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  On 21/12/2021 at 07:44, JonM said:

Every other forum I frequent was debating before the tour started whether England can sneak a draw in any of the games and make it a 4-0 rather than 5-0 loss. This is the only place I've seen any optimism at all - you've certainly shifted the dial a bit 🙂

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I might put £10 on Ing-er-land to win the RLWC yet, i might even put the £110 i win from the ashes bet on them. 

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England do have the capacity to win a test match but the big question is do they believe they can win a test.

The wins in Sri Lanka and the first Test in India were off the bat of Joe Root. Proof that individual brilliance overcomes systemic failure. Once Root no longer scored big hundreds, England no longer posted a big enough score,  hence the current tour of Austalia becoming a case of history repeating itself first as tragedy and then as farce as someone once said.

Looking at potential changes, you can certainly argue that all the names being put forward have already had a run in the side, Zak Crawley, Johnny Bairstow and James Vince currently playing with the Sydney Sixers.

Now there is press talk about Saqib Mahmood being brought into the squad from the Sydney Thunder and to be sure he would have been in my squad but for Chris Silverwood whose job is in peril and who has sole responsibility for picking the squad, picking Vince or Mahmood would be an admission he stuffed up on the selection of the touring squad, loosening even further the shaky nail on which his coat as England coach rests.

Before you ask about the A team - There home already, Given the ECB reserves had dwindled from £ 70 Million to just £ 2 million due to the 💯. This is no surprise. In the meantime a Test disaster is a good time to bury bad news the ECB are increasing the salary spend for each 💯 Franchise and borrowing the timed out rule (i.e. Batsmen need to be ready to recieve a first delivery within 75 seconds when a wicket falls) from the Big Bash League.

With England players required to play in the 💯 as preparation for the South African test series in August. A Saffer win in the first test is a value bet with the bookies.

The change in the Central Contract arrangements with white ball players now gaining parity in respect of central contracts with red ball players shows where the ECB priorities lie under the current regieme

https://www.thecricketer.com/topics/england/england_cricket_central_contracts_what_is_an_increment_contract_who_has_a_central_contract.html

On the BBL, crowds are poor on TV, partly due to Australias COVID restrictions - and they have not handled it better than the UK- but also due to over-saturation, Going from 6 games over the holiday period to a 14 game marathon, becoming gimmicky, (e.g. The bat flip instead of a toss and the X-factor player (the old 11 plays 12 scenario from ODI's around 2005). The innovations that are good such as the Bash Boost have led to higher scores in the comp but the BBL lacks start quality as evidenced by the quality or lack of in the overseas signings.

Around the world adminstrators make the same mistakes out of greed not so much killing the goose that laid the golden egg more leading it to the Gas chamber.

I should make a point about the David Lloyd non-issue, if there was any fallout from the Rafiq allegations with SKY then it would only have accelerated something that was already underway in that SKY are in the process of "refreshing" their Cricket coverage with Ian Bothan and David Gower departing in 2019, Michael Holding going earlier in 2021 and the 74 year old David Lloyd now. After all you have to make room for Stuart Broad who is expected to go the box in the SKY after the 2023 Ashes or earlier if he can no longer feature in the England side.

In the same way, when Cricket coverage switched from Channel 9 to 7 it spelt the end for Bill Lawry and Ian Chappell. I have to say I find the FOXTEL commentary, described as "the matiest mates who ever mated" by one hack, less grating than most of you do but then I am more used to one-eyed commentary.

That Michael Vaughan appeared on the BBL telecast down under  but BT Sport will cut away when he is on FOXTEL to show David Gower, This marks a werlcome return for DIG who took his removal from the SKY Broadcast team badly. Since then the old smoothie has found work commentating on the Pakistan Super League - Tuk Tuk...

Gower was the last amateur in a professional age. DIG was unlucky to be captain in a pre-central contract era and to take on a West Indies side that made any England Captain swop full dinner jacket for full metal jacket. A top bloke DIG would have a lifetime central contract were he playing today with this mob.

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When the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.

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George Orwell
 
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Four changes for England, Crawley for Burns. I can understand retaining Haseeb Hameed he has a basic technique and has more of an upside than Burns. If he can learn to rotate the strike. What is happening is he gets struck and ends up chipping in the direction of mid-on. It is interesting to see if Zak has cured himself of flailing at the ball outside off stump. This as with many things is down to white ball cricket. Zak opens the batting with Daniel Bell-Drummond for Kent and the Kent formula in T20 is to bat first with a powerful batting line up and go after the bowling from the first ball hence unleasing a drive at a well pitched up delivery as in T20 there are no close fielders. In the red ball game this keeps your second and third slip wide awake

Your trigger movement in Cricket is instinctive. You have to train your brain to leave the ball alone or to play with soft hands and this is why switching between formats is often problematic if you have not been playing red ball cricket.

