***Official*** Australia in Sri Lanka

[benchmark00]

Can I suggest the username 'chicken_nuggets' ?

 

[robelinda]

How about 'cheeqs is ****'. I'd use that one. Classic username.

 

[benchmark00]

Gonna flog you so bad ****. Will not settle until each one of your youtube videos is taken offline.

 

[Nate]

Why the talk aout Siddle being expensive? Thought he was going at three an over.

 

[Bun]

He's a boring bowler for sure. Lets hope he is a wicket taking bowler too. Bracken was a economical test bowler too, but had zero penetration.

his missus disagrees

 

[Bun]

Also going over there to meet up with some bird he's been tuning on RSVP iirc.

remarkably fascinating how the art of seduction gets described across cultures

 

[oitoitoi]

Does anyone else agree that the aussies haven't a snowballs chance in hell at winning this series? Cannot see them coming close to taking 20 wickets in those conditions. Hilditch & co have apparently lost the plot, picking players from anywhere? Is that not basically saying your fc system isn't worth ****? Nathan Lyons against Jayawardene & co... yeah that's going to end well. Don't think aus cricket could be headed in a worse direction if they were trying atm, Katich was right.

 

[vic_orthdox]

The Hilf ripped up shield cricket for a period of time before getting selected (but only @ Hobart)

i can't be bothered going to the cricketarchive but i'm certain Copeland actually has an average below 30 at more than one ground in australia

then again 17 games so that doesn't mean much. nevertheless peter george is probably a better comparison to Hilf, given he's a star at Hobart too but elsewhere....

Don't be fooled, Tasmania at that stage was known to be a batting paradise, in the early to mid-2000s and he was making his way through. Flat and slow, draw heaven.

 

[Jarquis]

I'd love to see Ronnie Mac selected itbt.

Yes!

 

[Sylvester]

McDonald got injured at the wrong time, if he had a full season with the form he was displaying it would have been hard to ignore him.

 

[morgieb]

Does anyone else agree that the aussies haven't a snowballs chance in hell at winning this series? Cannot see them coming close to taking 20 wickets in those conditions. Hilditch & co have apparently lost the plot, picking players from anywhere? Is that not basically saying your fc system isn't worth ****? Nathan Lyons against Jayawardene & co... yeah that's going to end well. Don't think aus cricket could be headed in a worse direction if they were trying atm, Katich was right.

Conversely, Sri Lanka will have a tough time taking 20 wickets....

 

[Bun]

Conversely, Sri Lanka will have a tough time taking 20 wickets....

murali or no murali, they are going to remain super strong at home, expecting a 2-0 result in favor of lankans.

 

[NUFAN]

Hilf bowled with too much width. You could just let him go as you knew if it was outside off it was going to stay outside off. Good batsmen just waited for the juicy ones and picked him off.

Copeland will bowl a bit shorter length, but he still makes you play because of his line. A comparison between how Copeland and Hilfenhaus take their first class wickets makes it pretty clear. Copes and Hilf are pretty even on bowled Copes with 18% to Hilfs 17%. For caught behinds Copes opens up a bit more gap 30% to 27%, but with lbw he clears out 20% to 13%. To me that is indicating a guy who is attacking the sticks despite his generally shorter length. His line and length are so good that you have to play and often knick them, but he has the ability to nip one in and hit the pads or knock you over. 68% (Hilf 57%) of his wickets bowled, lb or caught behind is a pretty telling stat. I knew from watching him that he was always at the batsman, but these numbers are pretty stark. I reckon that would be right up there with McGrath.

Just to show how telling (all first class wickets):
Siddle - b 18%, lbw 13%, cw 26%, total 57%
Harris - b 23% (wow), lb 17%, cw 22%, total 62%
Bollinger - b 17%, lb 14%, cw 30%, total 61%
Johnson - b 13%, lb 12%, cw 27%, total 52% (I suppose when you base your attack on getting batsmen to chase wide junk this is what your stats look like).

