Cricket

[Xenophon PCDGS]

If people wish to discuss cricket and indeed sportsmanship within cricket they are more than welcome to do so. However the last few posting of this thread have been little more than personal attacks and as such have been deleted. If this continues then further action will be taken.

Well said. This thread normally is a mature of thought and a well-behaved thread...not to be confused with the somewhat vitriolic postings that see light on the Football thread.

 

[balne-wonderer]

Some months ago, I ventured to wonde the main England strike attack would be like once both Broad and Anderson were omitted and an evaluation could be made about the next generation of new strike bowlers.

I appear to be receiving my answer.

On that subject Paul there has been a proposal made to reduce the number of teams in County cricket from 18 to 12. It's on the bbc sport site.

The idea being that it would improve player development and raise interest in county cricket

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

On that subject Paul there has been a proposal made to reduce the number of teams in County cricket from 18 to 12. It's on the bbc sport site.

The idea being that it would improve player development and raise interest in county cricket

I had indeed read of the comments made by Lord MacLaurin upon this matter and of his ideas of certain counties amalgamatiing in order to achieve a reduced 12-team county format.

I will be interested to see which counties will be opposed to such amalgamations.

 

[ainsworth74]

Well those that are proposed to merge I would assume! I noticed that he didn't suggest merging Surrey and Middlesex even though they're almost next to each other...

For anyone else interested the article is here (possible merges in bold):

Ashes 2013-14: Ex-ECB chairman calls for county cricket overhaul

Reducing the number of county cricket sides from 18 to 12 would help improve the quality of cricketers that England produces, says a former chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Lord MacLaurin believes action should be taken following England's 5-0 Ashes whitewash against Australia.

"We have a blank sheet now," he said. "If you started from here you certainly would not have 18 county sides."

“Some of the counties are playing pretty average cricket”

He also questioned the future of coach Andy Flower and captain Alastair Cook.

The County Championship has consisted of 18 sides since 1992, when Durham became a first-class county.

The competition last underwent major restructuring in 2000 when it was split into two divisions with promotion and relegation introduced.

"I think 12 counties would be a far better producer of Test cricketers than 18 first-class counties, and some of the counties are playing pretty average cricket," MacLaurin, ECB chairman from 1997 to 2002, told BBC Radio 5 live's Sportsweek programme.

"People don't watch county cricket. What they are watching is Twenty20, IPL and international cricket.

"We have got to get players coming through our system which give us the best possible future.

"It would do no harm at all to look at the structure of cricket going forward for the next 5-10 years and see where we come to."

Instead of removing six counties from the County Championship, MacLaurin believes amalgamating those close to each other geographically would be a good starting point.

He said: "You could put Sussex and Kent together for one, because they are near and maybe in the south-east of England you'll get some very good players coming through in a bigger county.

"You could go Warwickshire and Northants, you could go Gloucestershire and Glamorgan or Gloucestershire and Somerset. You could do it easily.

"We are not producing Test cricketers and we haven't got a spinner to name in the squad now Graeme Swann has gone. Put it out for people to look at and discuss it and see what can take the game forward."

England went into the Ashes series in Australia as favourites against a side they had beaten in seven of their previous nine Tests.

But they were heavily beaten in all five Tests, leading MacLaurin to ponder the future of both Flower and Cook.

"It is a very serious blow for English cricket so nobody can say their position is secure," he said.

"[ECB chairman] Giles Clarke is a very competent chairman and I think he won't take any prisoners at all.

"He will see what is right for English cricket I am sure."

Former England captain Allan Lamb agreed with MacLaurin's comments, adding that England's management did not prepare for the series adequately.

"You have to go properly prepared and everyone has to play," he said.

"Your top players have to go into a Test match on fire. We went into that Test match underprepared and you can only blame the management."

 

[Buttsy]

The merger of counties has been raised on a number of occasions before, previous county mergers that have been suggested are:

Leicestershire & Northants
Worcestershire & Gloucestershire
Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire

Oddly enough, Hampshire seem to be exempt from merger suggestions, yet only 2 Hampshire players have won a significant number of caps for England since WW2, Robin Smith and Kevin Pietersen, both of whom had the majority of their cricket taught to them in South Africa...In my view Hampshire should be the prime team for merger with someone else, such as Sussex. Also, Kent could merge with Surrey as the latter play almost all of their games in South London.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Given that England were ranked number one in the ICC Test rankings only a couple of years ago or so, it has all become 'doom and gloom' pretty rapidly since then! I wonder if Lord MacLaurin was suggesting this idea then, or was he thinking, like everyone else seemed to be, that everything in the garden was rosy? Only a year ago Australia were the laughing stock after their disastrous tour of India (where they lost 4-0) and 'Homeworkgate'...they seemed to have turned their fortunes around without wholesale changes to their competitive structure. Darryl Lehmann has stated that they copied aspects from the England setup!
Has Bob Willis popped up yet with his regular idea of abolishing the counties and basing the geographical location on cities?

