Ravi Bopara - another pretender?

[Richard]

Schooled in Kent, ended up at Hampshire, in between played for Leicestershire (ie a Midlands club like Bell), speaks as RP as you can get.

Interesting you class Leics as a midlands county, would say they border at worst on being northern. Either way, fair enough to call him a non-northerner I guess, but I do find it very odd if he never got called soft as he seems to me to be the absolute perfect candidate for it. Not an obvious "hardman", southern, perfect in terms of how good his strokes looked when they came off, yet was nothing more than a pretty good Test batsman in terms of effectiveness.

Maybe the increase in media of transferral of opinions has had an impact? No internet forums in 1985.

I just disagree. I thought Thorpe's technique was compact and harmonious. He's now starting to be remembered as a nurdler which is just a travesty. He was very versatile (more than just about anyone else among his England contemporaries) and could play beautiful attacking shots, yes more reminiscent of Border than Gower but nonetheless easy on the eye.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder obviously, but I never found Thorpe's strokeplay especially attractive. Like Stewart, I loved to see him play an innings that turned a game and was glued to the edge of my seat on the occasions he did so, but if I had the choice of watching someone play an innings of 128 where they came in at 200 for 3 replying to 160 (ie, where the game was already effectively won) I'd pick quite a few people over Thorpe.

 

[Jamee999]

Nah, we're Midlands. Maybe more North than South, but neither really.

 

[andyc]

Always amuses me when English people argue over which region is better when you're basically half the size of Victoria. Deadset, why do you all even use the internet when you could just go to the local pub and discuss it all there?

 

[Jamee999]

Because England has history that doesn't start with "Boat found land today. **** me this place is empty."

 

[Top_Cat]

What a coincidence, neither does Australia.

 

[Burgey]

What a coincidence, neither does Australia.

Indeed not. Jamee, have a read....


http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/s...992/23.html?query=title(Mabo and Queensland)

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

Because England has history that doesn't start with "Boat found land today. **** me this place is empty."

Haha wow that's an ignorant and borderline racist statement.

 

[Son Of Coco]

What a coincidence, neither does Australia.

Yeah, very good point.

Interestingly though the mentality Jamee describes is one which many of his fellow countrymen still embrace when they take their package holidays to Alicante/Ibiza.

 

[GIMH]

Always amuses me when English people argue over which region is better when you're basically half the size of Victoria. Deadset, why do you all even use the internet when you could just go to the local pub and discuss it all there?

My street has a bigger population than Victoria though, so the regional differences are hugely relevant.

 

[Richard]

Always amuses me when English people argue over which region is better

Amuses me too, given that most of the arguments are based on age-old stereotypes that became obsolete 20-30 years at the very least ago.

 

[Uppercut]

Amuses me too, given that most of the arguments are based on age-old stereotypes that became obsolete 20-30 years at the very least ago.

An amused Yorkshireman? Don't talk soft.

 

[Richard]

Trying my best to imagine that post spoken in an Irish accent amsuses me further, TBH.

 

[zaremba]

What a coincidence, neither does Australia.

Terra Nullius?

EDIT: Just seen that Burgey beat me to it...

 

[Langeveldt]

Always amuses me when English people argue over which region is better when you're basically half the size of Victoria. Deadset, why do you all even use the internet when you could just go to the local pub and discuss it all there?

I should get the Battle of the Crap towns thread restarted.. Like when Mancs and Scousers argue, they are forgetting that they are both ****

 

[Top_Cat]

Terra Nullius?

EDIT: Just seen that Burgey beat me to it...

Yep, like the Dutch beat the English here.

 

[zaremba]

Yep, like the Dutch beat the English here.

...and a few other folk c45,000 years before that.

 

[kingkallis]

Always amuses me when English people argue over which region is better when you're basically half the size of Victoria. Deadset, why do you all even use the internet when you could just go to the local pub and discuss it all there?

 

[steds]

Amuses me too, given that most of the arguments are based on age-old stereotypes that became obsolete 20-30 years at the very least ago.

Don't know about everyone else, but all of my arguments are based on fact rather than stereotype. All Frenchmen all being ****s isn't stereotype. It's fact. None of them being able to read and all of them being tight are (well founded) stereotypes. Nowhere (apart from the last set of brackets) have I accused anyone from Yorkshire of anything the do with the stereotype of them.

 

[Richard]

"Lancastrian doesn't really have a clue about Yorkshire" isn't the sort of thing I was referring to - that isn't obsolete at all.

 

[steds]

Got one of my closest friends gathering intelligence on them while based in Sheffield for a year. Don't want to go anywhere near the border myself