General Cricket Thread (It's Come Home)

There's a Test, just not a test, if you get my drift.

I'd like to follow it at all.  Unfortunately, RAIN.

Wow the West Indies are playing absolutely terribly. Just being dismantled. They should take a good look at South Africa, who lost but have at least shown some fight.

Oh wait, got the teams mixed up.

Benjamin Andrew Crapping Stokes. That is all.

So, how bout that record McCullum century eh! What a way to exit the sport!

Not bad, not bad at all. And I don't think anyone would begrudge him it. One of the nicest blokes in the sport: proof that aggressive cricket doesn't require aggressive behaviour.

Although I am a little sad that Mr. Blocker Misbah-ul-Haq no longer has the utterly incongruous award.

Today's fast bowler screaming face picture comes courtesy of Mitch McClenaghan!



I'm no fan of T20, not at all - but I couldn't help following the game last night, and... wow. It's not cricket, but it is fun.

Knowing absolutely nothing about t20 besides that it's the completely inferior form of the game, I now make this incredibly profound statement:



Go West Indies, you can do it!  


MATCH START!  Got my radio stream going!

Woohoo, second ball they get a wicket!

England in serious trouble right now, two wickets down already for a pathetic 8 runs!

Root and Buttler are bringing the match back under control right now with a partnership.

England piling on the pressure now, run rate is almost 7 an over and if they don't get rid of Root and Buttler soon this is all but over.

And no sooner do I say that but they pile on two sizes in a row.  That runrate is picking up bigtime now!  Almost eight an over!

Welp, that's that it would seem.  That run rate looks pretty much unstoppable.




Yeaaah. . .  Well, this match is as good as over.  Shame, I was hoping to see another upset, ah well.

Tragically, James Taylor's playing career was cut short at the age of 26 by a heart defect. Happily, it may well have saved his life. Could have gone on to become a regular in the two important formats: a whippet between the wickets and a tremendous short-leg fielder. A prize example that you don't have to be born with an intimidating physique to do well in the sport.

But, crucially, he's still alive. May he remain that way.

TEST CRICKET'S BACK.  Get out the sedately coloured bunting!  The #ProperCricket season starts in earnest here!

And England are 51/3. Aaaaaah, summer's back again.

Sachin who?

Please change the title of the thread to "Amirgate"? Biggest "gate" in cricket since... well, arguably the previous time Amir and his mates rolled into England, with... results.

Also quadruple post ATHRUN SAVE ME.

Just heard about the world record thumping England gave to Pakistan in their ODI. Sounds like it was fun to watch! Congrats are in order for the performance.

It was baws.  One team that have suddenly become very good, against another team that can't field and had about 1.5 decent bowlers, on a pitch that did nothing for them, with tiny boundaries... on a Tuesday.

Oh sure it was fun in a trashy sort of way, and Jos Buttler should stroll into any LO team, anywhere - but as far as contests between bat and ball go, it was nothing.  Pakistan put on a last-wicket partnership of 76 in 7.2 overs, just to show how little there was for the bowling side.  And England bowl okay in ODIs now.

The best cricket that happened yesterday was Dale Steyn slicing through New Zealand.

Not going to lie, I'm indulging in some good old schadenfreude seeing the boys getting some humble pie fresh out of the oven over in SA.

South Africa's tour of Australia has begun, and they are presently DESTROYING Australia, which I've no doubt will please Balla and any other English cricket fan who happens to read this.  

Day four and trends continue.  Our batting continues to be absolute mince prone to collapse from someone simply tossing a ball at us, and our bowling has become as weak as you'd expect with no real stars of Test cricket on the bowling attack.  

Remember, this match is at the WACA, and SA have scored 500 runs in the second innings.  This says all that really needs to be said about both their form with the bat (superb) and our form with the ball (woeful).  

The constant dropped catches haven't helped in the slightest.  



