Cricket

[DownSouth]

... Actually I can't 'aggressive' is the right adjective to apply to Ponting and, let's not forget, he led Australia to defeat against England in three series running, the one in Australia being particularly chastening. Yet I don't remember any great clamour to remove him as captain.

Correct, he was a fairly middle-of-the-road captain. Not a Cook/Dhoni and not a Clarke/McCullum either.

The first Ashes series he lost was acceptable, but for a blind umpire it should have been a 2-1 victory, and for a rolled ankle probably a 3-0 victory.

The second one was still acceptable - the Australian side was going through the low period which inevitably follows a strong time at the top (as England is heading into at the moment with many of the greats from that number 1 side retiring in the last 18 months) and it was an away series for good measure.

The third one (and first home Ashes series loss in 24 years) was very much unacceptable and did lead to public calls for him to lose the job and retire from all international cricket. He was injured for the Fifth Test, and when he returned he was no longer the captain.

From what I'm hearing Paul, if Andrew Strauss replaces Paul Downton, there's likely to be management changes within the ECB, I wonder if this means the end of Peter Moores as Head Coach & Alistair Cook as Captain?

Also, rumours about Moeen Ali loosing his place.....watch this space!

If Strauss is in charge (it sounds like the job will be something like a copy of the General Manager role in a Major League Baseball club) then his former loyal lieutenant (nice word for lackey) Cook becomes untouchable.

But he shouldn't get the top job so long as there are still some of his former teammates are still playing for England as it needs professional detachment - how could he be expected to fire one of them when their declining performance becomes untenable? For example, what if Trott hadn't realised himself that his time was up?

It might be possible for a relatively recent former player to be the coach if only a couple of former teammates are still playing, but not the boss overseeing the whole structure including the coach/player relationship. This is an issue that Cricket Australia has at the moment - Darren Lehmann was a teammate of Michael Clarke and Shane Watson early in their international cricket careers and this relationship needs to be well supervised as both of them approach the end of their careers.
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On the topic of champion England players retiring, Matt Prior appears to have found himself a good spot in the post-cricket world as the owner-manager of a brand new professional cycling team.

After just a couple of months since the first season started, they are now looking good to upgrade from Continental (third-level team) up to Professional Continental (second-level, and eligible for wildcard entry to WorldTour races including the Tour de France) when team licences are awarded for the 2016 season.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

If Strauss is in charge (it sounds like the job will be something like a copy of the General Manager role in a Major League Baseball club) then his former loyal lieutenant (nice word for lackey) Cook becomes untouchable.

But he shouldn't get the top job so long as there are still some of his former teammates are still playing for England as it needs professional detachment - how could he be expected to fire one of them when their declining performance becomes untenable? For example, what if Trott hadn't realised himself that his time was up?

As ever, you make the antipodean view from the other side of the world appear in print upon this thread, for us to consider.

Incidentally, what did you think of the 89 scored by the Australian fast bowler Peter Siddle, who is playing for Lancashire this season in the County Championship second division, in the match against Northants at their windy ground at Wantage Road, where yesterday, the wind was so strong that the bails were not placed upon the stumps for most of yesterday.

 

[DownSouth]

Incidentally, what did you think of the 89 scored by the Australian fast bowler Peter Siddle, who is playing for Lancashire this season in the County Championship second division, in the match against Northants ...

He certainly plays his lower order role well for Australia - if not quite as well as Mitchell Johnson who is now a serious all-rounder and has scored more than he has conceded a fair few times - and has a couple of Test fifties to his name. He's certainly good enough to hang on and support a middle-order batsman late in an innings while putting a few runs against his own name.

Good lower-order batting works especially well against opposition teams where the bowlers rely on carefully crafted plans for each batsman - I bet the Northants pre-match meeting didn't spend too much time looking at Siddle's batting weak areas and the tactics for attacking them. If the fielding captain is also too reliant on plans developed by High Performance geeks with laptops, then a tail-ender can cause huge problems - as the Hughes/Agar partnership did at Trent Bridge in 2013.

This was a key weakness that Australia identified in Alistair Cook's leadership during the last away Ashes series after almost winning the first Test at Trent Bridge. By the end of the series it had turned into a batting strategy which was applied for the following home series - see off Anderson and Broad at the start of the session, get to the drinks break without losing a wicket and then capitalise on the fielding team's dropping morale for the rest of the session. Cook would of course get to visit the laptop nerds at the next session break or rain interruption so the whole routine would start from scratch in the next session.

... at their windy ground at Wantage Road, where yesterday, the wind was so strong that the bails were not placed upon the stumps for most of yesterday.

