A more exciting selection playing Bopara ahead of Bell, although I wouldn't be too disgruntled should Bell return quicker than anticipated. I actually think Bopara's handy little medium pacers will help him when they come to pick the team, especially with Freddie being the absentee, and us going in with only 4 specialist bowlers.
Rightly or wrongly, I think it is very unlikely that Harmison will be dropped for this test TBH. With Flintoff missing, dropping Harmison would leave us without any 'hit-the-deck' bowlers which, IMO, the selectors will look to avoid.
Whatever a "hit-the-deck" bowler actually is. No-one's ever really defined it. All bowlers hit the deck, some at faster speeds than others, some from greater height than others, some losing more pace off the deck than others, some getting the deck to make the ball do more than others, some getting the ball to do more before hitting the deck than others...
I doubt it - one good decision (which it's very debateable that Bopara over Bell is TBH) has been made before now.
Isn't there a difference between a skiddier bowler than one who bangs it into the wicket? Wouldn't the bowlers who lose more pace off the deck be the ones who are banging it in. If all the bowlers bowled at say 85mph the keeper would find the ball coming into his gloves faster off the skiddier bowler.
Powell better get some runs again then...
(cue century...)
The point is that it's not that one is "hit-the-deck" and one is "skiddy". There's a gradual continuum from one extreme to the other and there's no way to say at which point one becomes the other.
Had an interesting discussion with Manee on this a while back- the greater a height you come from, the less the horizontal component is affected by pitching, so you actually lose less pace. On the other hand, if you're coming from a lower height, the ball has less distance to travel. Typically, how much pace you have depends on the pitch. Skiddy bowlers can exploit grassy surfaces, taller ones hard, bouncy tracks. Basically, exactly what you'd expect.
Dont quite understand this. Surely the taller you are, the greater the change in direction off the pitch and therefore the more energy that is lost. This can be demonstrated by throwing a ball into a wall. If you throw it sideways so it just brushes the wall, it loses very little speed. If you stand perpendicular to the wall and throw it straight at it, the ball will bounce back a bit, but basically just plop down at your feet due to the massive energy loss during the change in direction.
Yeah that's right, but I'm only talking about velocity in terms of how long it takes to reach the batsman i.e. the horizontal component. In terms of it's actual speed, regardless of direction, you're right. And i think you're probably right regardless, but that's what was discussed.
Ok I see what you're getting at. Im not quite sure how speed guns work in this respect, whether they take into acount the directional aspect or just speed. This is why I would prefer the average speed over the whole length of the pitch being used for the speedo instead of release speed. It may look cool seeing 100mph, but it's misleading and doesnt reflect the conditions.
Happy with that. What's the news on the pitch?
The speedgun takes account only of speed out of the hand. I've often said it'd be very interesting to see both speed out of the hand and speed as the ball hits the batsman, because the latter has also been available since HawkEye's creation. And maybe reaction-time, which is of course the most important thing of all.
However, if he's been dropped on his performances over the past five years, it's a perfectly reasonable decision.