And yet despite all this I don't mind Australia getting thoroughly schooled in Test cricket.  Because South Africa's style of play is incredibly similar to our own (minus some facets people dislike), and everything every team should take note of.   Positive, assertive, never-give-up, dominant yet disciplined.  Did they give up after getting knocked over for just over 200 and facing a dominant Warner and Marsh opening pair on day two?  No, they kept plucking away.  Did they give in when their best bowler left through injury?  No, they knocked over the rest of Australia for eighty-odd instead!

Eh.  I don't hate Oz as much as my nationality dictates I should.  Lyon in particular.  I do like SA though, and I do like teams winning away from home.  Happens so rarely.  That Rabada looks good as well.

That said, Athers, if we're going to inject some life into this thread, I'm going to need you paying attention to England in India as well.  Get a bit of two-way conversation going.  Even if it's just laughing at them, and there'll be a lot to laugh at.  Not fair if most this thread just focusses on the Oz series, however much I might want it to when England are 3-0 down with two to play.

Do we have a deal?


That said... oh dearie me.

I would agree to the deal, it's just I've no idea where to follow Cricket the rest of the year.   Don't have pay tv which broadcasts a lot of the international matches, the media here, well, like every sport if you aren't Australian you don't exist (god I despise the media here, if it isn't australian football they won't even cover it properly).  If there are any places to follow it though then yeah, deal.  Just shoot me a link and I'm game!  



And now I need to vent, I really really need to vent.  Today marks a new low in Australian cricket.  I thought we'd hit rock bottom when players were suspended from the side because they didn't do their school homework.  I thought we'd hit bottom when we were consistently relying on our tail end to score runs.  I thought we'd hit rock bottom after the last Ashes series with both teams competing to see who could play the worse of the two.  I thought we'd hit rock bottom when we lost at the WACA last week due to the batting lineup collapsing like they were playing T-20.

Oh how I have been proven wrong.  Today we performed so well the West Indies would stand a chance of winning here.  32 runs.  That is how many runs we scored for the loss of eight wickets.  We lost by an Innings and 80 runs.  Let me repeat that, we didn't even score enough runs to catch up to the average score that South Africa put to us.  To put it another way, when you factor in rain delays the match barely lasted two days of play.  

I awoke today with the promise of a bit of a fightback, Kawaja and Smith were at the crease both cementing themselves quiet well and looking on track to form a good partnership that, at least, might make SA play again.  I instead awoke about an hour and a half after play had started to find the match had ended moments before I had put the kettle on to brew some coffee.  

Amateurs, that is what the side is comprised of right now.  We have people not keeping their eyes on the ball (like, what?  How the hell do you even get in to professional cricket making mistakes like that?)  We have people making me miss Leg By Watson for crying out loud.  We have a pile of lazy-ass batsmen who couldn't be stuffed to hold the crease and try to score while not throwing their wicket away.

Right now when you mention the current Australian cricket team my face might very well take on a expression not unlike this one.




In short outside of Warner and Smith we have a team that is content to play like a pile of low class 20/twenty Batsmen, and happy to throw their wickets away even more cheaply.  


Today actually disgusts me.  I would not be upset to see almost the entire squad sacked from the team and a pile of newbies thrown in to the kennel.  Lord knows they cannot play any worse than the so-called professional side.  


Sack the majority of the team and exile them from getting back in for at least a year.  
Sack the board of selectors who have been making terrible descisions for several years straight.  Make Warner captain and Smith his vice captain, because Smith may be a prodigy but he has yet to acquire the experience needed to make good judgements on the field (his dismal choice of bowling attack at the WACA, specifically spending an entire day on pace only letting Lyon have a crack as a last resort at the end of the day when his confidence was completely shattered proves this), Warner if nothing else will be able to unify the team as a leader figure.  

And make it abundantly clear to the rest of Australian cricketers, if you want in the side you need high quality performances in Sheffield Shield.  Because yes, I understand the commoners have taken a liking to this T-20 cricket and its fancy light shows and cheerleaders and strategy so simplistic even a money could understand it, however it has not nor ever will be the appropriate way to raise competent test cricket batsmen, thus promising batsmen need to be reared through more appropriate forms of the game.


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Oh how true the saying "a picture says a thousand words"!








