at the start of the Aussie second innings he was around 78mph.  I saw one delivery clocked at 76mph.  If you had had a tall bowler like Finn getting bounce at 86 to 88 mph would it have made a difference?

You would be very brave to drop either of them at this point, and I don't think we have anyone better to bring in.

For me you bring in Bairstow for Ballance, and rearrange the batting order.  Ali/Rashid is a 50/50 call.  You may need to make a decision about whether Wood is better suited for Edgbaston or Trent Bridge and just play him in one of the two matches as he doesn't seem to be able to do back to back matches.

scrumhalf

I wondered if I was the only one thinking Anderson was off his game a bit. I noticed before one of the early session for the last Test that he was moving very awkwardly as the tean went in to field.

Spinnier - If not Rashid then maybe James Treadwell. He's no spin demon but he can hold up an end for a while.

As for the batsmen, I fear that an exces on one-day cricket has meant that they no judge which ball can be left and which needs to be played. In a situation where occupation of the crease is of paramount importance we had too many batsmen playing at balls that didn't need to be played. If it's going to hit the stumps it's one thing, but if the stumps aren't threatened, let it go. It's nothing to do with a dead pitch or a lively pitch, it's just basic common sense.

And whilst I agree that naughty-boy nets may not be the best thing, I think an arse-kicking needs to be administered and since they should have been capable of batting for the greater part they should have some practice at it. None of this "oh, we're disappointed" nonsense, practice being there for two-hour spells.

crunchman

James Taylor currently 225 not out for Notts.  Quite good timing.  I like him. Probably behind Bairstow in the queue at the moment, but might be an option.

Heartfeltdawn

UnclePsychosis said:

Just as well they hadn't prepared a lifeless pitch that was impossible to take wickets on or else that could have been really embarrassing for England. 

For once I actually agree with Boycott---I just do not believe Cook when he says they didn't ask for that pitch. The groundsmen at Lords know what they're doing, they wouldn't have done that by mistake. 

Nobody expected Trent Bridge last year. Would England have really asked for that against India? 

Heartfeltdawn

crunchman said:

Agreed they need an opener and a spinner but I'm not sure we have any better options at the moment. 

They also need to get Bairstow in.  He's averaging over 100 at the moment in county cricket.  The problem is that he's another guy who would probably slot in better at 5, and the problems are Lyth, Ballance and Bell at 2, 3, and 4.

There are no openers doing much in county cricket at the moment.  Robson wasn't impressive when he was in the side.  Carberry and Compton would be a backward step at this point in time.  Neither of them is setting county cricket alight at the moment either.  They are both averaging around 39.  Westley is averaging 57 at Essex but that's in division 2.  Lyth is probably the best we have at the moment.  He scored a century against NZ so he has potential if he can tighten up his game a bit.

In the short term I think have to leave out Ballance.  He just looks like a walking wicket.  He might do better if you moved him down to 5, but I think you have to get Bairstow in.  You bring Root or Bell up to 3, and slot Bairstow in at 5. 

On the spin bowling front I don't know what you do.  Panesar is a complete mess.  Essex aren't even selecting him for their seconds.  Rashid would be better than Moeen in some ways, but he chucks in a good selection of long hops and full tosses.  Even in county cricket he often goes at 4 or 5 an over. If you could rely on Root to bowl 4 or 5 reasonably tight overs to give the quicks a rest then Rashid might be better option.  There are one or two youngsters around but looking at what happened to Kerrigan I wouldn't be chucking them in the deep end.

To be honest, to be successful we need our fast bowlers to take wickets - and as @Heartfeltdawn pointed out above they aren't.   Again, the problem is that I'm not sure there is anyone better in county cricket.  Wood doesn't seem to be able to play 2 tests back to back at the moment.  They probably would have been better off playing Finn at Lords.  Footitt might be worth a look, but I think they are marginal calls.  I don't think they will bring a massive improvement.

The big worry for me is the form of Anderson and Broad.  Anderson doesn't look penetrating at the moment.  I know there were drops off him, but he hasn't looked all that dangerous.  He still cranks the odd ball up to 86mph so he still seems to be ok physically, but he didn't seem to be swinging it as much as the Aussies were.  I don't know if there is something awry with him.

