**Official** England in New Zealand

[Richard]

GTFO? Right.

Its not whinging, its how they approached the game. Scoring at 2.6 an over isnt being aggressive or thowing wickets away, its keeping yourself in the game. Its sensible responsible batting.

As it is, England could bat for more than 150 overs and still be in trouble.

The simplicity of some people to think its either block, block or slog slog.

England are batting themselves into a hole due to the runrate. You may like it but its bad cricket.

I hardly think asking for what is an extra single every 2 overs is excessive. And something as small as that with the runrate as low as it is makes all the difference.

England are making it hard on themselves. Sure 286/6 (134 overs) >>>>> 286 all out (100 overs) but its a pretty easy track to bat on and what makes you think 286 all out would be likely. Its like saying 550/4 (100 overs) >>>>>>>>>> 250 all out (120 overs). It means nothing.

I only watched about half today's play, and while there were times when Pietersen and Bell could have been a bit more proactive in looking for gaps (doesn't appear to me that anyone is suggesting to try and hit more boundaries) it's easy to overestimate the ease of the quick single. Placing the ball into gaps involves working across the line, it involves opening the face, it involves, premeditating - not all concurrantly, of course, but it still has its hazards. Especially with the skill, accuracy and variation Vettori and Patel were displaying, opening the face could have resulted in gliding one straight to McCullum, playing accross a straight one could have resulted in an easy lbw, premeditating could have resulted in top-edged sweeps, etc. etc.

TBH, I'm pleased to see Pietersen show that he can play at this pace, can stay at the crease without striking at even 50-per-100-balls. It's a skill he's not often demonstrated before now.

 

[Richard]

FFS

Not sure why. Anderson doing well > Anderson doing badly.

Broad is still likely to play ahead of him. Not that either Broad or Anderson offer me much encouragement if the Second Test sees the pitch play like this one and the balls swing as little as they have this game.

 

[Pup Clarke]

Not sure why. Anderson doing well > Anderson doing badly.

Eh, I'm not an English cricket fan...

Plus was rolleyesing at NZ cricket in this ridiculous decision tbh.

 

[Prince EWS]

GTFO? Right.

Its not whinging, its how they approached the game. Scoring at 2.6 an over isnt being aggressive or thowing wickets away, its keeping yourself in the game. Its sensible responsible batting.

As it is, England could bat for more than 150 overs and still be in trouble.

The simplicity of some people to think its either block, block or slog slog.

England are batting themselves into a hole due to the runrate. You may like it but its bad cricket.

I hardly think asking for what is an extra single every 2 overs is excessive. And something as small as that with the runrate as low as it is makes all the difference.

England are making it hard on themselves. Sure 286/6 (134 overs) >>>>> 286 all out (100 overs) but its a pretty easy track to bat on and what makes you think 286 all out would be likely. Its like saying 550/4 (100 overs) >>>>>>>>>> 250 all out (120 overs). It means nothing.

I think the main disagreement we have here is over their intent. You seem to think they went out there thinking purely defensively, while I couldn't disagree more. I saw every ball today, and they weren't missing out on bad balls - there just weren't many. While the pitch may be easy to bat on the sense that it's easy to stay in on, it's not particularly easy to score runs on as it's really slow.

Don't let the NZ first innings fool you - the pitch was quicker then and England bowled very poorly. The New Zealand bowlers bowled very accurately, and the spinners actually looked quite threatening at times. I don't think England were batting defensively - I think they were batting in a manner in that reflected the bowling and the conditions. The pitch was slow, but had little assistance for the bowlers, and the bowlers were accurate but didn't do much with the ball. All that lends to a slower run rate. Had England tried to score more quickly, I'm fairly confident they'd be all out by now, as they didn't seem overly defensive to me.

Credit should go to New Zealand for bowling really well on a flat pitch, IMO, and credit should go to England for recognising that and adjusting accordingly rather than taking a "devil may care" attitude to the match.

 

[Richard]

Eh, I'm not an English cricket fan...

You seem to change your mind every 5 minutes. Sometimes you're a fan of every team and want them all to pick their best team, sometimes you're a fan of no-one.

Plus was rolleyesing at NZ cricket in this ridiculous decision tbh.

What about the ridiculous decision to play so few warm-up matches of the last 7 years?

 

[Pup Clarke]

You seem to change your mind every 5 minutes. Sometimes you're a fan of every team and want them all to pick their best team, sometimes you're a fan of no-one.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

I've never "supported" Australia, Pakistan, India, SA, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or any other cricketing nation apart from my home country Scotland.

And I've never once mentioned I'm an England fan.

 

[Richard]

There's times you seem concerned for the welfare of all in international cricket, and talk of who should be playing and who shouldn't for everyone, then you say you're not a fan of anyone.

 

[Flem274*]

Loving this TBH, usually its us kiwis debating fiercely about what the hell we can do to save our arses.

 

[Pup Clarke]

That's because I'm interested in discussing Test match cricket without "supporting" any of Test match teams...

I enjoy watching and following Test cricket as a neutral, until Scotland promoted to Test status.

 

[andruid]

I enjoy watching and following Test cricket as a neutral, until Scotland promoted to Test status.

Same feeling over here supporting Kenya, I guess this makes us the only impartial commentators on this thread

 

[GIMH]

All these starts and no scores

 

[Richard]

Pietersen's dismissal, which I've just seen for the first time, is particularly frustrating - he didn't really do much wrong, and he was looking extremely solid for the most part.

Nothing I'd have liked to have seen more from him than 70-odd off 200 balls or something. Would've proven to everyone, including himself, that he not only can but will when neccessary play that sort of knock.

 

[Richard]

That's because I'm interested in discussing Test match cricket without "supporting" any of Test match teams...

But your attitude never seems to be "oh well, they've picked <insert crap player again>, oh well, I don't care, just saying". You actually seem to want all the teams to pick their best teams, and want crap players to be dropped and stay dropped. In addition to wanting good players to do well when picked.

That's different to actually caring about the result, of course.

 

[Pup Clarke]

ITSTL observation

 

[Richard]

What's with the capitalised acronym\abbreviation? You normally do it all in lower case, like this tbh, imo it's downright disgraceful ffs, and itbt you're cfab, it's only cos I cba that you haven't got one before now. What's the odds on you coming-up with another itstl reply?

 

[Pup Clarke]

*sigh*

 

[GIMH]

 

[TT Boy]

How long did people stay with this game yesterday? I managed about one and half hours until I fell asleep and in that time I saw one good shot from the captain and almost no chances created by the New Zealanders.

Just watching the highlights now and they could even make one hour’s worth of condensed footage interesting. Martin Crowe spent the best part of his commentary stint discussing ball tampering, Pakistan and Pringle.

 

[Richard]

Earlier in the day it was a bit dull, but as I say (probably about 30-40 posts or so ago) it livened-up with Vettori and Patel bowling at Pietersen and Bell. Both of them were looking dangerous, you knew New Zealand were right on top if they could force another breakthrough or three, and the batsmen had to keep their wits about them to keep them out - which they managed.

Mills bowled one absolutely unbelievable delivery at Pietersen with the new-ball too. Shortly after the new-ball was taken, I went to bed, not through dissatisfaction with the cricket but through tiredness (have generally had to be up at 8:30-9 through this match so don't really want to leave it much later than 1:30-2 to head to bed). And so I don't know what things were like during the Collingwood-Ambrose partnership.

Was vaguely interesting, FWIW, to hear Crowe talk of the Pringle-Pakistan incident - have only ever read briefly about it before. And not sure whether there's easily-available footage as far back as 1990\91.

 

[Richard]

Ind33d.