 

[andrew bell]

If people are worried or concerned about the amount of matches counties are playing and want to reduce the numbers of games played, why don't the ECB say the top 6 teams in this years County Championship will play in Division 1 in 2015, 7-9 in div 1 and 1-3 play in div 2, while the bottom 6 play in div 3. This way there is upto 16 days less cricket to be played, meaning we could start playing late April and finish early september, when the weather and pitches will be better.

 

[Buttsy]

Perhaps rather than mucking around with the county championship, losing some of the 1 day games would be more productive from an England point of view.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

If people are worried or concerned about the amount of matches counties are playing and want to reduce the numbers of games played, why don't the ECB say the top 6 teams in this years County Championship will play in Division 1 in 2015, 7-9 in div 1 and 1-3 play in div 2, while the bottom 6 play in div 3. This way there is up to 16 days less cricket to be played, meaning we could start playing late April and finish early september, when the weather and pitches will be better.

How would this affect the finances of the counties, considering that they will still be liable for full business rates on their county grounds ? Will they just take up the space left by a reduced number of County Championship games by playing more T20-type tournaments that do attract considerable spectators through their turnstiles.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Perhaps rather than mucking around with the county championship, losing some of the 1 day games would be more productive from an England point of view.

Spot on!

How would this affect the finances of the counties, considering that they will still be liable for full business rates on their county grounds ? Will they just take up the space left by a reduced number of County Championship games by playing more T20-type tournaments that do attract considerable spectators through their turnstiles.

I thought that all counties depend very heavily on funding from the ECB anyway, and the success of the England team is therefore very important. I have to admit to some bias here as T20 does nothing for me at all. but I concede that it is popular at the moment.

 

[Buttsy]

I would say that the current YB 40 should go to 4 divisions and the top sides (possibly with the 2nd placed ones) going through to a knockout competition rather than the current 3 divisions. Also, arranging the leagues on a geographical basis would assist with travelling.

For the puproses of my example, I have taken the Netherlands out of my groupings:

1. Scotland, Durham, Lancs, Yorks, Unicorns
2. Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Essex
3. Somerset, Glam, Glos, Worcs, Hants
4. Derbys, Notts, Leics, Northants, Warks.

The Unicorns have been added to the North group for convenience, though this could easily be the Netherlands and the Unicorns being slotted in as an extra team in league 2 or 3.

 

[DownSouth]

Well done to the England women's team for taking just one match to do what the men haven't - shown some balls and turned up to play. The men can go home now, the team for the Gabba has now selected itself.

 

[306024]

Thank you DownSouth. Yes the England women's team have all the team spirit that isn't apparent in the men's team just now. I've said before they are worth going to watch, I know they were really chuffed to play in front of a full house at Chelmsford last year.

 

[ainsworth74]

It's a shame that there were no highlights what so ever on TV of the match just played as it seemed like it was a very entertaining game!

 

[DownSouth]

Only a year ago Australia were the laughing stock after their disastrous tour of India (where they lost 4-0) and 'Homeworkgate'...they seemed to have turned their fortunes around without wholesale changes to their competitive structure. Darryl Lehmann has stated that they copied aspects from the England setup!

There have been major changes to the way the national team works, but not to the domestic competitions which remain as they were before. It helps that our domestic competition structure doesn't really need fixing, having only six teams makes the Sheffield Shield an elite competition where guys playing in their state's second XI could easily spearhead a county attack. At times the New South Wales state team would probably be able to beat all but the top couple of Test teams in the world.

Darren Lehmann is correct in saying that certain practices were copied by the previous coach Mickey Arthur from England's current 'high performance' focus - but he's definitely not saying that as a good thing, high performance is a load of crap that is not at all suitable for cricket. England first copied it from the supreme Australian side of 2002-2007, but failed to realise Australia was succeeding thanks to all-time champions (Hayden, Langer, Ponting, Gilchrist, Warne, McGrath) and not due to the coaches.

Australia then turned to an extreme implementation of high performance after the 2010-11 Ashes fiasco, making the same mistake of realising that loss was just due to England having some really good players and our team still suffering from the retirements of all the previously named champions except Ponting. There is nothing at all new under the sun there, coaching practices are copied all the time in all sports and often end up back where they started, just look at the legion of poached Australian cycling coaches (and a dodgy doctor from the Netherlands) responsible for the rise of British cycling on the track and with Team Sky over the last 5-10 years.

The practices Lehmann is talking about the previous regime having copied are not good ones though, the high performance model has failed Australian cricket so he has gone back to an approach of having every player playing their best cricket and refusing to allow the sport scientists to dictate on-field practices. Lehmann has also recognised what the lunatic Pat Howard (the CA high performance manager) can't see - that stress/strain injuries are caused by training and not by playing, so he would rather national squad members go and play a domestic match in a gap between national matches instead of over-training.

