Cricket

[Johnuk123]

England win by an innings and 244 runs against a terrible Indian team.

 

[Whistler40145]

Considering that India started the series well, they've been well & truly blown away. Chris Jordan's bowling today was great, he just needs to keep improving.

 

[Johnuk123]

Considering that India started the series well, they've been well & truly blown away. Chris Jordan's bowling today was great, he just needs to keep improving.

England's Bowling has been magnificent but India have gone from being reasonably good to absolutely awful.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

England win by an innings and 244 runs against a terrible Indian team.

In all my years following cricket I can't recall such a poor batting team as India in the last three tests, as well as Anderson and Broad bowled at the start of each innings, application there was none from the Indians! Even when they were hera last time and lost 4-0 they had Dravid!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I cannot imagine any Indian team that was captained by Sunil Gavaskar when he was there to motivate the players would have performed in such abysmal fashion when batting.

 

[DarloRich]

No test match for 6 mths????????? Bloody one day rubbish

 

[Whistler40145]

I wondered the same, 6 months till a Test Match.

I can understand that early next year is the ICC World Cup & therefore you can't schedule any in that period.

 

[ainsworth74]

No test match for 6 mths????????? Bloody one day rubbish

Yeah it's appears that it's the influence of the World Cup. We are going to Sri Lanka in November to play a 5 ODI and 2 T20I series but there's no tests. Not playing the tests gives us a gap until a triangular series in Australia as build up to the World Cup itself.

To be fair looking at our schedule we need the time off as it's pretty much chock-a-block for all of 2015 and well into 2016. Hell 2017 really!

 

[tony_mac]

Well, that was a thriller at Old Trafford between 2 of the bottom 3!
http://www.espncricinfo.com/county-cricket-2014/engine/match/692833.html
The day started heading for a draw with Durham still behind and 1 wicket down; it ended with Lancashire winning, with 1 wicket left, and 2 balls to spare! (recovering for 36/5 and 90/9 to reach 107)

It was exhausting to watch, even on Cricinfo!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

On day 1 at Old Trafford today, in the relegation-issue County Championship match, Durham made a good start to 50-0, then had a mid-table slump to 82-5 before a magnificent stand by MacLeod 84 (9x4) and Hastings 83 (6x6 and 4x4) saw a rearguard lower order recovery with both being dismissed late in the day but not until Durham reached 329-8 from 96 overs at close of play. Smith was a Lancashire bowler to emerge with a modicum of honour with his bowling figures of 20-6-37-4.

Match just finished with many wickets falling on the last day.

Durham 340 and 187
Lancashire 421 and 107-9

Lancashire win by 1 wicket and have gained a good number of points and go over Durham in the league table, but Durham still have a game in hand of Lancashire.

--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

No test match for 6 months?????????

People like Jimmy Anderson will be relieved that such a gap exists for the 5-day game.

 

[DownSouth]

People like Jimmy Anderson will be relieved that such a gap exists for the 5-day game.

He does seem to be bowling more overs than he should to carry the team, despite it being common knowledge to everybody except Alistair Cook that leading strike bowlers don't get more wickets if they get over-used. 2013 (and the Sydney Test in the first week of this year) had him bowling 568 overs in Tests in the space of nine months. It's no wonder that he couldn't stay in the fast-medium pace range once it got into December, and he looked like he could hardly walk by the time the whitewash was over in Sydney. When speeds start to drop the quality of a swing bowler like Anderson also drops – England's own sports scientists have worked out that below 140 km/h it's impossible to get reverse swing on even the notoriously reverse-happy Duke ball.

Anderson does look a little skinny to be handling long spells of fast-medium bowling at the moment, I wonder if he needs some work with a strength and conditioning coach to build muscle mass? A good long break after the end of the English season should provide plenty of time for a recovery break through to the end of September, then three months in the gym ahead of a busy period starting with the World Series in Australia, then going on to the World Cup and a short break before the English season with an Ashes series.

England would do well to clearly delineate which bowlers are there to come on for short attacking spells and take wickets (Anderson and Broad) twice a session, and which ones are there to provide long spells of stock bowling. It's okay for a captain to not attack the whole time, so long as the 'defensive' bowlers are keeping the pressure up with a consistent line and length that doesn't allow the batsmen to get on top. As a bonus, those stodgy stock bowlers will still get a decent share of wickets if they are good at it – it used to work for Paul Collingwood and Jacques Kallis, and in the last Ashes series it worked quite well for Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon.

