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*Official* England in West Indies

superkingdave

superkingdave

Hall of Fame Member
Been watching the highlights DVD of the last tour to cheer myself up.

Some observations...the only survivors from that tour for England are Harmison and Flintoff, the West Indies have Gayle, Smith, Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Ryan Hinds and Fidel Edwards.

Forgotten how lucky Mark Butcher was in that series, seemed to have at least one let off every innings
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Not quite that, but most, yeah. Hussain on the other hand did hard work often and missed the easy bits several times. Which neatly summises a good deal of his career.

Butcher had a fair few let-offs around that time, as I recall. He had more than one in the home series against SA and at least one in the one in SL. As well as about three in one innings in the one in Aus in 2002/03 and two in the opening Test.

Another observation from the 2004 series: West Indies batted diabolically almost throughout the first three Tests (with the exception of Hinds and to an extent Devon Smith - though he too had a let-off - in the opening innings). Gayle, Sarwan and Nash have already bettered the lot in one innings this time.
 
Nate

Nate

You'll Never Walk Alone
Am a bit worried about the safety of the crowd in the stands. They look far from great.
 
shivfan

shivfan

Banned
Jigga988 said:
Expect some unexpected bounce everywhere, have you heard the reservations Chris Gayle had about the pitch, two days is no where near enough to flatten out a wicket lets be serious, a week needed minimum to get the ARG to its usual flatness... Harmy and Freddy are bound to cause havoc because of the bounce and nature of the wicket... and we got screwed by our own laziness...
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Maybe that's a good thing....

A flat ARG is only good if you want to see KP or gayle try for Lara's record!
:laugh:
My day off is Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing some cricket on telly then.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Seems pretty likely.

Oddly, Virgin appear to have buggered-up the Sky Sports schedule. Hoping, that is, that Sky are actually going to be showing the opening day. :unsure:
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Much as it'd be unfair on Anderson, the unfairness would come from the Test being abandoned rather than him being dropped following the change of venue.

If the pitch looks uneven, it's hard to argue against the taller bowler getting preference to the shorter one, even if the taller one is quite a bit less accurate.

What I'd in many ways laugh at is if they picked Harmison and the pitch turned-out to be an old-style ARG-er. Then Anderson would thank his looky stars that he got left-out.
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Richard said:
Much as it'd be unfair on Anderson, the unfairness would come from the Test being abandoned rather than him being dropped following the change of venue.

If the pitch looks uneven, it's hard to argue against the taller bowler getting preference to the shorter one, even if the taller one is quite a bit less accurate.

What I'd in many ways laugh at is if they picked Harmison and the pitch turned-out to be an old-style ARG-er. Then Anderson would thank his looky stars that he got left-out.
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I'd almost liken it to picking Fernando ahead of Vaas at this point though. The difference between them obviously isn't quite that large but surely you see my point. I honestly wouldn't expect Harmison to outperform Anderson in any conditions at the moment. I don't think they are comparable bowlers in terms of class at this point of their respective careers.
 
Athlai

Athlai

Not Terrible
Anderson still does serve up his fair share of **** overs though. Unfortunately Harmison doesn't have the gold that comes between them.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Prince EWS said:
I'd almost liken it to picking Fernando ahead of Vaas at this point though. The difference between them obviously isn't quite that large but surely you see my point. I honestly wouldn't expect Harmison to outperform Anderson in any conditions at the moment. I don't think they are comparable bowlers in terms of class at this point of their respective careers.
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All his career, Harmison has been picked because people believe him capable of performances I see precious little evidence to suggest he is, so I agree with you on that score.

However, as a selector, you see an uneven surface and you pick a tall bowler over a medium-height one. It's virtually an instinctive reaction, and there's sound reasons why. If the taller one is stupidly wayward, maybe it'd be a bad decision, but the funny thing is that, of late, Harmison hasn't actually been that wayward and if he bowls good areas and the deck does turn-out to be uneven, he could easily be effective. The trouble with that would be that we'd then be stuck with him for another 3 years while people waited for a repeat dose, which would as I say above be very unlikely to come all that often.
 
Scaly piscine

Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I wonder if some sense will prevail and England will go against their policy of picking a specialist turban wearer.

Assuming the pitch is fast & bouncy this would have been perfect to have picked Samit Patel + 4 best seamers. Why the hell England don't prepare pitches that are fast and bouncy at home I don't know.
 
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