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*Official* England in West Indies
- Thread starter Richard
- Start date
Precambrian
Banned
How'd you groom him at this stage of his career? He's the oldest in the side and should do the grooming on others.
Uppercut
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I really think Michael Vaughan's golden year was a fluke. If the Aussie fielders hadn't momentarily forgotten how to catch it wouldn't even be there. Check out his FC average in addition to SS's stats and it looks quite ridiculously anomalous.
He's one of the "pretty but useless" type players that I can't stand. Commentators and pundits are so busy touching themselves over his cover drive that they forget he scores ****-all runs.
Precambrian
Banned
Fully AWTA.
Just like the fact that Atherton, who played 100 odd tests with mediocre returns, was the anthropomorphic representation of English Cricket in the 90s, Vaughan, if recalled can be called the same of English cricket for the first decade of this century. A mediocre career, peaked at the start, and glorified in the middle, yet retained much of the average performances of the preceding decade.
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
Vaughan in the end had a pretty mediocre career as a batsman. He could definitely bat and looked glorious when he scored runs but he had a few technical problems with the full ball and got out once seemingly set a bit too often. I think his failures are exaggerated a fair bit though as people subconsciously remember his terrible one day performances. It's hard to truly separate them from his Test performances in our own minds and if you actually look at his record, he was "decent" at worst.
He was a Test standard batsman who deserved his place on batting alone throughout his entire career IMO, with the exception of perhaps his original selection. He was also a brilliant captain and that's what I'll always remember him most for.
As for his potential recall - I'd be for it if he had some runs for Yorkshire under his belt, merely because I don't think Shah or Bopara will be very successful. As it stands though, he should not be in the team.
He was a Test standard batsman who deserved his place on batting alone throughout his entire career IMO, with the exception of perhaps his original selection. He was also a brilliant captain and that's what I'll always remember him most for.
As for his potential recall - I'd be for it if he had some runs for Yorkshire under his belt, merely because I don't think Shah or Bopara will be very successful. As it stands though, he should not be in the team.
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Vaughan's record is overrated. As I've posted before- the "average average" as it were, the average of all innings played by a top six specialist batsman since 2000, is 41 (Bangladesh/Zimbabwe not included in any way, shape or form). I'd say there's a tendency to think like it's still the nineties and 41 is the average of a player of real quality. In truth Vaughan's record is, by definition, average. Note that I said his record is average, not that he's an average player. Mediocre is the perfect word to describe his career.
The fact that he hasn't looked in great touch for six years is what makes me think he's currently a below-average player. Strangely though, I think of Vaughan the captain as almost a completely different man- a really excellent captain who I have a lot of respect for.
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or agree with me there.
pup11
International Coach
Agree with this, though Vaughan at the age of 34 won't really set the world on fire, but the other options that England have aren't seriously any better either, given Vaughan can score runs for Yorkshire, there is no reason why he can't make a comeback.
I would replace Bell with Shah for the next game and give him a run right through this series, if he can perform, then fair play to him, but if doesn't do that and Vaughan scores some runs at the county level, then don't know what's really wrong at picking him again.
Vaughan might seem like a very atrocious choice at this satge of his career, but the problem for English cricket is, he still arguably could be the best option around among all the other options England have currently.
GIMH
Norwood's on Fire
His average when he took the captaincy was somewhere in the low 50s IIRC. Some have questioned whether the captaincy affected his batting, I think it certainly did. I'm not saying that as an excuse, because we have seen great batsmen become even greater with the armband (Ponting, for example) but I personally feel that you can divide Vaughan's career up into two, pre-captaincy and as captain. Given how good a captain he was on the whole, I can live with the 10-15 runs average drop as skipper as he added so much more than that.
That being said, not sure I'd recall him now unless he was scoring runs for Yorkshire, as he appeared last season to be genuinely out of nick, which I didn't necessarily think when he was failing at other times.
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Maybe there's some truth in that- he stated several times that he looked forward to captaining more than batting- but when you look at his FC record it just looks like a regression to the mean.
Precambrian
Banned
How good a captain Vaughan was without a Flintoff at peak? Or would have been?
His captaincy is tad overrated imho just because he had a string of victories just during the time when Fred peaked, ie. 2004 to 2005 which probably culminated in the Ashes. Yes, he was an astute tactician and bettered Ricky Ponting head to head. But was he as good to be included in the test side merely because he was captain?
I disagree.
GIMH
Norwood's on Fire
Nowhere did I say he should have been picked as a specialist captain. Simply that the fewer runs scored compared to pre-captaincy were compensated for by the fact that he clearly added a lot of value as captaincy.
To suggest that the only reason he succeeded as captain was because of Flintoff suggests you never actually watched any of the matches, so I CBF with that little argument
To suggest that the only reason he succeeded as captain was because of Flintoff suggests you never actually watched any of the matches, so I CBF with that little argument
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Yeah, that. I thought it was pretty obvious to anyone watching that Vaughan was an awesome captain.
pup11
International Coach
That's all that you need when it comes to captaining a side successfully on the field of play, of course you need good players to to back and execute your plans, and that's why any captain is as good as his players.
England team had a golden run in test match cricket for a while leading into the 2005 Ashes series, and though Freddie was a big contributor, almost everyone in that English team was chipping in, into the team' success at some point or the other, so very unfair to say Freddie was the only reason England were doing well.
Precambrian
Banned
No, I've watched him captain also, and I did agree that he is better than Ponting, which in itself is a compliment to his leadership skills. The only problem I have is that his batting failures should not be papered over by his captaincy skills.
And yes, I do stand by the fact that without Fred, Ashes 2005, Vaughan would have ended up just as an average captain who had his run in the team.