Cricket

I know, especially now they're 41 for 9. Not entirely sure what's going on there. Apparently it's a seaming pitch. Well yes and.

They've managed to avoid their lowest ever Test score

Smith and Rudolph going great guns on 5 and 1 respectively.

SA FTW I reckon.

Certainly looking that way at the moment. What a strange test.

yeah 23 wickets in the day, I make that. SA need another 150ish to win, it looked like when the sun came out it was much easier.

?!

What is it about cricket that produces these crazy passages, more than any other sport? I do wish my watching days weren't mostly over.

I love the collective psychosis that can seem to affect both sides sometimes, seeing demons in the pitch when there are none, or at least few.

All four innings in a day.

Didn't Crowded House wrote a song about that? Andy Partridge should certainly consider doing so.

8wk win for SA, despite conceding a 188 first innings lead and being bowled out for 97 in that first innings. Astonishing!

the air of a private school headmaster that gets a bit too close to his favourite sporting lads

ah peter roebuck

gotta say though, I do like Roebuck's writing

― acoleuthic, Saturday, November 20, 2010 7:31 AM (11 months ago) [IP: 109.157.43.101] Bookmark

Never liked his writing, too much provocation for the sake of it. Word from Australian friends was that he was thought of as a bit of a joke, but is now being hailed as the CLR James of his day. Weird.

"Weird" sums him up

LJ gets it right with his first line.

Hope he's not talking from experience there

No. 1 in the world my hat!

Flower & Strauss out!

LOL times like these you hope they go for some sort of record defeat stat. I note another great performance from England's Best Batsman, Kevin Pietersen.

some stat about "when England lose, they lose big" has been bandied around- I think last 3 defeats were innings defeats. I think they'll bounce back, but a lot depends on whether they can get their heads round playing Ajmal.

87-7

Swann double century. Come on Swanny!

... came up 161 runs short :(

Pakistan need 15 to win.

Sterling stuff.

This is going... well, it's going really.

56-5.

lol so they let Zimbabwe play test cricket again

with unsurprising results

yes i saw that. only the fourth time a side has been bowled out twice in one day.

68-7. So, only 80 runs needed from the bowlers then.

What a shambles.

bodged it.

omg!

what is this, 1995?!

brilliant result for Pakistan, who were probably behind all Test. But yes, it's hard not to look at the batting line-up - Pietersen! Morgan! - and just shake your head in embarrassment.

Yes, great result, and they must be delighted given the various er...brushes with the English media and law, but back in the mid-90s the middle order was made of paper (Graham Thorpe aside really). You'd expect better this time...

The whole technocratic flower set-up is now to be questioned.

yeah, i'm not sure about that. is the 'technocratic' problem that they rely less on experience and on-pitch nous and more on pre-arranged strategies built on stats for each opponent/bowling machine types etc? Is that even a thing? Flower himself I've got quite a lot of time for - he seems resilient, sensible. I think Pietersen and Morgan need to be dropped, although I do realise that means you haven't really got a player who can just take the game away from teams (although Broad did do something usefully similar two days ago).

Well following the ENGLAND NO 1 a lot seemed to be made about how not only we have v good players but that flower has built a bunch of pre-strategies based on computer modelling/statical analysis and that mumbo jumbo.

I agree that Pietersen hasn't cut it for a while is a bigger problem, but (again from what I read) Eng did seem to arrive under-prepared, and Pakistan are no mugs.

Yes that's true I think. I know teams are well prepared nowadays, but you I did get a slight sense of complacency coming into this (and a lack of match fitness). Right I'm off down the pub to watch the football.

Indeed! There is more to cricket :-)

Well, the KARACHI GLOBETROTTERS have played true to form by producing a wonderfully wtf result. Hurrah!

And now the 2013 Ashes is looking even better.

Is that "there is more to cricket than life" xyzzzz__?!

I was thinking more about the technocratic thing. One thing you hear players say now, for instance, that you probably wouldn't have heard 20 years ago (when England were in their pomp of course) is talk about 'executing plans'. 'We'll be ok if we execute our plans'. It always strikes me as sensible, but also inflexible. Monty Panesar is the classic plan bowler, he doesn't even like setting his own fields, and doesn't show a lot of on-pitch flexibility. But really I've tended to find that's most used wrt bowlers and not batsmen, and clearly it's the batsmen that are the problem. I'm sure they also have their plans, but it's always going to be more reactive to bowlers, the situation, the pitch, the psychological need to get through the initial stages and 'get in'.

I hadn't realised that in fact Graham Gooch is at home, not in Dubai, because he's only retained on a consultancy basis by the ECB. That strikes me as a good detail to fill out that vague feeling of complacency.

KBP - yes, excited by Australia's bowling (always enjoy watching Clarke bat) - Hilfenhaus and Siddle looking dangerous and what's your opinion on Starc?

despite this: http://i44.tinypic.com/1581s8w.jpg

and this http://i44.tinypic.com/vy19oy.jpg

Siddle's still a (tentative) bro.

You won't see Starc around if Pattinson and Cummins are fit.

Siddle is a bloke that you want on your construction site.

sorry strauss but i dont think you should be going to india. You cant play stupid shots like that. you're a great captain but your forms not good enough and you and a few others shouldn't be going to India. KP youre in last chance saloon as far as im concerned.

KP yes. Strauss, I'd still like to have him in the side, he can pull out gritty innings (last test in UAE? in fact in all of those tests he was stronger than the meringue-like middle order iirc) and hold things together even when he's out of form, which is valuable esp in a side as prone to mental fragility as England.

KP has done pretty well in the recent one dayers, but I agree he needs a score, and no hairbrained charging down the wicket or getting run out. England might have a chance if he and Trott can keep it going for a bit.

Yep, we all want him to succeed but he needs to prove he can play spin in the subcontinent (as do others)

fuck off KP

we need to blood a few new batsmen this summer to take to India.