Bairstow for Pope - Getting Pope out of the firing line but putting Johnny B back in on it. Since he was forced by the previous chair of selectors to goive up the gloves for Jos Buttler his returns for England, when selected, have been paltry. Now Johnny is not a top order player in red ball Cricket but what he does/did do and does better than Ben Foakes, is when keeper batting down the order put runs on the board quickly before the England Lower order folds like a cheap suit which brings me on to..

Wood for Woakes, contrary to what you read Mark Wood would not be able to manage five tests in a series so he needed to be left out in Adelaide otherwise he goes the way of England's other broken pacemen Jofra Archer and Olly Stone both of whose careers are now threatened due to overbowling. Tough on Chris Woakes but his is ineffective with the ball in Australian conditions.

Leach for Broad. Well the wicket looks green and England do not seem to be able to guess ow the wicket will play.  Hang on, I hear you say Australia pick Nathan Lyon. Yes and he has 400 odd Test wickets and is effective in all conditions. Jack Leach on the other hand will be having the Aussie batters in a state of confusion," Four or Six shall I hit him for". If your not going to spin a side out you need your spinner keeping it tight to rotate the quicks not going at 8/9 an over.

I am all for having a spinner in the side but he has to be worth his place and for England, for reasons discussed earlier in this thread the cupboard is bare

Pat Cummins back as Captain for Michael Neser that's an upgrade, and Scott Boland in for Jhye Richardson for Australia. Time after time in Ashes series we see ordinary aussie bowlers like Scott Boland  pulling on the baggy green and strolling down to Bay 13 with a big cheesy grin and a swag bag of wickets to be lionised by the inebriated hoards. Will this Test be any different ?

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When the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.

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George Orwell
 
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You either own NFTs or women’s phone numbers but not both

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Anyone who struggles - or claims to struggle - to understand the difference between institutional/systemic failures versus individual failures could do a lot worse than looking at the England cricket team right.

Shift/replace individuals and the same issues recur because the failings are in the set-up. A tiny number succeed in spite of the system and a percentage shouldn't be there anyway because they have individual problems that no system could correct but, overall, it's the system that is at fault.

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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Systemic failures or not, we are now in a position where the senior England team look so far off the mark at test level. 

The top order have looked woeful for the last 2-3 years and whilst the bowling attack has endured less criticism, the reliance on Broad and Anderson over that same period would indicate that at test level, were towing there as well.

If its a systemic failure, I hope there are those within the system who can fix it....

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  On 26/12/2021 at 08:57, Robin Evans said:

If its a systemic failure, I hope there are those within the system who can fix it....

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It's a systemic failure and there are no people in the system who can fix it.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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Curates egg of a day, I thought England bowled well and for oince held their chances and bowled Australia out for a reasonable total. The problem being of course any lead over 50 in a low scoring game is tough especially when you are minus 82 at the commencement of your innings

As well as England toiled in the field when Australia got to bowl, they only had an hour and could take off the handbrake. The thunderbolts coming down from the Aussie bowlers was in Starc contrast to what had happened earlier in the day. Frankly unless you are a batmen of solid technique and have a little fortune such as Joe Root you can survive .. just. That spell was good bowling from Cummins and Starc rather than poor batting though.

As predicted pre-game, Scott Boland took advantage of a shell-shocked line up to claim two cheap wiockets and retire to bay 13 to a chorus of "We love you cause your a victorian.." to which they seranade all Victoria players at the MCG when they have a good day, which against England is depressingly often.

The conunderum is this, England did have a good day in the field but yet could concievably lose by an innings and are unlikely to get a lead of 150 plus that would give them an outside chance if the seam bowlers had things going for them. You can shuffle the batting pack but you would be bringing in players who have had little to no cricket in the current squad. It's not the panacea.

Unfortunately England are beginning to look like a rabble, unless the remaining batters can put up some resistance tomorrow  This series could get very grim indeed

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When the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.