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Here's a link to where I follow basically all my cricket, they do ball-by-ball text commentary: http://www.espncricinfo.com/  First Test was dull, don't expect any conversation from that.  

And... yeah I'm not going to say you're wrong.  And that picture is hilarious. Why are they talking about sacking Lyon though?  Why Lyon?  Australia has never been good with spinners.  I think CA handles spinners worse than the ECB, and that's saying something.

I agree with most of the rest of them, although whether spouting about that is good for the team is... debatable, shall we say.

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffft.

Lyon isn't performing as well as he used to be, that said how much of his lackluster performance this series is his form and how much is him being misplayed is debatable.  Short of another spinner sticking their hand up for selection in this round of Sheffield shield I'd give him another test.  

Sad part is that gif ain't far off the actual on-field events.  


They say heads are going to roll if they lose the next test.  Personally despite wanting Australia to win I'm going to hope they lose this one.  CA is too interested in chasing easy money from the BBL at the expense of Sheffield Shield.  Unless a lot of heads roll this issue, which has been persistent in the side for the last few years slowly oozing from the bandage that the coach change and Johnson were providing, won't go away.  The wound has reached infection now, drastic measures are needed.  

As for the Batsmens confidence, well, sometimes you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette.  Most of the current group seem to be too good in the art of throwing away wickets at the moment, if they went away and proved themselves for a while and came back I wouldn't mind much (except for Voges), but at this point we genuinely wouldn't be worse off for sticking a lot of new blood in the team.

To be fair to Khawaja despite my omitting him from the list of names to keep he should almost certainly be kept based on his performance this test, despite his wicket he actually, shockingly, played proper test cricket and got a good score to boot.  A century would've been preferable, but at the same time if the rest of the team had done its job and not put on a batting display so woeful they'd have trouble being selected for my rural towns team I likely wouldn't be caring enough to say that.  I take back my prior remark comparing it to T-20 play, if they'd played like that they likely would have scored more and lasted longer*.  




*Disclaimer: Not to be taken as praise for T-20



As an aside I'd like to place my humble bet for next years Ashes series now, 3-1 in favour of England!

Steady on there!  England have nobody capable of getting the requisite pace and bounce to succeed in Oz apart from Finn, who's fallen apart.  When's the next one, next winter?  That's a 31-year-old Broad who should do alright until he goes for 20+ in an over, Woakes who's as rfm as you can get, Stokes who... goodness knows, he's entirely unpredictable.  And one other.  

Besides, that's an entire year for Australia to develop a batting line-up based on their own tracks, with Smith and Warner as lynchpins.  They'll still go into it as favourites.



By the way, if Voges never played another Test, he'd have the second-highest Test batting average ever (with the usual qualifications, 20 innings played and that). Lies, damned lies, and batting averages.

I have to interrupt an exclaim that Athers is the only person who would use an Anime screen grab and be talking about cricket at the same time!
Sorry guys carry on

...wondering if that's a challenge...

...or a request for a cricket anime. Anyway, it's what I love about this forum! Hugs around the world
Sorry, I've done it again - carry on

Bubblegum Crisis Twenty20?

Do I hear the beginnings of a challenge regarding anime reactions to cricket?  






In good news heads have already started to roll, starting at the very top of selectors with Rod Marsh!  He claimed he hadn't been pushed, although I suspect it was a bit of a case of falling on ones sword before someone came along to do it for him.  


Looks like the next India v England match is starting up, got those live scores open!

cricinfo wrote:

"0.2
Anderson to Vijay, FOUR, pushed down the leg side again, Vijay is able to catch up with it and flick it fine of long leg (what Joe Burns was trying to do the other day)"

Ooh!  I guess you could say Burns just got...

Burned




Well that was quick, such is the life of an opener I suppose.

Lunch on day one, from the sounds of things the session was pretty even, the openers were taken out but at the same time a decent set of runs were scored.

And in fresh news from down under Voges is out of the test side after going down with a concussion in a sheffield shield match. Given what happened a few years back I can't help but cringe when I hear someone is knocked over by a bouncer and taken to hospital. Thankfully it's nothing life threatening.