• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

The England Thread

Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Pup Clarke said:
Spinners IMO are most defenitely not going to be belted in the WC.Monty is a wicket taking spinner who bowls with good accuracy so I don't see why alot of people will be able to belt him seeing as the pitches are going to be very helpful to spinners.IMO Monty should play in the opening game and he will.
Click to expand...
Just bowling accurately on unhelpful surfaces is not enough for a spinner to bowl economically in ODIs. He needs to either bowl very fast and flat (Dharmasena, the old Kumble) or have one hell of a quick eye and fingers and the ability to bowl lots of different deliveries and pre-empt certain stuff (Vettori, Croft).
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
shortpitched713 said:
I'd have Joyce in for Strauss, but when it comes down to it hes hardly any better either, is he?
Click to expand...
He's at least been crap for a shorter length of time.
And while Nixon has a reputation as a Twenty-20 biffer, he hasn't scored too many runs in ODIs, and his strike rate is also too low. In my opinion it doesn't really matter which one you have before the other, but if England need either to do a significant part of the batting they're screwed anyway.
Click to expand...
Nixon is a better batsman than Mahmood, regardless of anything.
 
grecian

grecian

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Richard said:
Me neither, but the better options are...?
Click to expand...
My point is none of the seamers fill me with any confidence, so not really sure why anyone's even discussing leaving out panesar, as he would be imo our second best bowler, amongst our motley rabble.

Talking about all the things Panesar needs to be a decent bowler, is all very well.Yet how about suggesting any of the seamers bowl it consistently in the right place, something none of them seem remotely capable of with this white ball, from what I've seen anyway. TBH I even think dalrymple and colly will have a better ER then most of them.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Lewis can do it of times, if not more than about 60% at best.

Shame about no Gough, ATC, really...

Yes, Plunkett and Mahmood are utterly rubbish, but the fact is some seamers (even if that doesn mean Anderson) are going to have to be picked.

No way around that. And IMO picking Dalrymple as a front-line bowler is a recripe (yes, that was a deliberate "typo") for disaster.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
shortpitched713 said:
I have the feeling that there have been times that Strauss has not been crap in ODIs. Was probably in the early days of his career.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Strauss since the start of 2005 has been abysmal pretty much without interruption, whether batting in the top three or at four.

Joyce is IMO never, ever going to be an opener (made one extremely lucky century and a decent enough 67 but if he was going to be an opener he'd have tried his hand there before his 28th b'day I'd reckon), but right now he's done more to merit a place than Strauss, there's not much way around that.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
shortpitched713 said:
Neither were given much of a run though.
Click to expand...
And Schoers was?

They both played (inexplicably) a hell of a lot more than he (inexplicably) did.

None should ever have got anywhere near the side, and for Schofield to be described by Nasser Hussain as "not a very pleasant lad" is condemnation indeed given that the book contains roughly 3 or 4 others (out of the several hundred people he mentions) with similar sentiments expressed.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Of late he certainly has been, but I don't know that you could conclusively say such a thing in 2001 (Keedy was only just established in the first-team at that point following the retirement of Yates) and 2003.

Batty and Dawson demonstrate one thing and one thing only IMO (I'd honestly be surprised if Keedy did much if anything in Tests were he to be picked, too) - the fact that crap seamers > crap spinners. If spinners aren't good enough, just don't pick 'em!
 
S

stafford_1990

Cricket Spectator
after sri lanka match

Bopara & Nixon played superbly today but in all honesty they should never have been in that kind of situation in the first place if the top order had done what they're supposed to do.

Joyce is not an opener but can do the job better than most for england

Vaughan is supposed to lead by example and he is hardly doing this by scoring nothing. it doesnt matter that hes captain, hes a liability at the top of the order, he doesn't give us good starts and he just ups the opposing teams confidence by giving them an early wicket

And Ian Bell. As much as i like him, he just doesn't get a big score EVER. yes he's consistent, consistently underachieving and putting england behind the clock in the powerplays which are there to encourage the batsmen to score more runs!

In Flintoff, Pietersen, Collingwood, Nixon, Bopara and James Anderson and Monty as bowlers, england have some very good attacking prospects, but we are just playing too defensively.

the best teams (australia, sri lanka and south africa) have batsmen who can score quickly at the top of the order and england could have that from Loye/Maddy opening and KP at 3.

England could have a capable side if they have a shuffle, get some guts and drop vaughan and start believing that they can beat teams instead of just defending and hoping for the best.

As for captaincy, there needs to be someone new and some new ideas in ODI cricket. there only seems to be only one person who can take the game to the opposition and really be a matchwinner and that is Pietersen and, though he doesn't seem like captain material maybe his tactics could be more proactive for england to beat other nations by taking the game to them rather than a vaughan or a strauss (who i think would just be a little vaughan clone as a captain). KP has the confidence and the match winning mentality which could inspire the england team to do more in ODIs.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Interesting first post...

I just can't see Pietersen as captain. I always used to think, back in 2004, that maybe Flintoff in ODIs was the answer, but I think we can safely put that to sleep now.

TBH, there's only 1 candidate IMO: Paul Collingwood. I've not often thought much of him as a ODI player, but his form of late has been stunning. Odds-and-sodds'-law, of course, he'll probably not score a run for his first 10 innings as captain or something. I mean, he's slightly due a down patch at the moment anyway. But I've said it since before he played his 1st ODI - Michael Vaughan is not a ODI-class batsman. And I think we've now seen enough to suggest he never will be.

Nice description of Nixon as a "prospect", but I do think he's now gone some way to showing that his selection was a pretty decent move. Awesome innings alongside Bopara today, the coolness both of them showed was little short of astounding.

I still think we'll get nothing from Mahmood and Plunkett and the sooner they go the better. Says a lot about Mahmood that even today, when he bowled far better than he normally does, he still went for 50 off 9 overs!

TBH, though, I'm not gonna get too excited about Bopara yet. Dalrymple not so long ago made a similarish entry, albeit not in such a highly-charged game. It was a fantastic knock, yes, but let's just wait and see.

I've never, ever liked Joyce as an opener and I think we've now seen enough of that. Terrible ODI player though Strauss may be, he's probably got to come back now. Hopefully after this tournament we'll see neither him nor Vaughan in the ODI side again and they'll be left to concentrate on their Test careers.

Either way, we're almost out now whatever *anyone* might believe - anyone seriously contending that we can beat either Australia or South Africa is asking for a miracle, and West Indies have to start favourites against us too.

A shame, but hardly a surprise from my angle. See the first post of this thread for all you need to know, TBH.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top