I expect that the English response to this tour will be to spend millions on a big review of what went wrong, which might conclude that high performance is a load of crap if they are lucky and might come up with nothing at all (or conclude even more high performance is needed!) if they are unlucky or pick the wrong reviewers.

The most important part of the 5-0 success is simply that the team was ready to stand up and show some pride, and that they knew it was possible after they got so close to winning at least two matches in England.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

It's a shame that there were no highlights what so ever on TV of the match just played as it seemed like it was a very entertaining game!

The whole match was broadcast live on the internet and we got nightly highlights during the domestic T20 competition. I think it just looks like Sky, BBC and others were asleep!

This tour will be a huge career highlight for the England team, possibly the only time some of the players will ever get to play a full tour on the big international grounds, and the three T20 matches played as double-headers with the men's games will be the biggest crowds they'll ever see.

 

[ainsworth74]

Yes the double-headers have been very successful over here at getting good crowds for them to play in front of. I've been to two games now that have been double-headers and both had a crowd of 5,000 or so, they've even done it with domestic games before and it was equally well received.

Though I'm sure that our Australian cousins will, of course, be able to out do us

 

[DownSouth]

It does help that our grounds are actually large enough to fit in a big crowd and the tickets are cheap enough for normal people to go to the cricket, a GA ticket for an international game is less than the cost of two movie tickets.

A limited overs game at the MCG won't get anywhere near the full 96,000 capacity (except at the World Cup next year when the members will have to purchase numbered tickets) but the T20I should still draw around 45,000 to 60,000 with about half of them there for the women's game.

 

[ainsworth74]

Indeed your grounds rather make my home ground (Chester-le-Street) feel positively tiny even though it's one of the larger grounds around in the UK! Certainly it seems to me the main reason why we've got eye-watering prices is simply demand and supply they can charge through the nose and England games still completly or near as sell out.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Australia gain over England in the fact there are less states there than "cricket counties" in England.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

There is a good article over on Cricinfo about MacLaurin's remarks, in particular I like the following (it's a long article so I haven't copied the whole lot):

'a quick rifle through the 2013 Cricketers' Who's Who confirms that Leicestershire, bottom of the pile in the Championship again last season, draw more players from a couple of public schools with an excellent cricket culture than they do from the city with the highest percentage of Indian immigrants outside south Asia, young people too. How can that possibly still be the case?'

'when England win Team England gets the credit. When England lose, it is not long before blame is pinned at the door of the county game.'

'One of many examples last season of Team England running roughshod over the county cricket structure it clearly does not view as excellent came when Jamie Overton, the most promising young fast bowler around, was withdrawn from Somerset's relegation fight because sitting around with England's ODI squad in the series against Australia was regarded as more useful for him, even if he did not play.

This same dismissive attitude was seen in the perpetual use last summer of Jonny Bairstow as an England drinks scuttler. At a time when Bairstow is as confused as England over whether he has more talent as a long-form or short-form cricketer, and whether keeping wicket remains a sensible career move, he needed as much cricket as he could get.

The outcome of that was Bairstow's two bad Tests in Melbourne and Sydney and a pile of personal abuse. It is a strange system which crams so much cricket into an English season that the contradictory result is that some players do not play enough.

Only an England set-up with such a disregard for the county game could have conceivably selected Chris Tremlett above Graham Onions for the Ashes tour in the belief that by some strange transformative process brought about by an England net or two Tremlett would regain the sort of form that had been conspicuously absent for Surrey. It was a selection based on theory and not on actuality.'

 

[DownSouth]

'One of many examples last season of Team England running roughshod over the county cricket structure it clearly does not view as excellent came when Jamie Overton, the most promising young fast bowler around, was withdrawn from Somerset's relegation fight because sitting around with England's ODI squad in the series against Australia was regarded as more useful for him, even if he did not play.

This same dismissive attitude was seen in the perpetual use last summer of Jonny Bairstow as an England drinks scuttler. At a time when Bairstow is as confused as England over whether he has more talent as a long-form or short-form cricketer, and whether keeping wicket remains a sensible career move, he needed as much cricket as he could get.

The outcome of that was Bairstow's two bad Tests in Melbourne and Sydney and a pile of personal abuse. It is a strange system which crams so much cricket into an English season that the contradictory result is that some players do not play enough.

This is a big point of difference for Australia with the way we run a home summer. Once they are out of the playing eleven and the match has started, the reserve players are usually disappearing off to the airport for a flight to wherever their state or T20 team is playing. Drinks and substitute fielding duties are performed by three players from the home ground's state or seconds team who are available - Brisbane eight weeks ago saw Chris Sabburg make history as the first player ever to get on a scorecard for Australia in a Test without having played a first class match.