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George Orwell
 
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You either own NFTs or women’s phone numbers but not both

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In my humble opinion, this tour was doomed before the squad was announced. Back-to-back tests, no family allowed, covid bubbles. 2 months only playing, or locked in hotels. Not good for morale, or general mental health, not helped by losing so badly, I can imagine team meetings turning into a blame culture.

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Our top order is perhaps the worst performing of the senior test playing nations.

Reliance on Broad and Anderson have perhaps skewed our assessment of how our bowling attacks is performing.

I haven't been a member of yccc since 1996 and as such only maintain the slightest of interests in the county game now. But I'm not sure there are those in the first class game that are any better than the current incumbents and if the ginger fella is correct, then there is no immediate fix.

I thinks it's way too simplistic to hypothesise that first class/test cricket has been sacrificed for the limited over game.

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No hiding the fact this is really bad and worse than I expected. No disrespect intended to Scott Boland and Family, but if a journeyman Aussie seamer gets 6 for 7 its not saying much about the side. Jonny Bairstow got a rough decision with DRS showing two Umpires calls which in my book should give the batsman the benefit of the doubt rather than confirm the on-field umpires decision but after that collapso.

For those who think people such as myself blame the 💯 for everything. You have to undertstand the history behind this. Colin Graves believes that an 18 County system is mediocre and wanted to create franchises. In doing so he, and the smaller counties rejected the idea of a first and second division T20 league as a made for TV product. The counties wanted to maintain their T20 revenue stream so were allowed to retain a 14 match bloc in late May / June in order to attract overseas players for big money. The ECB realised that two T20 competitions might just be more than the market can bear so set about creating a point of difference with a 100 ball 5 ball over brand which no-one else in the cricket world  has any intention of playing. This will hog the second week of August to September and will also pay big money to overseas players.

The First Class game which produces the test side was shunted into April  May and the end of September with a couple of games played in between the T20 and the 💯. This may increase to five games in July / August this year simply because the women are competing in the Commenwealth Games T20 at Edgbaston which will move the 💯 back a fortnight. So we have the bulk of the summer turned over to Two short format versions of the game which no-one else in world cricket has 

The 50 over game in which we are world champions has been reduced to a second XI competition played during the 💯. What price England retaining the trophy once the real World Cup is held in India in 2023.

English Cricket like English Rugby Union only knocks Soccer off the back page due to the national side. It's value to broadcasters depends upon the success of that national side. These days the main focus of the media is on the Ashes and the 50 over World Cup, do badly in both and media attention drops off and since the game is not on Free to Air TV it becomes even more a niche sport.

As regards coaching - If you look at the photograph of the touring party you will see the players are almost outnumbered by the coaching staff. The question should be what exactly do these apparatchiks do ?

Certanly there is an element of job justification coming in. Why interfear with someones bowling action for example, which nearly ruined James Anderson's career and did ruin Steve Finn's. Look at the latest  wheeze from Assistant Coach Ant Botha supposedly to help our opening batsmen ...

https://twitter.com/beastieboy07/status/1473925036301905926

It's the equivalent of trying to teach a rugby leaguie forward how to carry the ball into contact when he has reached international level.

I could go on about what's wrong with the English game but then this would be one looooong post.

Where does English Cricket go from here - To Sydney COVID permitting.....☹️

 

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When the pinch comes the common people will turn out to be more intelligent than the clever ones. I certainly hope so.

Expand  
George Orwell
 
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You either own NFTs or women’s phone numbers but not both

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  On 28/12/2021 at 08:55, CornwallRL said:

In my humble opinion, this tour was doomed before the squad was announced. Back-to-back tests, no family allowed, covid bubbles. 2 months only playing, or locked in hotels. Not good for morale, or general mental health, not helped by losing so badly, I can imagine team meetings turning into a blame culture.

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Outside of Agnew & the BBC commentary team + pals, everywhere I read before a ball was bowled seemed to be expecting a 5-0 whitewash, for all the above reasons, with the only hope of avoiding that that the 5th test might not be played, or we might get rain somewhere, or a double ton from Root to draw a game.

Root has still won more games than he's lost as captain - his percentage win record is pretty similar to Strauss & Vaughan, and it's not like England play lots of tests against the weaker countries. 

Three tests in West Indies in March at least gives us a chance to play one of the other weaker test teams and perhaps find a win.

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  On 29/12/2021 at 17:50, Josef K said:

This is cricket related, i used to have the game Test Match when i was a little lad but i never played Subbuteo cricket. Did anyone have it and how was it played ?. 

