Due to work, not seen any of this ODI between SA and Pakistan yet but Pakistan were incredibly short of runs. SA have beaten them with about 10 overs spare. I guess the highlights might show whether it was good bowling or bad batting. Imran Tahir’s figures (and Rabada’s/Pretorius’) in particular very economical.
I think the thing about this format in the CWC is that, even if India do get ambushed in the tournament, if it happens in the group stage, it is far less likely to prove fatal than in previous versions of the competition. In the 1992 version, there was one fewer team and 5 wins was sufficient to get into the knockout stages. 6 wins out of 9 will probably see you in the semis this time. One bad result can easily be worn and not really be a problem. This is why I think India are nailed on for the semis - I can’t see them losing 4 out of the 9 games in the group.
Of course, they could then have a bad day in the knockouts but then I’m not claiming they’re definitely going to make the final - at least not yet. Any team could run into a Pakistani buzzsaw in a knockout game. I’d dread facing them if England got to the knockout stages.
2nd Test Aust v SL @ Marnuka Oval (Canberra)
Australia unchanged from 1st Test, won inside 3 days.
They resisted the temptation to include Pucovski and/or Stoiness. Understandable but the sooner Stoiness get a chance to establish himself the sooner we put a crucifix into the prospect of a Mitch Marsh revival.
SL have lost through injury their 3 seamers from Brisbane.
So we have their second choice bowlers from honest trundlers first picked for the sixth ranked Test side. Their opening bowlers have 14 wickets between the and the other is on debut.
One doesn’t like to beat up on the minnows but in a summer without a Test century (first time since 1964 when they only played one Test, next worst season has 4) this is the gilded opportunity to score a “soft” century and book passage on an Ashes tour.
Paine wins toss, is astonished at his luck and bats, as he should on a benign batting deck…
In the 9th over Aust 3-28 ROFLMAO which at work isn’t a good career move unless your boss is a similar tragic. He’s not.
That’s Burns and Head in then?
Scoring rate for the day was 4.4 an over - which is pretty remarkable. Surely those 3 wickets that fell early must be disgusted with themselves as this appears to be a wicket, an opposition, or both, where you should be scoring heavily.
England had a bad old day of it yesterday and are now in the field for Day 2. It seems like it was a difficult wicket - not many of them gave it away yesterday (for instance, Joe Root’s wicket was pretty much unplayable given the lift it got off a good length). I don’t have loads of confidence that the English bowlers have what it takes to exploit this wicket though. If you’re the Windies, you see off Anderson, be a bit careful with Stokes and Broad but try to rotate strike and then cash in on Curran and Moeen I think. They should get a first innings lead, with care paid.
Amusing that after talking up India, they did exactly what PT suggested might happen every so often and got shot out for 92. No Kohli and Dhoni in that line up though, so some salt to be taken with that. Just goes to show that the knockout phases of the CWC will not necessarily be predictable.
[QUOTE=Cumbrian;21464163
England had a bad old day of it yesterday and are now in the field for Day 2. It seems like it was a difficult wicket - not many of them gave it away yesterday (for instance, Joe Root’s wicket was pretty much unplayable given the lift it got off a good length). I don’t have loads of confidence that the English bowlers have what it takes to exploit this wicket though. If you’re the Windies, you see off Anderson, be a bit careful with Stokes and Broad but try to rotate strike and then cash in on Curran and Moeen I think. They should get a first innings lead, with care paid.[/QUOTE]
And this is what is happening, with WI at 133/2. It’s still possible that they will get out below 250 - the WI batting lineup has shown itself to be fragile, and England do seem to be bowling well to little reward, but the pitch has a demon or two and so the WI batsmen appear to actually be taking care which balls they score off, and not attempting to blaze away from the off.
It’s almost like it’s a 5 day game or something.
Lunch on day 3 in Antigua.
West Indies finally bowled out for 306, having batted slowly but effectively to a lead of 110 runs. A bit of an annoying lead, really, since it gives England fans that hope that maybe Joe Root will get a ton and we can get to a lead of 150-200 to make an actual game of it in the final innings.