Now if Copeland had a crap average and strike rate or was going for heaps an over these stats might not mean a lot, but seeing as his FC average (21.68) is more than 6 runs lower than the next best (Siddle 27.79), his s/r (52.49) is second only to Dougie (51.57), and his rpo (2.47) smokes them all (Siddle again next best 3.08) I reckon we're looking at a pretty special talent even if he never bowls a ball over 130kmh.

It also shows to me that Harris and Dougie are our next most attacking bowlers who are going to pitch it up and make the batsmen play and why I don't rate Johnson.

Interesting, but are the cw catches just keeper catches or slips too?

 

[adub]

Interesting, but are the cw catches just keeper catches or slips too?

Just Keeper. I don't know where you'd get any data for slips unless you actually recorded it at the time.

 

[NUFAN]

Just Keeper. I don't know where you'd get any data for slips unless you actually recorded it at the time.

Yeah I thought so. I reckon it's a bit flawed though if you just judge keeper catches and not slips catches, especially first slip. Take for example Sreesanth in yesterday's play, he got 0% of his wickets caught keeper, bowled or lbw.

So yeah Johnson obviously does get wickets from wide deliveries, but I don't think it's any more impressive getting catches to the keeper rather than the slips.

 

[adub]

Yeah I thought so. I reckon it's a bit flawed though if you just judge keeper catches and not slips catches, especially first slip. Take for example Sreesanth in yesterday's play, he got 0% of his wickets caught keeper, bowled or lbw.

So yeah Johnson obviously does get wickets from wide deliveries, but I don't think it's any more impressive getting catches to the keeper rather than the slips.

It obviously can only be indicative. Plenty of whafts wide outside off go through to the keeper and some great full straight balls go out to gully. But it is pretty reasonable to assume this runs both ways so whilst it isn't completely accurate I still think you can take some qualitative information from it. Namely that the bowlers with a higher percentage of these wickets will tend to be those who are bowling fuller and straighter than those that aren't.

Taking just one match into account doesn't really mean anymore than any one innings means much against a players average. If Sreesanth is bowling mostly full and attacking the stumps he will tend to have a higher percentage of bowled, lbw and caught behind wickets despite some days when he doesn't get any.

The numbers correspond to what I would expect. From watching them bowl the idea that Copeland, Harris and Bollinger attack the stumps more than Siddle, Hilfenhaus and Johnson looks right and the numbers back that up. I think it provides a good indicator of who has more control and bowls a more attacking line and length more consistently, nothing more than that.

 

[Spark]

Is it completely ridiculous to suggest swing bowlers are more likely to get nicks to slip than bowlers who rely more on seam movement?

 

[Migara]

Is it completely ridiculous to suggest swing bowlers are more likely to get nicks to slip than bowlers who rely more on seam movement?

May be in England or Australia it may be the case. But in SL, it's when batsmen pushes at swinging ball. There will be more coconut trees growing in the north pole than seaming wickets in SL.

 

[vic_orthdox]

I think that he was referring to the fact that seam bowlers would be more likely to get a nick to the keeper, while swing bowlers are more likely to get them to slip; rather than what sort of bowler is more likely to get wickets.

Definitely agree with you though, SL is generally better for someone who can do their work in the air.

 

[Ruckus]

Does anyone else agree that the aussies haven't a snowballs chance in hell at winning this series? Cannot see them coming close to taking 20 wickets in those conditions.

Hmm...I actually think if the bowling attack chosen was Lyon, Johnson (or Siddle), Harris and Copeland, we'd have a pretty decent chance of taking 20 wickets - or put another way, I think our chance of taking 20 wickets would be much higher compared to any recent combination of bowlers (e.g. Beer, Johnson, Siddle, Hilfenhaus). Copeland and Lyon are obviously untried at the test level, but I think they both have a fair bit of potential to cause some damage.

I'm more worried about the batting tbh. Assuming the top 6 chosen are Watson, Hughes, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Khawaja, I can see a lot going wrong there - Watson should perform well, as he usually does, but Hughes could go either way (just the kind of player he is), Ponting is yet to show he is back to proper form, Clarke for some reason struggles at no. 4, Hussey has a terrible away record and Khawaja's form of late has been lousy.