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*Official* England in West Indies

King Pietersen

King Pietersen

International Captain
A match between India and Australia where India went in with Zaheer Khan and Sourav Ganguly opening the bowling, the spin bowling options were woeful as well. England's attack is far better than that.
 
G

garage flower

State Vice-Captain
Richard said:
I suppose "negative" automatically has, well... negative connotations (no other way to put it). Conservative is probably a better term. The whole point of taking a conservative rather than proactive approach to whatever result you're looking for though is that you're going to throw-out the balance. I know this is an unbalanced team - the question is, is deliberately not picking a balanced team fair enough? I think probably so, in this case.
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I think anything less than 4 front-line bowlers would always be very difficult to justify, particularly when the supplementary bowlers are as unthreatening as Gayle, Nash and Hinds.

The kind of adjustments to the balance of a team I'd be looking at are the kind that England and the West Indies will regularly face when Flintoff and Bravo are fit (i.e. whether or not to pick 6 batsmen + Bravo/Flintoff).

Otherwise, I'd genuinely suggest picking 11 bats and utterly disregarding the win, the paying spectators, us armchair fans, and the broader interests of the game.
 
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Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
King Pietersen said:
A match between India and Australia where India went in with Zaheer Khan and Sourav Ganguly opening the bowling, the spin bowling options were woeful as well. England's attack is far better than that.
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That game featured McGrath, Gillespie and Kasprowicz though - as well as Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble. Neither of them remotely approach the "woeful". Even Murali Kartik bowled reasonably well that game.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
garage flower said:
I think anything less than 4 front-line bowlers would always be very difficult to justify, particularly when the supplementary bowlers are as unthreatening as Gayle, Nash and Hinds.

The kind of adjustments to the balance of a team I'd be looking at are the kind that England and the West Indies will regularly face when Flintoff and Bravo are fit (i.e. whether or not to pick 6 batsmen + Bravo/Flintoff).

Otherwise, I'd genuinely suggest picking 11 bats and utterly disregarding the win, the paying spectators, us armchair fans, and the broader interests of the game.
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Just FTR, Australia went in with three specialist bowlers in both 1990 in West Indies (a couple of Tests - McDermott, Reid, Hughes, with the Waughs and Border as part-time options) and the whole series in South Africa in 1996/97 (McGrath, Gillespie, Warne, with the Waughs, Blewett and Bevan as part-time options) and a single one in the previous home series again with West Indies (the same as above with Bichel standing-in for the injured Gillespie).

They lost just 2 of these 6 Tests, 1 of which was a dead-rubber, and either won or were denied by the weather in the others.
 
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Richard said:
And you wonder why people think you're an England fan...
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Where did i say i wanted the result to be in favour of England? "Us" as in "those watching/those involved in the match".

I've technically no interest in England levelling the series. But when only one team tries to win a match i naturally prefer if they do.
 
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Haha, I'll say stuff like that regularly though whichever team's involved. I was a lot more interested in South Africa beating England last summer, but noone mistook me for a South Africa fan. Ditto with India beating them in November.

I've nothing against England, but if I'm choosing a side to support they're not the most likeable side around these days. Until Hoggard's recall i'll tend to support the other side more often than I do England.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Oh dear.

Anyway, decent first day. This pitch is not going to be easy to force the pace on though, so no-one should expect England to kick-on greatly tomorrow.

Another almost-on-time finish too. That's the 2nd one this series. :blink: 90 overs for 258 for 2 in 6 hours. That's one from the 1960s.
 
Richard

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Slow, low, occasionally uneven, and turning more and more as the day has worn-on.

Is only going to turn more as the game goes on, presumably, but that might well be offset by getting still slower and lower.
 
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It's definitely breaking up, when the ball lands it disturbs the surface. It's difficult to say how hard it actually is to keep one's wicket on this pitch since the West Indies only played one bowler. But it looks like the England selectors read conditions spot-on with the selection of two spinners (as they did the intentions of the West Indies- five batsmen is pretty much enough against a prank-attack like this). It's up to Monty and Swann to make the most of it, but if both bowl well they should get 20 wickets (big if though, especially in Monty's case).
 
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