SA tour of West Indies - 2021

[Bevab]

I'm no fan of RvD in the test side let alone at four but if it means KP bats in his natural position, so be it.

Now that I've jinxed him.. expect RvD to finally score his test century.

Post automatically merged: Jun 10, 2021

Bowl Seales you cowards!

 

[wasteyouryouth]

Wicket first over for Seales! A beauty.

 

[Aislabie]

Ngidi's ability to alternate between potential ATG and club cricketer never ceases to amaze me.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Wicket first over for Seales! A beauty.

All that "he's just like Kagiso Rabada" hype was spot on. He's effortless and right up around 140 kph. Little bit of natural shape away from the bat. Phenomenal talent, and has to be a 50-Test player at least

 

[Aislabie]

Alright, this guy is absolutely the real deal. Most impressive display of fast bowling by a teenage debutant since Pat Cummins

 

[Satan666]

Alright, this guy is absolutely the real deal. Most impressive display of fast bowling by a teenage debutant since Pat Cummins

Havent got the chance to see him at all today. Looking forward to the highlights. I trust your opinion though and you got me pretty excited.

Always great for the game when we unearth a new fastbowler that looks apart. I recall Boycott saying that its always the fast bolwers who win you test matches. So true.

 

[qpeedore]

Saw some replays of the wickets. I'll give credit to South Africa, they bowled quite well. But some of the batsmen played poor shots too. Pretty much a typical West Indian collapse - there's always a counterattacking mentality at the wrong time. Fazeer Mohammed on commentary said it best, sometimes you just have to play boring cricket for a while when wickets have been falling. And that's true. It might not be the prettiest, it might not be exciting, but some of the guys need to put a higher value on their wicket. If you get out to a good ball, then fine - you were properly out. But when you fashion your own downfall by playing away from your body, or trying to hit over the top when it's not called for, that leaves a sour taste in us fans' mouths.

Bonner out of the game with a concussion. Kieran Powell to take over. He's normally an opener, but he might fit in well at three. Bonner will (should, rather) automatically miss the next match as a precaution, so Powell really has a chance to stake a claim if he does well in the second innings. I'm actually looking forward to seeing him bat, actually. He's been pretty decent in the last FC competition, and he's not been in the team for a long time. It's a perfect opportunity for him.

I really don't like seeing Cornwall standing so wide and so deep at first slip. Da Silva is going to struggle to cover that area, and we saw that with the early chance. There was no way it could have been Cornwall's catch standing so deep, and da Silva wasn't in a good position when he dived for the ball. Cornwall standing maybe a yard up, and he'd have had a chance if he dived forward.

We haven't bowled too badly. There were some wayward deliveries, yes, but overall it wasn't bad. Some of these guys haven't played red ball cricket in a very long time, and it showed. But generally it was a pretty decent effort. Roach continues to be the bane of left-handers. Good catch from Blackwood. Elgar would not have been happy with that dismissal. Blackwood is the shortest man on the field by some way, and Elgar managed to hit it directly into his jumping path. A few inches to the left, and that would have been four.

I'm impressed with Seales thus far. I wasn't a big fan of him in this year's regional one-day tournament, but I'm growing to like him after seeing him bowl today. His three wickets were well-deserved, and hopefully he continues that display tomorrow.

South Africa are definitely on top, no doubts about it. But we've fought back pretty decently. If we can get two early wickets tomorrow we're into the tail. A lead of 120 maybe? If we bat well in the second innings and give them anything like 300 to chase in the last innings, that would be great. We can't let them give us too much of a deficit, that much is important.

There will be a result in this one. I don't see it going all five days for a draw, barring some marathon innings to come.

 

[Aislabie]

I trust your opinion though and you got me pretty excited.

In fairness, "most exciting teenage fast bowling debutant since Pat Cummins" isn't exactly the highest accolade as it's quite a small sample size, but you correctly interpreted that I'm excited about him in the same way I was excited about Pat Cummins

Spoiler: Teenage fast bowling debutants since Cumdog

Pat Cummins - Took the wickets of Amla, Rudolph, Kallis, de Villiers, Philander, Morkel and Steyn, then capped it off by hitting the winning runs. The gold standard of debuts.
Ehsan Adil - Got Smith and Faf out with excellent fundamentals, only to pull up injured and leave his team a man down.
Mustafizur Rahman - Took the wickets of Amla, Duminy and QdK in the space of four balls. Could have created an unlikely win if the weather had held off.
Alzarri Joseph - Ran in and beat Virat Kohli for pace on the bouncer. Followed it up with wickets of Rohit and Saha. Oh, that was the game where Miguel Cummins bowled like Pat.
Lahiru Kumara - Bowled very fast but showed that he had a lot to learn about Test cricket by spraying it everywhere.
Sam Curran - A wicket in each innings, but not really that special of a debut.
Wafadar Momand - It was his country's first Test and he'd played about two first-class games. It was the blind leading the blind.
Shaheen Shah Afridi - Took the wickets of Latham, Raval and Taylor across the test, but could only show so much on a spin-friendly track.
Naseem Shah - He passed the eye test, but that bowling attack got caramelised by Warner, Burns and Marnus.
Musa Khan - Teenage fast bowlers not cutting it? Why not try another one! Pakistan tried Musa Khan and he was trash.
Shoriful Islam - One of only two bowlers on this list whose debuts I didn't watch live through the power of internet streams, it doesn't look like I missed much.
Jayden Seales - This is a Trinidadian who has never represented Trinidad in first-class cricket. And every ball he looked like taking a wicket. What a spell.

