Cricket

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.

KP = Graeme Hick.

well played KP. Amazing knock.

A week's a long time in cricket obviously

Pietersen out!

tom maynard has been killed :(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18492564

that's horrible news.

How would you rank these six players? NB I know nothing about cricket.

Adam Gilchrist
Imran Khan
Ian Botham
Dennis Lillee
Richard Hadlee
Sunil Gavaskar

It's pretty difficult as there's one wicket-keeper-batsman, one specialist batsman, one specialist bowler and three all-rounders. With personal bias i'd probably say:

Khan
Gilchrist
Botham
Gavaskar
Hadlee
Lillee

There's not a great deal between them, though.

You could put them in any order tbh. Gilchrist, Lillie, Khan, Botham, Gavaskar, Hadlee maybe. Why has this come up?

yeah we would all have different orders id have botham at the top

Gilchrist top three definitely, soft spot for Hadlee has him 3, 4 or 5 and Botham probably in the bottom two. But they could be in any order, as others have said.

i feel privileged to have been old enough to have seen all of them (later parts of career obviously)

and with the 3 or 4 greatest cricketers of the last 20 years missing from there then you know what a golden era we had

and of course a lot of west indians not mentioned either

Sanath Jayasuriya the obvious name missing from the list for me, without even going near Sachin. Or Murali, or Shane Warne. Or Allan Border, or the Waughs. I'l stop now.

Yeah, I'm curious now. I mean it's clearly not a 'best of the last 40 years' list, so what is it?

Sorry to be cryptic, but it's for work!

Botham
Khan
Gilchrist
Hadlee
Lillee
Gavaskar

IMO the first four are all time, Lillee and Gavaskar not quite in the first rank.

lol what? Gavaskar was the leading test runs scorer for a long long time, in the days they didn't play as much cricket as they do now.
And try telling the aussies Lillee isnt first rank. Lillee & Thomson were FEARSOME

Not any kind of absolute list, btw. Just curious how they rank in relation to each other. Understood that a "best of the last 40 years" list would also include Warne, Tendulkar, Richards, Marshall, McGrath, Muralitharan, etc.

So Graeme Smith has done away with three England captains (Strauss, Vaughan and Hussein) as well as KP, sort of. At least Strauss didn't burst into tears.

xp to AG Gavaskar was great in the same way Boycott was, not my type of player at all though, and definitely not a team man. I would take Hadlee over Lillee every time- look at his career analysis compared to Lillee's- more wickets at a better average and a far better batsman too.

Super-over win for the West Indies! Total choke from NZ. Looking forward to seeing how England - Sri Lanka turns out.