My critique of the St.Vincent pitch has nothing to do with the fact that AUS lost.
I have seen a lot of windies home ODI at St.Vincent over the last 10 years and was always worried about how it would last when i saw the schedule that three games would be played on that surface.
So far my fears have been realized.
Yah I agree. It just makes for dull cricket. Either you want batsman to be able to score freely, or you want to help the bowlers out. Here there isn't much for either. There's a bit of turn for spinners, but it's not fast enough to be a spinners paradise. It's just a real grinding match, and for a guy like me who hates the middle overs anyway, these pitches are a snooze fest.
Forrest dropped for Lyon and of course more shuffling with that batting lineup.
Should have happened from match 1, certainly match 2 once the conditions were known. Not quite as bad as leaving Hauritz out at the Oval '09, but similar sort of thing. There was obvious turn in the pitch, not much joy for the quicks, Lyon would have been useful instead of having Dave Hussey. Hussey is handy, but you can't really attack with him on, it's always 5 on the fence.
Lit's tough to drop a batsman for a bowler considering all the batsmen are having a tough time.
On the flip the extra batter hasn't really helped.
I hate playing 8 batsmen. Always have from the time we played Ian Harvey and James Hopes down at #8. I think it makes the top order lazy and it wastes the talent of your 7 and 8. I intend to do some kind of study into it, but I think that teams with 8 batsmen tend to be 4 or 5 wickets more quickly than teams with 7 batsmen. Just sends the message to your top 5 that they don't need to do as much work because the lineup is longer.
It's easy to look at scorecards later, see your 6,7 and 8 have scored some runs and say 'hey its lucky we played a long batting lineup', but that is the wrong conclusion. Twisted thinking really, because if you think the team needs 8 batsmen, then you are basically admitting that 4 or 5 of your other batsmen are probably going to fail. Never a good start if you think that. The only way I wouldn't mind 8 batsmen is if it's with a mind to attack A LOT. eg. send Christian and Wade in to pinch hit in the middle of the innings to accelerate the run rate.
So yeah, I think Australia will actually bat better with only 7 batsmen.