 

[ddrap14]

IRL WI need to take lessons from my Cricket Captain WI who are very keen on 350-ball 80s

 

[qpeedore]

IRL WI need to take lessons from my Cricket Captain WI who are very keen on 350-ball 80s

Lol...well that's taking it to the other extreme. I don't want a team full of guys who play like Jimmy Adams.

Seales really was great today. The more I think back on his spell (video highlights not up yet), the more I realise that he was troubling the batsmen very often. He stuck to that outside off line and it paid off for him. Regularly beat the batsmen, although you can say that they also left him alone a fair bit. The thing is, when they played, it wasn't too confident. He generally took the ball away, but if over time he can manage to learn how to bring the odd one back in, he'll be a perfect setup bowler.

When Fazeer said that the last West Indian before Roach to reach 200 Test wickets was Ambrose, I was genuinely shocked. But it's actually true. It's not since 1994 that a bowler has gotten to 200 wickets for us. And we've had a hell of a lot of bowlers in the intervening years. Roach is only still 32 years old at that, 33 in about 3 weeks. He has adapted to being a seam and swing bowler rather than outright pace since his injuries, and that sort of thing also gives him extra longevity. If his body holds up, there's no reason why he can't play until he's 35 or 36 and get past the 300 mark. (Unrelated anecdote, in the late 90s we were playing Australia and a commentator pointed out that Walsh and Ambrose together had more wickets than the entire Aussie team combined.)

Faz also brought up the story of Fidel Edwards (I assume it was Edwards, I was out of the room and came back in halfway through the story, but it could only be him). Edwards had only played something like two FC games for Barbados before he bowled to Lara in the nets. Lara promptly went to the selectors and told them to pick the guy. Think he had a five-for on debut too. It was a comparison to Seales, who only has one FC match to his name - and that's an A team game against New Zealand A. It's sort of on the cards that the guy goes on to get at least five in this innings, and suddenly win or lose, Ngidi's effort is going to be relegated to the back of the mind.

"Do you remember that match where Ngidi demolished the West Indies for 97?"

"Yeah, but remember that was the match where Seales made his debut."

"Oh yeah, that was some bowling!"

That's how the conversations are gonna go.

 

[qpeedore]

No matter how good or how bad we perform, you always see the passion that our players have for representing the team. They just showed an interview with Seales, and the guy was beaming. He's clearly extremely proud of being able to play at the highest level. And that's the sort of thing that you need from players. Test cricket is still the be-all, end-all of the game, and when you get these young guys still ready and willing to aim for that sort of thing, it's really heartening to see.

He was born when we were slumping heavily. And still he wants to represent us and is proud of being able to do so. Excellent attitude.

More wickets, please!

 

[Satan666]

No matter how good or how bad we perform, you always see the passion that our players have for representing the team. They just showed an interview with Seales, and the guy was beaming. He's clearly extremely proud of being able to play at the highest level. And that's the sort of thing that you need from players. Test cricket is still the be-all, end-all of the game, and when you get these young guys still ready and willing to aim for that sort of thing, it's really heartening to see.

He was born when we were slumping heavily. And still he wants to represent us and is proud of being able to do so. Excellent attitude.

More wickets, please!

Let some IPL scout him for next year and he wouldnt give a damn about representing the Windies in white!

Really has been the story of both these teams with players quota and the IPL sucking them dry. Both teams always had natural talent but they mostly fall prey to the IPL ideals.

 

[qpeedore]

@Untouchables_666

That's the sad thing about promising red-ball players. It's why guys like Kieron Pollard has never played a Test and hasn't played FC cricket in years, even though he was really good at the 4-day game. But despite that, we do still have guys like Nick Pooran who admits that he sees himself as a white-ball player, but his ultimate dream is to represent the West Indies in Tests.

Hey, look at that. Wicket. Wiaan Mulder I believe. Holder has a serious issue with no-balls in this match, but he's been on that back of a good length, then sneak one fuller in sort of bowling. He's a thinking bowler, so I'm glad to see him get the two today so far. Lead already 118 though. Maybe 150 lead? I'd be somewhat comfortable with that...anything past 200 is going to be really difficult.

 

[qpeedore]

Oh wow, brilliant catch from Powell at bat-pad/forward short leg. Happy to see Big Jimbo among the wickets. He's lost some weight though...

Teams generally throw the newest specialist batsman under the helmet. I was never a proponent of that sort of thing. Ricky Ponting wore the helmet and fielded close in a hell of a lot of times. So did Ramnaresh Sarwan. Kieron Pollard also fields close in during limited overs games. You really need a guy who's got fast reflexes and the catching ability in those positions.

I'm happy for the catch, but I'm wondering if Shai Hope could probably be a better player close in. He's a keeper, he'll have stood up to the spinners. He's an obvious choice for fielding close, at least in my opinion. Of course, Powell will be wearing the helmet and shin guards for years to come after that catch. But...just saying...consider Shai Hope too.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

Looks like this test could be over quickly.

 

[Bevab]

Let some IPL scout him for next year and he wouldnt give a damn about representing the Windies in white!

Really has been the story of both these teams with players quota and the IPL sucking them dry. Both teams always had natural talent but they mostly fall prey to the IPL ideals.

A test series between two teams from different continents and you still manage to sneak in a bashing against a T20 competition. Is there any sunshine in your life? Also, the usual tripe against the quotas being the great drain of talent.