New Zealand in South Africa - Dec - Jan 2012/13

[spooony]

Nah i wasn't talking about that england # 1 team. I as an english supporter never recognized them as # 1 as the faulty rankings systems said.

I was refering to the 1951-1958 england team.

And the South African team of the 70's

 

[Biggy]

New Zealand are ridiculously bad, I think they need to enter themselves into the Sheffield Shield before they play anymore tests.

 

[spooony]

Trouble is spelled P-R-O-T-E-A-S
NZ 40/6

 

[crazyrahul]

What should we call this series?
Such an one-sided boring series

Still we must say OUTSTANDING Team Effort by RSA

 

[CG123]

Martin was our best bowler in the warm-up and in the first test, so what do Hesson and McCullum etc. do, drop him for their Otago mate Wagner who gets smashed. Seriously, they just don't help themselves. Watling should be opening as well, swap him and McCullum and get McCullum to wear the gloves down the order. McCullum isn't a test match opener, nor is he a test match captain, end of story. You can have all the staff etc. that NZC do, but atm they're just planning to fail.

 

[Howsie]

Martin wasn't New Zealand's best bowler in that first test, he was terrible, the most pedestrian fast bowling performance I've seen in a long time. He picked up a couple of declearation wickets but was next to useless otherwise.

Wagner's terrible too but at least he can hold a bat.

 

[CG123]

Martin wasn't New Zealand's best bowler in that first test, he was terrible, the most pedestrian fast bowling performance I've seen in a long time. He picked up a couple of declearation wickets but was next to useless otherwise.

If Martin was useless, then what were the other bowlers? You couldn't bowl much worse than Wagner did, and he was bad in the West Indies as well, plus you only have to look at the warm-up where he struggled against South Africa F. Bracewell's been pretty terrible since his initial honeymoon period in the team as well.

Wagner's terrible too but at least he can hold a bat.

A number 11 shouldn't need to be able to hold a bat, look at South Africa where Morkel didn't even need to bat throughout the series.

 

[swacker]

As much as that would help the weaker teams, it just doesn't make for good viewing for the general public and I personally think a tier system would just about sort all that out, competition is best where in it's actually competitive.

I don't see having two tiers helping improve the standard of Test cricket.

Whatever changes are made should be done with the aim of improving Test cricket, both it's overall standard and to keep it as the ultimate form of the game.

 

[Owzat]

I don't see having two tiers helping improve the standard of Test cricket.

Whatever changes are made should be done with the aim of improving Test cricket, both it's overall standard and to keep it as the ultimate form of the game.

I think tiers are the only way forward, until such a time Test cricket will remain stagnant and some series uncompetitive like this. The pros are :

- less teams to play in a rotation = less fixture congestion
- sides play other sides at the same level
- the format becomes workable with a proper table and championship
- series lengths become standard rather than agreed by the two sides
- the game becomes more international with more than 10 elite teams in it
- weaker sides can improve and get promotion to aim at, it isn't just playing cricket and a string of meaningless results
- you could impliment a "deciding factor" of say wickets* to make sure there are no dead rubbers and sides have something to play for even when up against it. This could decide league positions like GD in football
- DRS would be mandatory as part of the competition, maybe just in the top league unless someone funded it in other leagues (or s*y cough up)

*I've long thought margins should be standardised to runs or wickets. Runs as a margin could be say in ODIs the second side bats to the end of their overs so the winning margin is runs. As pitches vary you could do it as wickets, so if the side is batting last and loses by 72 runs say, the margin is how many wickets the other side had 72 runs from the end of their innings (if you subtract 72 from their 2nd innings).

If a side wins by X wickets then all well and good, if by an innings you add 10 wickets to the 72 runs example. As the wicket margin would factor in the pitch, same for both sides, it would be less influential. And of course it means you could only have a "deciding factor" of 20 max, more likely to be between 3 and 10, so it doesn't gain too big an advantage if you win by a lot of runs - and it takes out the complexity of the innings margin for which there is no runs value possible.



I'm sure there are more pros to the tiers proposal, it will meet resistance because people like things the way they are even though cricket itself wouldn't change and the only possible loss is the aussies not getting to stuff the kiwis all the time. When the kiwis are good enough they'll go up and get a chance to prove it, or go back down. If sides are worried about bilateral series they really want in the calendar, with reduced fixtures they could always play each other with the result not counting towards the championship.............................

 

[spooony]

Cmon guys. It is just a on form South African team that makes some of the other teams look ridiculously bad. Philander made the Aussies look like amateurs just like he did the Kiwi's at Newlands. NZ were just as good as South Africa allowed them to be. So no matter what you do breaking up in tiers or whatever is not going to change much. Only way that you are going to have tight games is when 1 and 2 play against each other the whole year. Australia made it llok boring back in the 90's/2000's in their golden era.

 

[swacker]

- less teams to play in a rotation = less fixture congestion
- sides play other sides at the same level
- the format becomes workable with a proper table and championship
- series lengths become standard rather than agreed by the two sides
- the game becomes more international with more than 10 elite teams in it
- weaker sides can improve and get promotion to aim at, it isn't just playing cricket and a string of meaningless results

A lot of people will argue against a two tiered Test system would be you're only going to get better playing better teams. I am not convinced that's true. Though on the over side of the argument (having tiers system) you're going to be having mainly games like Bangladesh v West Indies, New Zealand v Zimbabwe and so on.

I suspect few fans who watch these countries at home will hardly be enamored with the prospect of these games. The likes of Bangladesh are very unlikely to get out of the second tier for at least a decade, so their choice of Test matches will be extremely limited. Also England will be playing Australia and South Africa every other week and this will dilute the interest in The Ashes and the big series against the likes of South Africa.

By 1999, with coach David Lloyd resigning after the World Cup exit and new captain Nasser Hussain just appointed, England hit rock bottom (literally ranked as lowest rated test nation) after losing in shambolic fashion to New Zealand 2?1. Hussain was booed on the Oval balcony as the crowd geered "We've got the worst team in the world" to the tune of "whole world in our hands".

As the quote above shows these things happen in cycles. Sure, New Zealand and Sri Lanka are having a tough time of it at the moment, where the player resources are limited and the teams are for the moment uncompetitive. Having a two tier system would not help to keep Test cricket as the premier form of cricket either, especially in those countries in the second tier.

 

[War]

New Zealand news : Jesse Ryder sets sights on England series | Cricket News | New Zealand v England | ESPN Cricinfo

Taylor hints at return for England series

Good to see Ryder & Taylor will be back soon. Get them back in the middle order & the NZ especially in tests will be solid.

 

[spooony]

New Zealand news : Jesse Ryder sets sights on England series | Cricket News | New Zealand v England | ESPN Cricinfo

Taylor hints at return for England series

Good to see Ryder & Taylor will be back soon. Get them back in the middle order & the NZ especially in tests will be solid.

Hows things going now Astle and Cairns might think of making a test comeback

 

[Chewie]

From what I saw of the match, Mitch was bowling pretty well.

 

[Warner Watson]

NZ back in trouble Kleinvedlt strikes. thing at looking good for NZ.