Those conditions with a very strong end-to-end wind would have been great fun for a bowler with lots of variations - like Mitchell Johnson or James Faulkner - who can think on his feet.

I was at one of the World Cup matches where the opposite happened - Misbah ul-Haq got away with being bowled thanks to the bail landing back in the groove.

 

[Oswyntail]

I see Sir Geoffrey is making a fool of himself yet again. Read his (inaccurate) description of Cook's captaincy and you mind goes back to his own spell in the job, almost word for word. And what Graves was thinking of....Anyone remember "Who's Grovelling Now?"

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Even though the match between Lancashire and Northants (first and second in the league) was drawn, it was good to see that all the three innings totals were indeed sizably respectable.

 

[Whistler40145]

I see Andrew Strauss has been appointed ECB Director of Cricket & Peter Moores has left his post of Head Coach.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I see Andrew Strauss has been appointed ECB Director of Cricket & Peter Moores has left his post of Head Coach.

Peter Moores should have stayed in his role with Lancashire rather than that last move over to the England team organisation.

 

[Whistler40145]

Quite right, why go back to the same role that didn't end well the first time?
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Little bit of incorrect infomation, Peter Moores has been sacked & not resigned.
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If the ECB can sack Moores, will Captain Cook be getting worried?

 

[Busaholic]

Quite right, why go back to the same role that didn't end well the first time?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Little bit of incorrect infomation, Peter Moores has been sacked & not resigned.
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If the ECB can sack Moores, will Captain Cook be getting worried?

At this stage, can't see Strauss being unsupportive towards Cook, who's making runs again and with no captain-in-waiting in the wings. On reflection, I wonder if there's ever been a time when so few current county captains have either little chance of being good enough to play test cricket or, alternatively, retired from it or been found wanting in that format. Only Chopra of Warwickshire comes to mind, as an opening batsman possibility, but only behind Lyth and Hales now.

 

[Whistler40145]

Well..,from what I've read on the ECB website, Jason Gillespie could be the next England Head Coach.

 

[Busaholic]

Well..,from what I've read on the ECB website, Jason Gillespie could be the next England Head Coach.

Justin Langer has also been mentioned : the choice of either might antagonise our Antipodean friends.

 

[Whistler40145]

We're going to have a problem with an Australian as Head Coach, can't see much allegiance to England during the Ashes.

 

[Busaholic]

We're going to have a problem with an Australian as Head Coach, can't see much allegiance to England during the Ashes.

I can, so long as we are winning.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Listening to some after-match discussions of Rugby League Premier League matches with the coaches of the teams, to hear anything but an Australian accent makes a refreshing change these days..

 

[DownSouth]

I for one welcome the possibility of Dizzy coaching England for two reasons.

1. The ECB will have to either buy out his contract with the SACA (good for the SACA's flagging finances) or do without him in December-January (good for Australia in the next home Ashes series) each season.

2. It will present an opportunity for England to (for the first time in living memory) attribute the credit for an Australian Ashes series win to an Australian, instead of a South African as was done last time around.
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If the ECB can sack Moores, will Captain Cook be getting worried?

Heck no! So long as Strauss is in the top job, his loyal lackey's job is as safe as it could ever be.

 

[andrew bell]

I for one welcome the possibility of Dizzy coaching England for two reasons.

1. The ECB will have to either buy out his contract with the SACA (good for the SACA's flagging finances) or do without him in December-January (good for Australia in the next home Ashes series) each season.

2. It will present an opportunity for England to (for the first time in living memory) attribute the credit for an Australian Ashes series win to an Australian, instead of a South African as was done last time around.
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If the ECB can sack Moores, will Captain Cook be getting worried?

Heck no! So long as Strauss is in the top job, his loyal lackey's job is as safe as it could ever be.

Or Dizzy can resign from his position at SACA instead. That way no compensation is required.

Personally I would like the best man available for the job to take it, whether he is English, Irish, Indian, Australian I couldn't care less.

As for Cook, I think he should be worried if he doesn't score runs and either win tests or at least be competitive in them, but is there a captain in the current squad apart from Cook? Only person I could see having it is Root

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Another matter of note this weekend was that 23 year old Kate Cross, a seam bowler of the England Women's test match squad became the first female player to play in the Central Lancashire League, where she played for Heywood against Clifton. She returned figures of 3-18 and also had a catch dropped off her bowling...by her own brother, who also plays for Heywood.

Since I made this posting some time ago, Kate Cross had an excellent spell of seam bowling for Heywood against the male cricketers of Norden yesterday in the Central Lancashire League and returned bowling figures of 8 - 47.

