Solution to England?s Woes?

[MUFC1987]

The Aussie domestic competition only has 6.

And has a smaller population to choose from, and therefore less players. Sure if they have their International players, there are some good Australian sides. But I'd say outside the top two or three, the rest are no better or worse than the English sides. Lets not forget that the newest County in England has produced Harmison, Collingwood and Plunkett.

 

[evertonfan]

They have Onions as well who's on the outskirts of the England setup.

 

[Sureshot]

The Aussie domestic competition only has 6.

It's more in relation to how many states you have though isn't it?

Could you have 18 state teams? (without dividing the states up into north/south, etc)

It starts with the kids imo. As Kev has said, Football is easily more encouraged, probably even Rugby too.

 

[Stephen Bailey]

Good point Jeremy, I think we played cricket for about 2 weeks a year at school. (OK it may have been a little loneger than that but not much).

You had longer than we did at school then. We got two sessions of Cricket in PE if we were lucky during the summer. Most people wanted to do Rounders, Tennis or Athletics. It just wasn't encouraged. My cricket club has offered several times to do some coaching sessions for a number of schools, but they just don't want to know.

 

[Kev]

You had longer than we did at school then. We got two sessions of Cricket in PE if we were lucky during the summer. Most people wanted to do Rounders, Tennis or Athletics. It just isn't encouraged. My cricket club has offered several times to do some coaching sessions for a number of schools, but they just don't want to know.

Yeah to be honest, I didnt care that we only got 2 weeks of it. I much prefered playing football, rugby, tennis, softball or doing things like cross country running. Certainly at my school cricket was thought of as a sport for toffs. An image it still has in the UK to a certain extent.

 

[Griffo]

You say these things but English soccer isnt brilliant and English rugby is just as bad if not worse than Australian rugby atm and Rugby Union is behind 4-5 sports in australias most popular

 

[angryangy]

And has a smaller population to choose from, and therefore less players. Sure if they have their International players, there are some good Australian sides. But I'd say outside the top two or three, the rest are no better or worse than the English sides. Lets not forget that the newest County in England has produced Harmison, Collingwood and Plunkett.

You sure have a point there. I mean with more than twice as many people, England could easily field a second quality international team. Right? No, not quite, rather it is Australia who would still have more luck finding players for a second team.

It seems pretty clear whenever Aussie players spend a season in England that the competition is nowhere near as tough. Brad Hodge, David Hussey, Michael Hussey, Justin Langer, Stuart Law, Chris Rogers, Phil Jaques, Martin Love, Darren Lehmann are just a few of the batsmen who have had enjoyed Bradmanesque seasons on the county pitches. More recently, younger players such as Cameron White, Shane Watson and Mark Cosgrove have joined them to considerable success.

Just compare a current English player with one of these men. Ian Bell is a fairly comfortable squad member, he has 4700 odd runs for Warwickshire at a handsome average of 42. Darren Lehmann, on the other hand, whose efforts in first class cricket were barely enough to squeeze in 27 tests, averages almost 69 at Yorkshire after 88 matches.

I don't even comprehend your point that the newest county produced international players. You don't get more international players by creating more counties. You get the same number of players, distributed over a greater area. If that team wasn't there, they'd play for someone else.

 

[MUFC1987]

No, if the team wasn't there, they wouldn't get noticed and would be lost to the sport. It's all very well for you to slag off County Cricket but it's the first place Australian players look for experience and has resulted in many of them being fast tracked to the team. Imagine if there was only 6 county teams, it would hurt Australias prospects.

To whoever said English football is poor is talking rubbish. The English team is decent and the domestic sides are 4 of the best 12 or so in Europe easily.

 

[Griffo]

finally someone talking sense the english soccer teams buy their way to sucess there not to far of the rugby league system in england

the county players dont devlop their skills batting against the bowling of Timothey Linley they devlop the skills against the likes of James Anderson and Stuart Broad if they face ore consistant and higher skilled bowling their talents will rise and they learn to adapt and concentrate in more high pressure situations

The steve harmisons and liam plunketts of durham will be found while playing club cricket and news isnt like the 1920's it spreads fast so if someone picks up 8-13 in a club game people will hear about it and there is also a thing called a scout they actually go out and LOOK for new players like they do now

 

[MUFC1987]

No, Counties are in charge of Cricket in their area essentially due to ECB iniatiatives. If Durham didn't exist, the likes of Liam Plunkett may never have been encouraged to play cricket ever.

 

[puddleduck]

The fact is though that the English soccer team despite it's underacheivement is actually in the top 10 in the World in a Sport that has 100's of teams competiting. So even if they could do better they are still one of the top sides in the world.

At the same time AngryAngy, you have to take into account that someone like Mick Lewis was able to get international recognition playing in Australia, but was no more than a journeyman pro when he came to play in England, so it isn't just the case that players come to England and always find it easy.

 

[Griffo]

thats where the ECB needs to pull their finger out and work they are not going to be sucessful unless they adapt their system to one that has worked for over 30 years in Australia. What would you prefer 18 counties or an ashes victory

 

[puddleduck]

thats where the ECB needs to pull their finger out and work they are not going to be sucessful unless they adapt their system to one that has worked for over 30 years in Australia. What would you prefer 18 counties or an ashes victory

But we acheived an Ashes victory with 18 counties all of 2 years ago :

 

[Griffo]

The sad thing for English cricket is that instead of aussies going to england when an english player goes to australia like geraint jones and ian salisbury they play grade cricket

 

[Kev]

And what do you expect the other counties to do? Just shut up shop and go away?

They are businesses and believe it or not do not exist to bring on England players. They exist to try and win the county championship.