If he gets to thirty and out six times in 3 tests, he’ll be doing very well
Isn’t that what Sibley did, and was discarded in favor of some guy who at that time was averaging in the mid twenties in first class cricket. I forget the name.
Emilio Gay has crossed my radar.
Could I ask for a potted summary of the talents/potential of:
Rehan Ahmed (Leicestershire)
Sonny Baker (Hampshire)
Matthew Fisher (Surrey)
James Rew (Somerset)
What is a potted summary?
I’ve watched Rew bat at Somerset, one of his hundreds last year. He was very good, but the suggestion at the time was that he wouldn’t be able to nudge into England. Very happy to see his name on the team sheet, although it seems likely Somerset will be denied his talents for him to carry drinks.
That’s one of the inherent inequities of the game.
You have somebody in form with potential and you stop them playing so they can watch others, so nobody benefits from their capabilities.
So, England beat New Zealand in a test match that has technically gone to day 4, but is still the third shortest by balls bowled, ever (in games when all forty wickets have been taken)
A win is a win, and there were some positives for England, but by god the surface wasn’t good enough for Test cricket. A ball kept low in the first over of the match, and it never got better.
There are ways of restoring life to pitches, but that usually that involves replacing the centre wicket area. On this side of the globe the improvement of the MCG deck would be the best example.
Are there many/any drop in pitches used in the UK?
England cricket shit-show continues. Captain Stokes seems to have celebrated the win against New Zealand by flushing his career down the toilet.
The whole culture of English cricket seems rotten. No accountability. Harry Brook was in a fight with a bouncer in New Zealand because he was too drunk to be admitted to the bar. He was rewarded with the Vice Captaincy. The failure in the Ashes both on and off the field were resolved by a commitment that they would be Very Good Boys for a bit. How on earth did Stokes get the idea that this promise meant nothing. Oh, wait. It’s because in the past there were no consequences if you were the right guy in with the other right guys.
What was already an absorbing contest at Trent Bridge has amped up into high drama a few minutes ago. Twenty minutes ahead of the tea interval, while he was bowing his tenth over on the trot, Stokes announced his retirement.
Literally as the news was posted on the big screen at the stadium and the crowd goes wild, he breaks the stubborn partnership with his next delivery.
You cannot write this script, it’s too melodramatic.
Absolutely awful for the US Willow channel to switch from this test to an India-Ireland T20, that no one cares about. I was absorbed in this test match, and the rug got pulled by Indian-American purchasing power.
This was the worst few hours of cricket I have seen since Mohammed Aamer was caught bowling no balls at the behest of match fixers.
Just stupid, selfish, egotistical, rubbish from Stokes and England. Made a mockery of a properly competitive test series decider.
Got to agree with you on this one. It’s all very well for him to have a tantrum and hit out, but there’s a test series on the line here.
Annoying, but does it help that Ireland beat India by one run. Making it the second time in three days?
In fact it has been quite a weekend for cricket:
Ireland Men beat India Men (Fri), Ireland Women beat West Indies Women (Sat), (Ireland Men beat India Men (Sun); Stokes resigns while New Zealand march to an overseas series win, and West Indies win vs Sri Lanka with a 400-run partnership!
The turd in this particular punchbowl is England’s second innings batting. It was already self-indulgent for Stokes to open and throw the bat, but fine, it’s his last innings and one player doing it is more or less defensible as a gambit to attack a big total. Not great, but you know, sure Ben, whatever. But for the the rest of the team to follow the same pattern is just disrespectful to a fine New Zealand side. Yeah, 380 or whatever was a tough target, but there was a draw to be fought for. This was just a return to the worst excesses of one-gear Bazball, where actually doing the hard work was never an option compared to flashing the bat around before the inevitable.
If I were in that New Zealand team I’d be furious, they’ve more than earned the right to be taken seriously.
Brendan McCullum has been sacked as test team coach on the day that England achieve the #1 spot in T20I rankings. Seems fitting somehow.
Whilst on the topic of the fallen of the mighty, today probably the greatest cricketer ever passed away.
IMHO his only peer was/is Jacques Kallis.
Good enough to hold his place in the W.Indies Test side as a batter, left pace bowler, left arm orthodox and left arm unorthodox. And were it not for Lance Gibbs probably was.
In one test season, lead the world aggregates for runs, wickets and save for one keeper, catches. His 254 vs Australia for the RoW at the MCG in 1972 is seared in my memory.
My father is very sad. My father went to school and played on the same team as Hanif Mohammad, so he was very much into that era of cricket. Though being in Pakistan, no TV coverage (there was no TV at all until the late 1960s and no cricket coverage until the mid 1970s)
He has to be the greatest player the game of cricket has ever seen. Everyone knows how hard it is to master one facet of the game. Not just be good or very good for your era but to be an all-timer as simply a batsman or simply a bowler. Sobers did both while excelling in the field too at a time when I think it is fair to say being a fielder wasn’t close to what it is now with athleticism.
I never saw him play live or even just a full innings uploaded on the internet ball by ball but from the footage out there he would be one of the best players in the modern game if he was born 50 years later. Stylish stroke play, big back lift of the bat and fast bat speed, backed himself to hit 6 6s in an over when no one had ever done it in the 80 years of English cricket that came before him. I saw Kallis play a lot and while I respect his career and longevity, he was quite a boring player to watch in contrast. I think he would have been more suited for the era Sobers played in than vice versa.
1st Test of the Australian summer (mere 8 weeks after the winter equinox) but held in the Top End in Darwin vs Bangladesh.
Based on the ICC ranking it was world #1 vs world #9 … and didn’t Bangladesh kick our bloody arses!!!
Not sure Australia won a single session, maybe the morning of Day4 as we made them at least bat a second time.
AUS 198 Smith 71, Hasan 6/55
BAN 426 Tazim 101, Najmul 84, Hazelwood 6/89
AUS 284 Green 104, Mehidy 5/66
BAN 1-59
BAN win by 9 wickets inside 4 days
Probably a win toss and bowl pitch, but AUS batted and after a modest start folded like a cheap suit. Only resistance was Smith with 71, and he was dropped on 2 and got a fortuitous DRS call early on as well. BAN bowlers are solid trundlers, the AUS batting was frankly indolent.
Then the (now aging) best bowling attack AUS has ever fielded with Lyon, Starc, Cummins and Hazelwood (now each having taken 300 Test wickets and 1620 between them) couldn’t make regular breakthroughs. AUS even resorted to using 8 bowlers and BAN posted a commanding first innings lead after 138 overs. From then on, apart from Green’s resistance in the 2nd dig it was a mopping up exercise completed efficiently enough.
Some searching decisions for the selectors made more problematic that no domestic first class cricket is being played yet.
The likely response would be to drop Webster and bring a 6th batter. IMHO that just puts a band-aid on the top order failures of technique and approach. Find two old-school openers. I like Weatherall but just he hasn’t brought his first class credentials into Tests. Put Head back at #5. Put Marnus out to pasture, the juice has run out. Best middle order bat to come in would be Inglis. Drop one of Starc/Cummins/Hazelwood, make greater use of Webster. Not sure Boland will get a nod. Replace Lyon, a grand servant but not another swansong season please.
That’s way too many changes to be realistic. So probably only the one foreshadowed.
That was a discouraging showing by Pakistan. Hard to know if England is really good, because our performance in all three disciplines was just incompetent.