Broad was our best bowler, but at the start of the Aussie second innings he was around 78mph.  I saw one delivery clocked at 76mph.  If you had had a tall bowler like Finn getting bounce at 86 to 88 mph would it have made a difference?

You would be very brave to drop either of them at this point, and I don't think we have anyone better to bring in.

For me you bring in Bairstow for Ballance, and rearrange the batting order.  Ali/Rashid is a 50/50 call.  You may need to make a decision about whether Wood is better suited for Edgbaston or Trent Bridge and just play him in one of the two matches as he doesn't seem to be able to do back to back matches.

If you look at the CC averages, you've got a lot of openers averaging fairly poor numbers for their ability and a lot of good spinners going for high averages. That shouldn't surprise anyone when you look at how much CC cricket is played in the early part of the season. Why? For this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/english-one-day/fixtures

My county, Somerset, are playing one CC game in August. That is the time when opening batsmen should be learning to bat for long periods of time on good wickets. It's the time when spinners learn to bowl long spells  on harder wickets in the first innings and how to use the rough in the second innings. It's also when seamers learn how to bowl on wickets that don't give them much seam movement and when they learn how to utilize reverse swing. 

In 2005 in Division 1, Warwickshire played five Championship games in August. The entire fixture list back then looks so much different to now. When it changed in the past, it produced Test cricketers capable of beating a great Aussie side in 2005. The County Championship was a hard aggressive competition. The Kolpak players were of a good quality, we had good overseas players like Hussey playing in the domestic game. The push to bring in younger English-qualified players simply hasn't worked.

County cricket needs to be restructured. From the competition formats to the pitches we play on to the reliance by some counties on private schools to produce their squad members whilst some of those counties sit on their arse regarding a decent scouting system rather than word of mouth/who you know getting you a chance with a 2nd XI). 

camf

Enjoying some serious, thoughtful and informed cricket reflection on this thread. Thanks!

crunchman

What wazzock set that competition up with only 2 groups?

If they split it into 4 groups they could halve the number of group fixtures.  If you went back to the old format for the T20 where it's all in a block in the middle of the season with 10 group matches instead of 14 then you could fit the championship matches in without starting at the beginning of April.

I read a piece that Struass wants to reduce the county championship to 10 games.

The problem is that the counties won't cut the number of one day games.

I think you need a couple of the weaker counties to go bust and reduce it to 16 teams.

scrumhalf

Sadly, the county championship has been sacrificed on the altar of one-day cricket. I can't help but think that there is a slow slide towards franchise cricket, where instead of 18 counties we will have ten, maybe 12, regional teams.

We're heading that way, it's no co-incidence that many of the counties with test-match grounds have the dosh to spend on overseas players whilst the rest scramble around for leftovers. I support Kent, and whilst the decision to do without overseas players this season is admirable from the point of view of producing home-grown talent, it's been forced on us due to lack of home-generated income. Our county championship form is at best erratic and although we have reached the latter stages of the T20 we seem at times to be scoring higher in T20 than in CC.

When I started being really interested in cricket you knew where you were. B&H at the start of the season, intermittent rounds of the Gillette Cup and 7 days a week comprising a couple of three-day county championship games and a Sunday League 40-over game.

There seems to be no structure to the season nowadays, and there are vast gaps where teams don't play at all.

By all means make the national team the focus, but if you hack away at the longer form of the game you end up with players unable to structure an innings, to bat all day if necessary and whose diet consists of smashing it all over the place for a quick bash.

Heartfeltdawn

@crunchman The counties won't want to cut the one-day games because most of them can't afford to do so. In 2005 the county with the highest average salary was Durham at £52,000. The Sky contract started in 2006. Dominic Cork's final contract with Hampshire for the 2011 season was approaching six figures. As he said in the Telegraph: 

"Cricket was always a sport that was never going to be as popular as football and the money that goes with that, reflects that popularity so I think that’s fair enough. When I was coming into the England team I felt that perhaps players were being underpaid but with the advent of centralised contracts and the involvement of Sky that has all changed. Sky really transformed cricket and also cricket players’ wages because money now is being invested into the England cricket team but also county cricket and that has allowed current England players to be earning good amounts of money that they deserve."

