***Official*** South Africa in England

[GIMH]

Yeah, Lee has come on leaps and bounds since that series. He won a lot of English hearts through his spirit, since then he has won a lot of cricketing minds through improvement.

 

[Uppercut]

Well if you're looking for someone to pick up "cheap tailend wickets", MS Panesar is obviously your man, surely?

As i said, he's the best at it out of this England attack. But he still can get battered around pretty easily by a slogger in the mould of Tim Southee, for instance.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Well if you're looking for someone to pick up "cheap tailend wickets", MS Panesar is obviously your man, surely?

Depends on the tailender and the situation really. Declaration charge and ugly swipes then yep. I wouldn't fancy Panesar to get out competent tailenders batting defensively unless they allow him his frequent lbw from non-turner dismissal. And yea Panesar can be knocked about, but again there's a few factors involved.

 

[Burgey]

Im sure we all have a great deal of admiration for Flintoff the bowler.

Its just Im not sure Ive ever seen a bowler have to work so hard for his wickets. His wickets seem to come from massive effort and quality bowling and yet they seldom come in bunches like for others.

There must be a simple reason that even when bowling brilliantly, and looking like a world beater, that he cant run through sides.

Every dismissal seems to be a masterpiece and the result of a battle rather than batsmen rolling over and gifting their wickets.

Reminds me of Gillespie when he was in his pomp.

I can recall any number of times he bowled as well as McGrath, yet he just didn't pick up the scalps - and of course, being the premier bowler, McGrath usually got 1st crack at the tail

 

[SpaceMonkey]

I dare anyone to claim Twenty20 is more entertaining that what we saw during that last spell of Flintoffs. I DARE!

 

[Uppercut]

I dare anyone to claim Twenty20 is more entertaining that what we saw during that last spell of Flintoffs. I DARE!

I have not once met or spoken to anyone who will passionately claim that T20 is better than test cricket. Yet every time something exciting happens in a test match THAT line is wheeled out.

 

[Pup Clarke]

Bowl Bell. Drop Collingwood until he gets a bit of form.

Maybe Bell doesn't want to bowl?

 

[Top_Cat]

Im sure we all have a great deal of admiration for Flintoff the bowler.

Its just Im not sure Ive ever seen a bowler have to work so hard for his wickets. His wickets seem to come from massive effort and quality bowling and yet they seldom come in bunches like for others.

There must be a simple reason that even when bowling brilliantly, and looking like a world beater, that he cant run through sides.

Every dismissal seems to be a masterpiece and the result of a battle rather than batsmen rolling over and gifting their wickets.

Surely it's his length more than anything; he's usually just back of a length as his default ball so he's going to go past the edge a lot as the movement is exaggerated. That was one of the big criticisms of Jason Gillespie too. Contrast that with Waqar Younis who used to mostly bowl full and would take many wickets in a bunch. Ntini is similar to Flintoff; rarely just runs through sides and bowls a similar length, always seems to work hard for his wickets.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

don't think Lee is particularly good at removing tailenders or at least he wasn't in the 2005 Ashes, Warne on the other hand was an absolute master at it.

Hahaha what? Lee's a completely different bowler to what he was in 2005. You're a joke.

 

[Flying V]

This is becoming more and more enjoyable per match, Flintoff's performance was a joy to watch, that being said there was some less than great cricket on display by certain england bowlers today.

 

[TazzX]

Hahaha what? Lee's a completely different bowler to what he was in 2005. You're a joke.

Hang on are you saying he is or he isn't?

Great day of cricket I will be happy with a 100 lead for SA from here on in. Anything less and I will feel like we didn't take our oppertunity.

Flinty is AWESOME!

 

[James]

Looked as though Flintoff was generating some serious pace yesterday.

What sort of speeds was he up around?

 

[Richard]

Late-80s. Right up at the sorts of speeds he was managing in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Agree with everyone, incidentally, who says that Flintoff charging in is the ultimate edge-of-the-seat stuff. What's better is that he doesn't often give lots of runs away in doing it. I've seen so many spells like that in his career, but this is the first for a long while.

 

[Richard]

You're a joke.

ITSTL.

 

[GIMH]

Anyone in the midlands gonna share weather details with us?

Down there yesterday it was similar to here, if that's the case then I imagine today will follow a similar path, some rain and poor light but not enough for us to start thinking about nailed-on draws (see New Zealand @ Lord's in May)

 

[Richard]

Well I think partly it's because he's fairly poor at getting rid of tailenders.

The thing is, Flintoff doesn't need to be poor at getting out tailenders. Flintoff bowls an absolutely fantastic Yorker and can swing it on a very full length too.

His dismissals of Kasprowicz and Gillespie in 2005 were your ultimate tailender-removal dismissals, aside from the fact the Gillespie one was missing leg-stump.

Flintoff should knock-over tailenders far better than he has done to date. It's not like he doesn't have the tools. A good Yorker will do the trick perhaps 15 times out of 20. And if it doesn't work first time you try it - keep trying. It's far better than bowling length.

If he simply did this more often he'd be one of the very best at running through the tail. But in common with so many bowlers of late, he just doesn't try the Yorker often enough.

 

[Stapel]

Flintoff is the one and only reason I got dragged back into cricket in 2005, after having missed it since the BBC stopped broadcasting cricket. It was quite good to see once again why that was. This reminded me of the 2005 ashes over where he started on a hattrick, just missed it, but went on furiously to take out Langer and Ponting. Same ground, right?

It was good, very very good!


About Collingwood:

Only a top class superb innings can probably save his place. I reckon there's not too much discussion over it. Just any other player would be better. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Broad batting at 6 is an improvement! That said, so it is either Flintoff or Ambrose...., but Broad is the only no6 player I can come up with, who is more valuable than Collingwood (in current form) with both bat and ball.

 

[GIMH]

Yeah, if Flintoff could do all his bowling at Edgbaston he'd have about 500 wickets

THAT over was indeed on Edgbaston. This is the best he has bowled since then, save maybe at The Oval in the same series.

 

[Richard]

On Strauss's batting, i feel at the moment he suffers from scoring so slowly and with such a limited array of strokes that it gives him a greater chance of getting a good ball or a bad decision. For example, in the opening partnership Cook tends to score almost twice as quickly. So where Strauss gets a bad decision on 30, had Cook got the same decision, he'd have been out for 60. Just a factor that's often overlooked when people talk about "risk-free innings" and the like.

Don't agree with that TBH. You should never bat for the "well I might get a bad decision eventually" mentality.

Strauss batting as he currently is batting, and without treading on his stumps, should score plenty of Test runs. As long as he doesn't worry about mini-slumps like this and start trying to play differently purely because of strange dismissals like treading on his stumps, he'll be fine.

 

[GIMH]

This does seem different to when he wasn't scoring runs previously. Last year he was just hopeless and getting himself out, now it's that old cliche of "I don't feel in bad nick"

Unless he does something special, Colly should be left out of the Test side from here and get a few FC innings under his belt, if he can get some form you'd want him in the side to face India, we need him at his best there. Let's not forget that it was on the subcontinent where we finally saw him establish himself, in 05/06.

It's an interesting situation though, with him being the ODI captain, but suspended and completely out of form.