In the second test in Canberra*, and after getting into a bit of trouble at 28/3 as penultima thule points out above, Australia have bossed the game since. Big tons from Travis Head and Joe Burns (and a smaller one from Patterson) have given them a stranglehold on this game that Sri Lanka seem unlikely to break. They had a decent opening partnership, they are 123/3 at the close and Karunaratne has been rushed to hospital for scans after getting a bouncer in the back of the head. He may well return to bat later if he’s ok.
*Canberra? Do they play there a lot?
Is something like this the decision of the umpire? Or why wouldn’t teams sub batsmen in and out?
Another question: oftentimes, umpires will use DRS to confirm that the bowler’s foot was not too forward prior to a wicket. Why don’t they also check the bowler’s arm? I’ve watched a bit of this West Indies- England test series and thought that Roach’s arm was slightly bent on at least one occasion. Or is this simply too much of a judgement call? I’ve now been watching cricket for a while, and don’t recall a bowler ever being caught for a bent arm toss.
There are no substitutions in cricket. The eleven named at the start of the game are the only ones who can bat or bowl. You can have a substitute fielder but that’s it.
You can “retire hurt” as you want, and you can return to bat at the fall of a wicket. It’s not normally an advantage to split your innings like that, though, so it’s not abused. They don’t get to use an extra batsman, and if you’re not available when the final available wicket falls, you don’t get to bat (but you are “not out”)
They tend to reserve the checking for suspect actions for review after the games, as it got too political when they would no ball someone during a game.
First Test to be played at the venue.
Play First Class games there regularly.
Last was NSW Blues v QLD Bulls Friday in November.
Also, due to a scheduling snafu the 2014 Sheffield Shield final between NSW and WA was played there.
Good venue, excellent surface, good batting deck, it’s not a drop-in pitch.
“as you want” is a bit problematic.
You can retire anytime you like, but then you are out.
To be hurt is usually self-evident at the time, the batsman is hit, injured or becomes ill. The fielding team are usually critically aware they have a problem and
In his iconic 210 vs India in 1986 Dean Jones was in severe heat distress for the last half of his innings. His routine was block, block, hit a boundary, walk to square leg, spew [repeat]
He asked hard as nails captain Border if he could retire but was told “Well go on, off you go then. We’ll get someone tough out here. We’ll get a Queenslander.”
Phillip Hughes was 63 retired, not out in his last innings.
The only instance of retired, not out in Test cricket was Gordon Greenidge’s 154 retired, not out in 1983 in 5th Test vs India when he left the field to visit his daughter who was dying.
In an U16s game the team I was coaching a couple of seasons the oppositions captain and best bat had scored mid 20s. He was cleaning his glasses between overs and one of the lens popped out and he couldn’t get it back in place. So he left the field. Didn’t ask, just walked off.
We had an ex 1st grade umpire officiating and I was standing at square leg.
I have glasses myself so am sympathetic to his plight but they were the best team in the comp and we were in with a real chance of knocking them off. So I asked the umpire whether he had “retired” or “retired hurt” as he patently wasn’t hurt, nor had he sought permission to leave the field.
At the drinks break the umpire consulted the regulations and decided that Law 24.4.2 applied on grounds of unavoidable cause, rather than Law 25.4.3.
Aust v SL Day 3
Leading by 319 Aust don’t enforce the follow-on. It’s the right call.
We need to batting practice more than wickets and it’s hot enough to take the opportunity to sit inside.
After 14 overs Aust are 3-37.
Demand for antacids, beta blockers and Packer Whackers will go the roof this Ashes tour.
Greenidge was not out overnight when called away because his 2-year-old daughter had suddenly acquired a kidney infection. He stayed with her until she died 2 days after the test had ended. Greenidge won man-of-the-match, but obviously wasn’t there to receive his award.
Comfortable win for Australia. Comfortable win for the Windies. Neither of the losing sides can have any complaints.
No real point in getting into England - they need to prize their wickets more highly but probably don’t have skills to do it - and the solutions won’t be found in the touring party they have. Whether there are any options in county cricket is a difficult question. Not that I can see. We could really do with Haseeb Hameed putting his last two years of dreadful form behind him and coming good. There was a bloke who I thought was going to be the new Boycott/Cook and just grind away at the top of the order. The rest of them, bar Root, don’t average much more than 30. This is not good enough, bluntly.