So this huge cash injection helped England, undoubtedly helped to modernise the England women's game, and did bring up wages for the more experienced pros. This is apparent when you consider the PCA recommended minimum wages. £23k for a 24 year old whereas the like of Graeme Smith were apparently on a salary of £150,000 at Surrey. Central contracts became very lucrative. 

Some clubs put a lot into becoming or maintaining international venue status. Cardiff tried and had to get a council bailout. This year the council wrote off 70% of it. Hampshire got Eastleigh Council involved. Trafford Council stumped up cash for Lancashire. Kent were allowed to defer repayment of a loan this year. It's pretty apparent how much money juggling has had to go on. When clubs are like that, income from spectators becomes even more vital so really there's no option to reduce fixtures. 

Heartfeltdawn

scrumhalf said:

Sadly, the county championship has been sacrificed on the altar of one-day cricket. I can't help but think that there is a slow slide towards franchise cricket, where instead of 18 counties we will have ten, maybe 12, regional teams.

We're heading that way, it's no co-incidence that many of the counties with test-match grounds have the dosh to spend on overseas players whilst the rest scramble around for leftovers. I support Kent, and whilst the decision to do without overseas players this season is admirable from the point of view of producing home-grown talent, it's been forced on us due to lack of home-generated income. Our county championship form is at best erratic and although we have reached the latter stages of the T20 we seem at times to be scoring higher in T20 than in CC.

When I started being really interested in cricket you knew where you were. B&H at the start of the season, intermittent rounds of the Gillette Cup and 7 days a week comprising a couple of three-day county championship games and a Sunday League 40-over game.

There seems to be no structure to the season nowadays, and there are vast gaps where teams don't play at all.

By all means make the national team the focus, but if you hack away at the longer form of the game you end up with players unable to structure an innings, to bat all day if necessary and whose diet consists of smashing it all over the place for a quick bash.

I agree. As much as I want to keep the old county system, I don't think it's feasible in terms of fixture demands against quality of cricket played. 

I do think too much focus has been put on Team England and not even on where the players for Team England will come from. 

Consider minor counties as well. When I played for a minor county at youth level in the 1990's, we had to pay for our jumpers. A week long county cricket festival would cost me £100. That minor county now has ECB money and has enough to send the Academy side on a tour of the UAE. No, they don't pay for their sweater. Or their coloured kit. 

So lots of Sky cash but has it all been used well? When you see that the final day of the Cardiff Test got fewer viewers on Sky than an old Columbo film on ITV3, when the participation rate in cricket is down, and when you see the county game looking so fucked up at the minute, then no. We had a system that was working in 2005. The Sky deal, the IPL, the recession, some poor investments, and some poor decision making regarding fixtures have all contributed to a really big mess. 

crunchman

If England don't field a competitive international team then eventually Sky TV money will decrease.

There might be short term money in loads of one day fixtures but they would be better cutting a few games for the long term good.  If you could cut 4 group games per team in the 50 over one day tournament, and 4 in the T20 it would make the fixture list a lot more manageable.  You might even be able to finish early enough in September to make Champions League T20 participation feasible and bring some money in that way.

If you cut to 10 Championship games the test team will probably suffer.  One option I saw mooted was to add one more county - possibly a combined Devon/Cornwall team, and add Ireland and Scotland and go to a 3 division Championship with 7 teams per division.  That would give you 14 Championship fixtures with home and away matches against the rest of your division.

I would agree with the comment above that restricting the Kolpaks has backfired by reducing the standard.  Have they still got the financial benefits for fielding lots of under 25 England qualified players as well?  That reduced the standard even more because you got rid of too many of the grizzled old English veterans at the same time they got rid of lots of Kolpaks.

Heartfeltdawn

We were competitive in Cardiff and look at those audience figures on Sky. If the figures are that bad when we win (albeit with Wimbledon on at the same time)...