England travelled with a very large squad on this tour. Maybe next time they should consider trying to find clubs in each city they could pay to parachute in players for the weekend? The players lower down the list of possible selections could handle drinks/fielding while the squad members close to getting selected get to play competitive cricket.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

ICC World Cup qualifier (Group A)

Hong Kong....263-7 (50 overs)

Scotland.......246 all out (48.4 overs)

It appears the men's England cricket team are not the only British team with problems...

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

This is a big point of difference for Australia with the way we run a home summer. Once they are out of the playing eleven and the match has started, the reserve players are usually disappearing off to the airport for a flight to wherever their state or T20 team is playing. Drinks and substitute fielding duties are performed by three players from the home ground's state or seconds team who are available - Brisbane eight weeks ago saw Chris Sabburg make history as the first player ever to get on a scorecard for Australia in a Test without having played a first class match.

England travelled with a very large squad on this tour. Maybe next time they should consider trying to find clubs in each city they could pay to parachute in players for the weekend? The players lower down the list of possible selections could handle drinks/fielding while the squad members close to getting selected get to play competitive cricket.

I don't think Australia have always had that policy, but it is a good one....for home matches England do something similar as you probably know, but as you suggest it would be a good idea to have a better policy on tour....I do recall that Monty Panesar did turn out for a grade side at some point, but the last few weeks has all been a bit of a blur and I can't remember whether I imagined reading that!

 

[DownSouth]

I don't recall Monty turning out for a grade side during this tour, he did appear to be running drinks and sub fielding fairly often. He did previously do a full summer in Adelaide with the Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy, as have Joe Root, Alex Hales and currently Ajmal Shazhad among others.

My local SACA grade club has previously said they would accept a donation from a touring side to have a player in the B grade team, but they would not be open to compromising the integrity of the premiership by having them in the A grade team and it would be subject to agreement from the opposition club. International players who are training with the Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy in Adelaide do play in grade sides, but that's a more stable arrangement involving regular training and a full season commitment instead of an ICC full member team blowing in for the week and wanting to parachute players into a team.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

England XI...264-8 (50 overs)
Buttler 61 not out

A recovery from the position of being 149-6 in the match against the Prime Ministers XI. Some notable batting failures in the England top order.

 

[Johnuk123]

England XI...264-8 (50 overs)
Buttler 61 not out

A recovery from the position of being 149-6 in the match against the Prime Ministers XI. Some notable batting failures in the England top order.

Cook out for 1 after 2 balls once again tells me that he is going the same way as Trott.

 

[Cletus]

Joe Root is a player I like, but he is completely out of form in one day games as well as tests.
I can’t really see him playing the next game.
We can move Stokes up from 7 and Buttler up from 8 to bring in a bowler, probably Treadwell.

Great figures from Bopara earlier 3-0-3-4. Finally we clear up an Australian tail.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Prime Ministers XI...92 all out (26 overs)

An England-like slump from a position of 58-3, losing their last seven wickets for 34 runs. All the England XI bowlers had wickets to their name.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Cook out for 1 after 2 balls once again tells me that he is going the same way as Trott.

Fell to the bowling of a certain 37 year-old Brett Lee...

 

[DownSouth]

Fell to the bowling of a certain 37 year-old Brett Lee...

There's no shame in that, he might be 37 but he has worked extremely hard to avoid letting his skills and fitness go even if he's not able to perform in long-form cricket any longer. He's not nudging up to the 160 km/h mark like he was 15 years ago, but he's still beating 150 km/h (the first person ever to do that for twenty years in a row) and moving the ball both ways. Judging by his form for the Sydney Sixers, he should be on the probable list to play for Australia at the World Twenty20.

A number of bar owners around the suburb of Manuka will surely be extremely happy today, the early finish to the tour match would have made for excellent business!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

There's no shame in that, he might be 37 but he has worked extremely hard to avoid letting his skills and fitness go even if he's not able to perform in long-form cricket any longer. He's not nudging up to the 160 km/h mark like he was 15 years ago, but he's still beating 150 km/h (the first person ever to do that for twenty years in a row) and moving the ball both ways. Judging by his form for the Sydney Sixers, he should be on the probable list to play for Australia at the World Twenty20.

A number of bar owners around the suburb of Manuka will surely be extremely happy today, the early finish to the tour match would have made for excellent business!

Our very own captain of Lancashire, Glen Chapple, is now in his 40's and is still an opening strike bowler.

Last season, in an inspired spell of pace bowling in the second innings of Essex in a County Championship match, he took Essex apart, and in 7.2 overs (4 maidens) he took 5 wickets for 9 runs, as Essex were 20 all out. Lancashire won that match by an innings and 105 runs.