 

[Whistler40145]

I see a certain Kevin Pietersen has scored 201 for Surrey. No doubt he'll knocking on the England door once again.

 

[Oswyntail]

I see a certain Kevin Pietersen has scored 201 for Surrey. No doubt he'll knocking on the England door once again.

Let us hope not. 200 against the mighty Leicester is barely convincing.

 

[Whistler40145]

Mind you, the spat with Andrew Strauss is hardly likely going to be forgotten, therefore he can forget about playing for England ever again!

 

[Busaholic]

Let us hope not. 200 against the mighty Leicester is barely convincing.

Leics not won a first class game since 2012, and lost some of their better players to other counties at the end of last season. Also, runs at the Oval and Taunton are of less value than runs scored at,for instance, Old Trafford or Chester-le-Street, which is why a batsman like Hildreth of Somerset can't be judged purely on statistics. It's a bit like Rooney being acclaimed for a hattrick against Luxembourg.

During other current championship matches, Derbyshire had their youngest-ever centurion, Ton Critchley, and Sussex conceded 62 extras against Middlesex, which though not a record in itself was 24 more than the highest score by a batsman, Voges with 38. In a low-scoring match thus far, they may have handed Middlesex victory on a plate.

 

[ainsworth74]

Still you don't get 326 without a little bit of something about you even against Leicestershire...

Not that it matters as England continue to prefer to cut off their nose to spite their face and have apparently confirmed to KP that he will not be playing for England again. More fool them as far I'm concerned.

 

[Busaholic]

Still you don't get 326 without a little bit of something about you even against Leicestershire...

Not that it matters as England continue to prefer to cut off their nose to spite their face and have apparently confirmed to KP that he will not be playing for England again. More fool them as far I'm concerned.

Didn't W.G. Grace once take on an All England XI? KP against All Australia would put bums on seats, certainly, and he might get 326 or get out in the first over to the dastardly left arm spin of Michael Clarke.

No one doubts his talent or self-belief. It might just have been better for all concerned if he'd been a tremendous tennis player or golfer.

 

[DownSouth]

Wouldn't you get more people in to watch if he was taking on his real enemies, i.e. England?

Now that Strauss is in charge, perhaps KP should make a second swap to try and qualify for Ireland in time for the next World Cup and have a chance at knocking out England in an ICC tournament?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Wouldn't you get more people in to watch if he was taking on his real enemies, i.e. England?

Now that Strauss is in charge, perhaps KP should make a second swap to try and qualify for Ireland in time for the next World Cup and have a chance at knocking out England in an ICC tournament?

Would there be anything in his family heritage that would enable him to play for The Netherlands?

 

[Cletus]

Copied this from another forum, perhaps would have been a better way of going about things by the ECB.

If, IF, this was because the ECB as a group had looked at Ballance/Root/Bell and said "You know what Kev? There's just no room for you at the moment. You're not an opener and we don't want to upset the balance of the side by moving Belly up" then this would make sense and be extremely difficult to argue.

If it's because the ECB have said "Well Kev, yes you've got 326 at the moment but it's your only massive score so far - keep going through the summer and we'll see where we get to" then that would also make sense.

I just don't understand why they'd be as bloody minded as to tell a bloke he won't get picked regardless of what he does.

 

[DownSouth]

Would there be anything in his family heritage that would enable him to play for The Netherlands?

His surname being spelled Pietersen instead of Peterson should surely count?

It's four years until the next World Cup. That's plenty of time to move to Ireland or the Netherlands and gain at least permanent residency, if not citizenship.

 

[ainsworth74]

Copied this from another forum, perhaps would have been a better way of going about things by the ECB.

Whoever said that I have to say I completely agree with them.

 

[Oswyntail]

Really, the fact we are still discussing him says a lot. According to most commentators, and himself in his book, he single-handedly destroyed the cohesion of what was a very good England team. And that last word is the important one. And we should ignore what Vaughan, a man with a grudge against Strauss for being more successful than him with fewer resources, is saying. And we should certainly ignore what the Australians are saying - they would love to have him messing up the team for them. And, lest we forget, his test batting was in serious decline, possibly because he had lost concentration. I regret that England has lost the batting talent he displayed early in his career - but today he is more trouble than he is worth.

 

[DarloRich]

I think KP is a great player and we are weaker without him. His omission reflects badly on management who were unable to deal with a fantastic talent who is clearly a fantastic ego monster and a right pita to deal with while his behavior after omission (book/media etc) looks bad on him.

That said he was never going to get back in as he has burnt his bridges with the ECB and Strauss. They should have just told him to sod off and never come back, the fact they didn't makes them look stupid, although they seem to have been excelling at that recently!