The financial benefits for young players and England qualified players are a bit of a mishmash. You also have the issue of the salary cap which Pietersen railed against with his lousy comments about "muppets" who earned 18k a year (amusingly coming at the same time that the hairdressing business his wife and he own closed up, with reports in the Evening Standard about staff being given one day's notice. Yes, it's terrible when your bosses just dump you...). As Surrey had Sangakkara signed up, they couldn't get Pietersen. Him playing for Surrey for no salary but accepting a donation to his charity was a neat bit of PR management. 

With the focus on professional cricket, it's important to not forget that grassroots cricket is in serious strife. I packed up in 2005 with a broken knee. Back then, the premier league in the area had gone to the pyramid structure. Some of the travel time was ridiculous, two hours and more to get to some venues. For 50 over innings, we almost spent as much time driving as we did on the actual pitch. The idea was that a pyramid structure would build amateurs toward the professional game and give them a clear structure of progression. It simply didn't work for the most part. That league was supposed to feed up to Somerset and Gloucestershire. Many young players have been and gone in that time. Few have really made it. Craig Miles at Gloucestershire is one of the few and looks a really good prospect. 

One change my league made was to regulate bowling overs. When I retired, it was 50 over cricket with no restrictions. Bringing it down to 10 overs per bowler made the competition poorer in my eyes. What also happened is that T20 blew up. If a bowler has a bad over, they get hauled off. That attitude has come down to club level and consequently you will see clubs using 7 or 8 bowlers for a 50 over competition. The young seamers already have restrictions placed on the length of spell they can have with the fast bowling directives which means a captain can't have full flexibility as to how to use that bowler. The end result is that a lot of young seamers around here bowl one short spell on a Saturday league game and that's it. Who the hell wants to travel for two hours on a Saturday, set off about 11am, get home around 9pm, and all for the fun of bowling six measly overs? During a couple of women's internationals last year I got to talk to some coaches who worked in clubs and they were saying the same thing that I saw in my region, that a lot of young bowlers were moving to playing midweek 20 over cricket on the basis that they got to bowl four overs there, only two less than a Saturday, and they didn't give up half their weekend. T20 has brought about the rise of the dibbly-dobbly bowlers and a reduction in decent bowlers. 

It is the standard of bowling which worries me about cricket's direction. 

crunchman

Ballance dropped, Bairstow in.

Bell to move up to 3 and Root 4.

Teetonetal

Not really immersed in cricket these days, but I do love a test match, as such not sure how much of this is nonsense but:

The sad thing is it doesn't seem to me that long ago that England's Batting and Bowling future seemed bright:

Batting in 2012/2013 Morgan was considered to still have the potential, then Taylor, Balance, Bairstow were in and out or in reserve but fighting for 1 spot , Hayles, Compton and Butler seemingly on the cusp, all pushing for places... Now apart from Butler the confidence of the selectors doesn't really seem to be with any of them. Really hoping Bairstow does well as that will give selectors the chance to give Balance time in the league to regain form (he looks horrible right now).

and in the bowling there was Finn, Tremlett, Onions, Bresnan, Plunkett all pushing for places 3&4, all but Finn seem to have disappeared with no one coming through..

Now there seems to be almost no competition and lets not even talk about a spinner.... Moeen is a good all rounder, but not yet high class at either.

Since 2013 I do feel that Swann is the biggest miss in the team, he gave the seamers breathing space, created pressure at the non bowling end and was dangerous himself. I think he is by some distance the keystone of the team that has not been replaced.

Bell has always been a really patchy cricketer whose form seems to come and go at the drop of a hat..  and I wonder if he doesn't feel comfortable in this team, they keep moving him around, but his clearly better at 5 or 6... I wonder if he should be moved on now, he's had a good career, was the sole reason we won the last home ashes, but now something seems missing,

hmm

scrumhalf

Interesting start, Aussies 3 down at drinks.

Finn bowling very well, poor Mark Wood must be cursing his luck.

crunchman

Might not have been a bad toss to lose.  Overcast conditions and a bit of juice in the pitch on the first morning.

scrumhalf

For the first time since the fourth Test against West Indies in Antigua in 2004, 139 matches ago, England take the field in a Test match without a player born in southern Africa.

Hmmm... interesting.