sami ullah khan
Panel of Selectors
Nah, I don't think we need tiering. Test cricket is as healthy as a bison atm.
LOL, that series was two high scoring draws and the India smashed NZ. That's not excitement
Don't pretend that's not already how it works. Australia have played 5 away matches against Pakistan in the last 10 years, one third of the number of Tests played in England in that time. The Ashes of course follows a slightly irregular 4 year calendar, but currently Australia and South Africa are running their double tour extravaganza on a 3 year cycle. For old friends New Zealand and West Indies, they can manage to tour about once every 5 years, but Australia has toured neither Sri Lanka nor Bangladesh in six years, a period in which they have toured India thrice.
Ireland and scotland are not test nations because we have no FC competition, we could not run one that would get close to breaking even, the public are apathetic towards the sport, participation and spectatorship are low and our potential for development is poor.
How do the weaker sides improve? Well by playing other weaker sides, getting thrashed heavily is not a good way to improve. You're better off playing someone around your level, it is testing and to beat the other sides around your level then you have to improve. It also avoids having confidence destroyed, had Bangladesh played West Indies, Zimbabwe and say Ireland and Scotland instead of getting beaten heavily by the likes of England, Sri Lanka etc then maybe they'd be a better side now.
This confuses me Stinky - why are England, Scotland, Wales etc treated as different nations when it comes to sport? You all have the same central government, same nationality etc, so why such difference in sporting culture?
This confuses me Stinky - why are England, Scotland, Wales etc treated as different nations when it comes to sport? You all have the same central government, same nationality etc, so why such difference in sporting culture?
it stems from football and rugby. the first ever international in football was between scotland and england, there were regional leagues in england and scotland (because travelling in the early amatuer times of the game wouldn't be practical) scotland issued a challenge to england in a paper, england accepted and the first ever international was formed.
I think it has a lot to do with lots of sports being invented in britain (rugby, cricket, tennis, football, baseball (yep), golf, snooker) and in the early days scotland, wales and englands natural rivalry was a motivating factor in playing them. so when we formed sporting bodies we formed our own seperate ones and they stuck. UEFA famously wants us to join and become a UK team because they think that's proper (also, there are political power reasons as well but we'll leave them) but we refuse.
Altough cricket scotland was not formed that way, we seperated from the ECB fairly recently to keep with the tradition of having seperate sporting bodies from england.
Ye basically. But sometimes i do wish FIFA would/could have made the home nations play as one UK team, like they do in the olympics though.
I always wondered if you were australian or english.
so, australian I guess.
But Wales are wasting time having a national team.