Windies have been really good but Jason Holder has been suspended for a match for slow over rates. A lot of the cricket commentariat I follow are grumbling about this (they’re playing winning cricket, the match finished in 3 days, it’s good for the Windies to be captained by a guy who is leading them back, etc) - to which I say bollocks, in particular to the idea that the matched finished in 3 days so it’s not an issue. Tell that to the guy who forked over for a day’s cricket and didn’t get a full day because he was watching guys stand around. I wish this was rigidly enforced – England are not blameless here and could stand to have some sanctions come their way - as slow over rates are a pox on cricket. My Ashes tickets at The Oval are £100+ a day. You’d best believe I want the 90 overs I paid for, and the ICC is right to safeguard the paying punter over some of these sort of romantic objections to enforcing the rules.
Is there a different criteria for wide balls in test cricket, versus limited overs games? I don’t see wides called when I watch test cricket often. Also, I noticed that a wide ball that went past the keeper to the boundary was called a 4-wides in a test match, but a 5-wides in an ODI or T20. If so, teams that are bowling for a draw in a test match could purposely bowl poorly to minimize the batting side’s probability of reaching its target. Does this happen?
So, the third test in a dead rubber, now the WIndies are 2-0 up.
Decent from England yesterday. Some dodgy moments outside off stump, but they generally put more value on their wickets and it showed, no Authority was Stamped but they stayed in and got some runs, and sat pretty at around 230/4 at the end of the day.
Then they threw it all away in the first session, all out for 277. Good bowling though.
After another 50 opening partnership by the WIndies, though, the English bowlers are starting to have a little fun themselves, and have them pegged at 59/4.
Jackknifed Juggernaut, there are different criteria for wides, yes. And “negative bowling”, trying to prevent scoring instead of trying to take wickets, is absolutely a thing. It’s not “Bowling poorly” though, it’s bowling to prevent scoring, and there are batting tactics to use against it.
Substantial difference.
In the BBL the creases are now marked with additional blue lines.
In a BBL T20 a ball passing outside the blue line on the off-side would be called a wide, in Test cricket it would need to be outside the (white) return crease to be called a wide.
On the leg-side the distinction is even more pronounced. Any delivery passing down the leg-side in a T20 is probably going to be called as wide, even if it pitches on the stumps and spins. In Tests a leg-side wide would again need to be pitching outside the (white) return crease.
Finally a delivery bouncing over the head of the batsman will be called as a wide in T20 but exceptionally rarely called in Tests.
A delivery called wide which went to the boundary in Test, ODI or T20 would score 5 in all three formats and the delivery is rebowled. What you may have seen in the Test was a errant/wide delivery which was not called a wide and therefore scored 4 byes. These really piss off the wicketkeeper as it is marked as being their error but isn’t marked against the bowler.
In a flashback to the 90s, when I started watching cricket, England, in a dead rubber, have come to the party and hold a big lead on first innings in the final Test in St Lucia. Burns and Denly hung around well enough, without scoring heavily, to knock some of the shine off the ball and helped the middle order get some runs in that respect. They still collapsed from 232-4 to 277 all out, mind you - though the Windies bowled well and the pitch looks reasonably difficult. Putting the Windies out for 154 was a top effort - better catching, and some fast, fast bowling from Mark Wood being the primary factors. Wood is someone that struggles to bowl this fast in successive Test matches - good job that there is a long break after this one then - and probably needs some real looking after. When he’s fast though, he’s fast - most of his spell yesterday north of 90 and frequently around 94-95 mph. Had the batsmen hopping at least.
Given how difficult the pitch has been to score on, I would hope that 200 would be sufficient in England’s second innings. Likely to be an adventure trying to get there though.
England 324/4, and it’s nice that we’ve actually showed up to a game in this series, even if it is after the series is already lost.
Still a huge question over Jennings. I want him in my Ashes team this summer, but it seems unlikely he’s going to be there. But who are they going to throw to the sharks in his place?
England set Windies 480+. Anderson strikes early - belting catch by Moeen in the gully.
I find the above interesting. Why do you want Jennings in your Ashes team?
As to the second question: everyone seems to be pointing at Jason Roy to open. Which seems to me like pouring oil on the fire. He doesn’t open down at Surrey and he’ll be in on the grounds that he opens in ODIs and should be able to tee off. But isn’t our problem at the top of the order lack of obduracy?