Considering that India started the series well, they've been well & truly blown away. Chris Jordan's bowling today was great, he just needs to keep improving.

At least they showed some spirit in the first couple of matches.

Last time India played in Australia (with Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman all in the team) they got whitewashed 4-0 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. The match at the WACA was over just after lunch on the third day, which was a major problem for the Nine Network who lost lots of advertising revenue they would otherwise have brought in when the third session of each day in Perth is perfect for the big Melbourne and Sydney prime time TV markets.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Anderson does look a little skinny to be handling long spells of fast-medium bowling at the moment, I wonder if he needs some work with a strength and conditioning coach to build muscle mass? A good long break after the end of the English season should provide plenty of time for a recovery break through to the end of September, then three months in the gym ahead of a busy period starting with the World Series in Australia, then going on to the World Cup and a short break before the English season with an Ashes series.

Always good to hear from you on the Cricket thread. With regards to what you say above about Anderson needing more muscle adding to his frame, I don't know if you follow the top level of golf, but Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland who is at the top of his game at present with two Masters titles in quick succession, had added no less than half a stone of muscle and seems to be benefitting from this, stamina-wise.

 

[DownSouth]

Not a huge golf fan myself, until McIlroy got his name on the news recently the only two things I knew about him was that he was a golfer and also the partner of Caroline Wozniacki.

Ryan Harris is looking in absolutely superb physical shape at the moment. After the Test series win over South Africa (especially his heroic effort to come back and take the last wicket) he had to have knee surgery with a long recovery period, but that hasn't stopped him getting into the gym to work on his upper body. He also got appointed by CA as an assistant coach for Australia A while he couldn't play himself, which is a most interesting move.

 

[CallySleeper]

Meanwhile, another classic Outlaws game at Trent Bridge:

Warwickshire 302-7 (50 overs)
Nottinghamshire 306-9 (50 overs)

Notts win by one wicket off the last ball. I understand it's the biggest ever one-day run chase at Trent Bridge.

Unbelievable tension!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

This Saturday, the T20 Blast Finals will be held at Edgbaston.....

1st semi-final....1100 start
Birmingham Bears v Surrey

2nd semi-final....1430 start
Hampshire v Lancashire
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
T20 Blast semi-final results

Birmingham Bears 194-4 (20 overs)
Surrey 178-7 (20 overs)

Lancashire 160-5 (19 overs...now using D/L method)
Hampshire 101 all out (14.1 overs)

 

[DownSouth]

The ODI tri-series in Zimbabwe started last night with an unsurprisingly massive win for Australia over Zimbabwe.

The most interesting part of the game would probably be the Australian lineup: two batsmen, the keeper, three batting all rounders, two bowling all rounders and three specialist bowlers who can all swing the bat around a bit. Looks like World Cup preparation is now in full swing if Darren Lehmann is starting to give some selection tactics a test run.

Mitchell Johnson also showed his aim can be excellent when he's on form, both with the ball and with the bat.

 

[CallySleeper]

James Taylor hit a career-best 146no as Nottinghamshire beat Derbys by 85 runs to progress to the one-day cup semifinals. In doing so Notts hit 81 off the last 6 overs, and set a new 50 over record at Trent Bridge (313-5), beating their own record of 306-9 set last week.

 

[muddythefish]

Astonishing that Taylor continues to be overlooked by England in the short-game format. He's a very good player.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The ODI tri-series in Zimbabwe started last night with an unsurprisingly massive win for Australia over Zimbabwe.

To be fair to Zimbabwe, they were 83-2 at one stage. Masaakadza with 70 from 91 balls and Raza with 33 from 40 balls gave them a good start, but an Indian-like slump saw them lose their last eight wickets for only another 69 runs.

 

[DownSouth]

To be fair to Zimbabwe, they were 83-2 at one stage. Masaakadza with 70 from 91 balls and Raza with 33 from 40 balls gave them a good start, but an Indian-like slump saw them lose their last eight wickets for only another 69 runs.

Masaakadza is a good batsman but Zimbabwe were always going to be outclassed chasing 350 – George Bailey had nine options to bowl (only himself and Brad Haddin don't bowl at elite level, but even Haddin is known to get fiercely competitive when bowling to the ICC umpire Aleem Dar in the nets!) if the batsmen managed to get on top of even a couple of them.

