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***Official*** Pakistan and England in UAE

Who do you think will win?!

  • Total voters
    88
hazsa19

hazsa19

International Regular
honestbharani said:
well, I don't see it as a great bowling side. I just don't think Pakistan are that good a batting side even in these conditions.. But perceptions and all that..


I just don't think it was such a close series at all. I mean, that 140 target apart, I don't think England even looked like they were competing Even when Pak were 99 all out, I didn't expect England to get a bigger lead than 70 or 80.. That is telling something, I would think.
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Never said anything about great, but I think English fans could be justified in believing they have the best all round bowling attack in the world.
 
honestbharani

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
Prince EWS said:
I think (or at least hope) the point of such posts isn't to say the performance was in some way acceptable or "not that bad" - but that, as opposed to say India after the England and Australia tours - it was a case of one aspect failing to absolutely ridiculous extremes and everything else being fine to good. It doesn't make the performance more acceptable or the tour more successful, but what it does do is make it easier to fix - England as a whole need to work on their batting against spin. It was terrible beyond comprehension which made the tour a complete and utter failure but it wasn't a case of England's cricket overall being substandard or them being outplayed in every department; it's one thing to target and that makes improvement in the short-term more realistic.
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See, I get that. But my point is that the bowling is not that good either. You can probably put it down to what I think of Pakistan's batting (I don't think it is there yet in terms of being world class, Misbah and Younis apart), but I just don't think the bowlers did THAT great a job either.


And while England may not face spinners this good (and that is still very much an arguable point), they are certainly going to face batsmen who will do much better. And the sad thing is, it doesn't even seem to cross some of the posters' minds here. Face it, the next time they face Pakistan, even Pakistan will be batting a lot better than they did this time.
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
honestbharani said:
See, I get that. But my point is that the bowling is not that good either. You can probably put it down to what I think of Pakistan's batting (I don't think it is there yet in terms of being world class, Misbah and Younis apart), but I just don't think the bowlers did THAT great a job either.


And while England may not face spinners this good (and that is still very much an arguable point), they are certainly going to face batsmen who will do much better. And the sad thing is, it doesn't even seem to cross some of the posters' minds here. Face it, the next time they face Pakistan, even Pakistan will be batting a lot better than they did this time.
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Whether you rate Pakistan's batting doesn't really change how England bowled though. I'm not just talking about the results; I watched pretty much every ball of this series and England bowled fantastically. It's certainly not an area of concern to come out of this.
 
Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
honestbharani said:
Define pretty small. Being unable to even make it to 100 in the 4th inning, being unable to capitalize on bowling out a team for 99 are for me, unmistakeable signs of weakness. As I said in the previous post, Pakistan are still not a very good batting line up, even in these conditions and the fact that you could not capitalize on that shows how big the margin is between the two sides. You can play 3 more tests and unless your batsmen magically improve in terms of facing upto spin, I don't see your lot doing any better at all.


And in conditions where bowlers hold sway most of the time, as compared to conditions which help bowlers for a while but settle down later on,the margins of defeat always look smaller. Doesn't mean one time was not outplayed at all.. That NZ tour in 2002-2003 for India was pretty much the same. It would have stupid of us to have been crowing around about how easily it could have been 1-1 back then... And I am pretty sure if the tables were turned and we said the same thing after being down 3-0, you guys will be falling over yourselves with useless snide one-liners that only you find funny..
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If England successfully chase 145, they win the 2nd Test.
If England score 250 in the 1st innings in the 3rd Test, they win.

Neither of those two things are huge asks. England batted uselessly this series, absolutely no argument, but that's a fairly small level of improvement that would have been needed for England to win the series, which is what makes this loss so frustrating. If we'd folded cheaply chasing 400 or if Pakistan had got to 300 in their first innings then you hold your hands up and say "we were outclassed." Despite batting as badly as we did, it wouldn't have taken much more for us to win the series 2-1.
 
honestbharani

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
hazsa19 said:
Never said anything about great, but I think English fans could be justified in believing they have the best all round bowling attack in the world.
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Maybe.. But I don't think it is that good for the SC conditions and I don't think they did anything extra-ordinary this series either. Being disciplined is great but that alone is not gonna make you the best bowling side for these conditions, at least.
 
honestbharani

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
Prince EWS said:
Whether you rate Pakistan's batting doesn't really change how England bowled though. I'm not just talking about the results; I watched pretty much every ball of this series and England bowled fantastically. It's certainly not an area of concern to come out of this.
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Nah, I watched it too. And there is a reason I said what I said about Pak batting. I think better batting line ups will have scored a lot more against the same bowling. How the batsmen play the ball always makes a difference to how the end result looks when judging bowling.


EDIT: It is just a matter of perception coz we will never know. Just gotta wait and see the series in SL and India.
 
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honestbharani

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
GingerFurball said:
If England successfully chase 145, they win the 2nd Test.
If England score 250 in the 1st innings in the 3rd Test, they win.

Neither of those two things are huge asks. England batted uselessly this series, absolutely no argument, but that's a fairly small level of improvement that would have been needed for England to win the series, which is what makes this loss so frustrating. If we'd folded cheaply chasing 400 or if Pakistan had got to 300 in their first innings then you hold your hands up and say "we were outclassed." Despite batting as badly as we did, it wouldn't have taken much more for us to win the series 2-1.
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I think the two tasks you mentioned are MUCH MORE than what this team could achieve in these conditions. So what the **** are you on about again?
 
Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
honestbharani said:
Nah, I watched it too. And there is a reason I said what I said about Pak batting. I think better batting line ups will have scored a lot more against the same bowling. How the batsmen play the ball always makes a difference to how the end result looks when judging bowling.
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Who are these "better batting lineups"?
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
honestbharani said:
Nah, I watched it too. And there is a reason I said what I said about Pak batting. I think better batting line ups will have scored a lot more against the same bowling. How the batsmen play the ball always makes a difference to how the end result looks when judging bowling.
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Only if you can't differentiate between poor batting and good bowling when you're watching cricket, tbh.

Anyway this is basically an irreconcilable difference so I'm going to stop arguing with you about it.
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
GingerFurball said:
So you expect England to crumble to 72 all out every time they're asked to chase in the subcontinent?
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I reckon this is a bit of an irrelevant argument. "If we played much, much better cricket when we played terribly then we would've won" is a pretty ridiculous attitude. You didn't lose games by 10 runs or have rain-effected draws; you got belted because you batted like dicks in pretty much every innings.

Given it was such a specific and repeated failure it does make the weakness obvious, isolated and easy to focus on, which is an optimistic way to look at the potential for immediate improvement, but looking at the actual performance on this tour, it was awful, regardless of how close you think you were to 2-1.
 
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