General Cricket Discussion

mmm i watch quite a bit of county cricket if i can on skysports and so much of it is sub par. the batsmen are not of the same quality and too many bowlers are what we would call "county plodders". throughout the late 80s and most of the previous decade, there was a real lack of quality in the England side which must have been due to the county system.
I grew up watching the Caddick/Gough generation which in all honesty was laughable.
Now there are some talented players who have made an impact, Cook, KP, Trott, Strauss and Flintoff. 2 of those names were raised and matured in SA, under a much harsher, winner takes all mentality. I've played a lot of cricket here and the attitude is more like "it's ok if you lose" which is not serving anyone at the moment. Flintoff slipped away in the last few years, mostly due to injury yes but even in his early years, before the glory days of 2004-06 he was a serial underachiever (Broad??).
Cook is the shining beacon of English cricket at the moment, but having one is not enough.

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I forgot about Anderson, who has come good in the last couple of years but again, his failures in non-english conditions and in the ODI game are widely documented.
Swann is a very good off-spinner, but having shone at the international level in his thirties, I can't see him going any further.
 
England have produced a lot of quality players over the last few years. Their bowling line up at the moment is very potent with impressive and more than capable bench strength to back them up. The era that Cricket Icon is mentioning was where a lot of bits and pieces players (Ealham, Hollioakes, Cork) played for England even at test level.
 
Well, this is a very impressive English side perhaps the best one in a few years but I can't agree that Caddick and Gough were not good bowlers. They especially Gough was a very good bowler of that time.
 
Their main failing was living in the shadow of a dozen really excellent bowlers that happened to be playing.
 
Gough was good and only SLIGHTLY above average, Caddick was average. The point I was trying to make was that there haven't been too many WORLD BEATERS in recent years. And the County scene should really take more responsibility for that.

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And I have gotten back into the T20s this year, good to see Junaid Khan doing very well, and McDonald with the bat has been tremendous.
 
Yeah, but sometimes you just get a generational gap where there is less talent and often that isn't the fault of the system. For example, India doesn't have many good players between 30-36 (they have a lot around 30ish though: Dhoni, Harbhajan, Yuvraj, Gambhir). Sehwag and Zaheer are about the only 2 guys that bridge the gap between the 30 year olds and the over 35s of Dravid, Laxman and God. That's the kind of gap that got Greg Chappell in trouble a few years ago when he became too keen to promote young players. Maybe if there was more talent in the right age bracket of 27-30 he mightn't have had to reach further back for players that were younger.

It's funny now because Australia is in exactly the same position that India was a few years ago ie. not much talent in the 25-30 age bracket. There's a big gap between young under 25 guys like Hughes, Khawaja, Smith, Pattinson, Starc etc. and then the 30 year old guys like Watson, Johnson and Clarke with very few guys in between. And who did they promote just a year ago to help us through the talent drought? Greg fricken Chappell... He better have learned his lesson. Although I guess it turned out OK in the end for India...
 
sifter132 said:
Yeah, but sometimes you just get a generational gap where there is less talent and often that isn't the fault of the system. For example, India doesn't have many good players between 30-36 (they have a lot around 30ish though: Dhoni, Harbhajan, Yuvraj, Gambhir). Sehwag and Zaheer are about the only 2 guys that bridge the gap between the 30 year olds and the over 35s of Dravid, Laxman and God. That's the kind of gap that got Greg Chappell in trouble a few years ago when he became too keen to promote young players. Maybe if there was more talent in the right age bracket of 27-30 he mightn't have had to reach further back for players that were younger.

It's funny now because Australia is in exactly the same position that India was a few years ago ie. not much talent in the 25-30 age bracket. There's a big gap between young under 25 guys like Hughes, Khawaja, Smith, Pattinson, Starc etc. and then the 30 year old guys like Watson, Johnson and Clarke with very few guys in between. And who did they promote just a year ago to help us through the talent drought? Greg fricken Chappell... He better have learned his lesson. Although I guess it turned out OK in the end for India...
Click to expand...

I think Chappel should have kept Katich as well. Alternatively kicked everyone out. Reg. India it was good from the sense some people like Raina got opportunites and it was bad in the sense some guys like Irfan were destroyed. Probably Shane Warne needs to be the coach or selector along with Gilli. They seem to know the knack to unearth and inspire cricketers.
 
I just read something very positive at cricinfo about Junaid Khan who is playing for Lancashire. He lead his side to victory when Northants needed only seven to win from six balls. Junaid bowled 6 yorkers all clocking at closer or over 90 MPH and gave away only three runs. It would be awesome if Junaid could fill the gap left by Aamir's stupidity.
 
sifter132 said:
It's funny now because Australia is in exactly the same position that India was a few years ago ie. not much talent in the 25-30 age bracket. There's a big gap between young under 25 guys like Hughes, Khawaja, Smith, Pattinson, Starc etc. and then the 30 year old guys like Watson, Johnson and Clarke with very few guys in between. And who did they promote just a year ago to help us through the talent drought? Greg fricken Chappell... He better have learned his lesson. Although I guess it turned out OK in the end for India...
Click to expand...

Not a good sign considering we were meant to be on the up after 2 years of rebuilding already.
 
Agree that the review is taking a fair while. I'm sure the team selections for SL will take place before the review is finished, and we already know Nielsen and Chappell have long contracts. There won't be much change at the top when the review is finally done I would imagine.

As for coaches in general, I think every new captain should be given the option of having a new coach, and should get a large say in who that coach is. Those 2 are the brains trust of the team and it makes sense to have guys with the same philosophy and mindset in that role. It worked really well for Steve Waugh and John Buchanon for example. But if Shane Warne had been captain, then Buch would have been a terrible appointment because their styles clashed.
 
sami ullah khan said:
I just read something very positive at cricinfo about Junaid Khan who is playing for Lancashire. He lead his side to victory when Northants needed only seven to win from six balls. Junaid bowled 6 yorkers all clocking at closer or over 90 MPH and gave away only three runs. It would be awesome if Junaid could fill the gap left by Aamir's stupidity.
Click to expand...

I actually saw that. One ball was clocked at 92 mph. Pakistan has no problem producing FAST bowlers but the quality, especially in the longer form of the game is not there for Khan....yet. Seen him play for Pakistan a few times, was good but Aamir is a once in a generation type of athlete, oh why oh why did he mess it up :noway .

Good point made by Sifter (I think) there are some generational gaps, but England's was more a drought. There has been a slight recovery in recent times, but the best batsmen over the last few years for England have been KP and more recently Trott, sadly neither English. Cook has been the only other stand out. Both Bell and Strauss have done well but neither has been world shatteringly good. In ODI cricket we now have Morgan...who is Irish.

The bowling department in all honesty has fared a lot better. Fin, Anderson, Swann and to some extent Broad and Bresnan have all carried expectations very very well.

The problem with Australia is that a tried and tested method of grooming young players for the international scene has not been working so well, but with a much fairer selection committee with less nepotism then say India or Pakistan, they should come through this bump a lot easier than subcontinental teams.

The current problems facing Pakistan and their lack of international quality players has been made much worse with all the back room politics, exactly what happened to India from, in reality, the late 70s/early 80s till about 6 years ago.

Which goes to show how important having a decent, hard working cricket board, which actually cares about the game is.
 
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