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I had Subbuteo football but not cricket.

I don’t know how it was played either, but I do know that obscure original Subbuteo teams from certain eras go for £100s of pounds to the right collectors.

I think good condition Subbuteo cricket stuff isn’t cheap either.

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I had Subbuteo Cricket. The bowler had a triangle at the base were the ball was placed. This was flicked towards the wicket were the batsman actually it was a bat on a long handle tried to hit it. Fielders were placed around the field.. The fielders base was exended forward with a grove and if the ball went in there they were out caught. Those are my memories I wouldn't recommend the game.

I had the cricket in my early teens. Also had floodlight football subbuteo and the five a side version which was my favourite.

Edited by Irish Saint
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Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor but because we cannot satisfy the rich.

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  On 29/12/2021 at 17:50, Josef K said:

This is cricket related, i used to have the game Test Match when i was a little lad but i never played Subbuteo cricket. Did anyone have it and how was it played ?. 

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This was (is) a genuinely decent cricket game

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9177/armchair-cricket 

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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  On 28/12/2021 at 15:34, THE RED ROOSTER said:

No hiding the fact this is really bad and worse than I expected. No disrespect intended to Scott Boland and Family, but if a journeyman Aussie seamer gets 6 for 7 its not saying much about the side. Jonny Bairstow got a rough decision with DRS showing two Umpires calls which in my book should give the batsman the benefit of the doubt rather than confirm the on-field umpires decision but after that collapso.

For those who think people such as myself blame the 💯 for everything. You have to undertstand the history behind this. Colin Graves believes that an 18 County system is mediocre and wanted to create franchises. In doing so he, and the smaller counties rejected the idea of a first and second division T20 league as a made for TV product. The counties wanted to maintain their T20 revenue stream so were allowed to retain a 14 match bloc in late May / June in order to attract overseas players for big money. The ECB realised that two T20 competitions might just be more than the market can bear so set about creating a point of difference with a 100 ball 5 ball over brand which no-one else in the cricket world  has any intention of playing. This will hog the second week of August to September and will also pay big money to overseas players.

The First Class game which produces the test side was shunted into April  May and the end of September with a couple of games played in between the T20 and the 💯. This may increase to five games in July / August this year simply because the women are competing in the Commenwealth Games T20 at Edgbaston which will move the 💯 back a fortnight. So we have the bulk of the summer turned over to Two short format versions of the game which no-one else in world cricket has 

The 50 over game in which we are world champions has been reduced to a second XI competition played during the 💯. What price England retaining the trophy once the real World Cup is held in India in 2023.

English Cricket like English Rugby Union only knocks Soccer off the back page due to the national side. It's value to broadcasters depends upon the success of that national side. These days the main focus of the media is on the Ashes and the 50 over World Cup, do badly in both and media attention drops off and since the game is not on Free to Air TV it becomes even more a niche sport.

As regards coaching - If you look at the photograph of the touring party you will see the players are almost outnumbered by the coaching staff. The question should be what exactly do these apparatchiks do ?

Certanly there is an element of job justification coming in. Why interfear with someones bowling action for example, which nearly ruined James Anderson's career and did ruin Steve Finn's. Look at the latest  wheeze from Assistant Coach Ant Botha supposedly to help our opening batsmen ...

https://twitter.com/beastieboy07/status/1473925036301905926

It's the equivalent of trying to teach a rugby leaguie forward how to carry the ball into contact when he has reached international level.

I could go on about what's wrong with the English game but then this would be one looooong post.

Where does English Cricket go from here - To Sydney COVID permitting.....☹️

 

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A very good resume of the current state of cricket in England.

there are rumours that the hundreds is a precursor to franchising the first class game over here with ~10 city based “test” teams, concentrating the the available talent.

the problem is that franchising in sport hasn’t really succeeded in the UK

but of course the lower counties don’t want to be reduced to basically a fully professional version of league cricket (which it isn’t that far off at the moment)

 

One thing that is needed is less limited overs and more competitive timed cricket 

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  On 29/12/2021 at 17:50, Josef K said:

This is cricket related, i used to have the game Test Match when i was a little lad but i never played Subbuteo cricket. Did anyone have it and how was it played ?. 

Expand  

When I was at school, we used to play dice cricket, roll a die, & add up the scores, if you threw a 5, you were out, unless you threw another 5 straight after.

Real pedants after a wicked the non-scoring player would then roll the die for how out. Example, 1= Bowled, 2= LBW, etc

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