Glenn Maxwell is a pretty good option to have up your sleeve and not need to use, and Aaron Finch has previously done the job as an oddball partnership breaker like Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting used to do from time to time.

Interestingly, the Australian women's team also seem to be going for the long bowling list tactic at the moment - as with the England/India series they've also been contesting matches against Pakistan at Allan Border Field in Brisbane for points in the 2014-2017 ICC Women's Championship in the last week.

 

[Cletus]

Mitchell Johnson also showed his aim can be excellent when he's on form, both with the ball and with the bat.

He's done it again today this time against South Africa 23 off 8 balls (1x4 and 2x6).

Australia totalled 327-7.

Have England it in them to score over 300 regularly? Graeme Swann doesn't seem to think so at the moment.

 

[DownSouth]

He's done it again today this time against South Africa 23 off 8 balls (1x4 and 2x6).

Australia totalled 327-7.

Have England it in them to score over 300 regularly? Graeme Swann doesn't seem to think so at the moment.

That was Australia's 77th 300+ score, we're now just one behind India although they are in a good position to go past 300 in the current match with Dhoni and Raina in and Jordan having just bowled an 11 ball over.

It's way too early to say if 327 is enough to win, there was that match in Johannesburg in 2006 where 438 was not enough. Australia don't have Mick Lewis there to get a century this time.

Zimbabwe continue to have issues with team discipline. This time they've banned the bowler Panyangara from the rest of the tri-series for sending the batsmen in the team a video of Mitchell Johnson working over the English batsmen last summer

 

[Cletus]

Well, England will have to chase over 300, mainly due to Jordan's usual erratic bowling.

 

[ainsworth74]

Well, England will have to chase over 300, mainly due to Jordan's usual erratic bowling.

Actually only 295 after some help from the rain

Is he the new Jade Dernbach? Sprays it all over the place but the selectors seemingly love him none the less...

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The total of 17 overs bowled by Jordan and by Stokes cost 127 runs at an average cost of 7.47 runs per over.

 

[Cletus]

295 off 3 less overs, so at a higher run rate.

With rain about we need to be ahead of Duckworth/Lewis, Cook needs to up his scoring rate, 10 runs from 23 balls last I looked.

South Africa won their run chase with 3.2 overs to spare. They only hit 4 sixes in their whole innings.

 

[muddythefish]

England were poor today and although we had the worst of the batting conditions 160 was a poor total. Taylor deserves a chance in place of Bell while I would still play Bopara - the lad is such an outstanding talent.

On a happier note good to see the rock crunchers reduced to rubble by South Africa in Harare.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

With rain about we need to be ahead of Duckworth/Lewis, Cook needs to up his scoring rate, 10 runs from 23 balls last I looked.

Captain Cook eventually serenely moved on to 19 from 33 balls before being dismissed, nothwithstanding that he knew that England had to score at over six runs an over to win this match.

Jajeda seemed to like this version of the game and his bowling return was somewhat different to that achieved by the England bowing attack....7-0-28-4
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

In the ODI tri-series in Zimbabwe, Mitchell Johnson also showed his aim can be excellent when he's on form, both with the ball and with the bat.

He is really there for his bowling prowess, as you were at pains to point out in the series against England, but his bowling return of 10-0-63-0 against South Africa yesterday in the tri-series did not exactly help the Australian case.

 

[DownSouth]

6-2-7-1 was a lot better for him in the first match. With the ODI rules these days being stacked so heavily towards the batsmen, for a fast bowler to get one maiden in a match (even against second-tier teams like Zimbabwe or England) is a rare achievement that happens even less often than wickets, and getting two almost unheard of.

The best tactic for handling Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers is probably to not dismiss the openers. Still, I can't see Australia being too unhappy with that performance, the second match back after a long winter break against a team that's in hot form.

But what's up with England? Shot out for 160 by a side which is notoriously weighted towards batting, and on home turf - I hope Cook apologised to the fans after the match! Bangladesh fans will be watching that and looking forward to their World Cup match at Adelaide Oval next March and Afghanistan will be licking their lips at the prospect of a win at a legendary ground like the SCG.

 

[muddythefish]

More interesting is India's attitude to yesterday's game. They were pitiful and looked disinterested in the Test series yet seemed galvanised and motivated by a meaningless one-day match.

It does rather reinforce Matthew Engel's view that apart from in England Test cricket is in serious trouble around the world with declining attendances and general lack of interest. Indian fans in particular seem to regard the IPL as more important than the national Test team these days.