What worth are rankings anymore?

[vic_orthdox]

This..


I think Test Cricket is at a very exciting time. There are so many Cricketers who are still only in their formative years of playing at the highest level, so it's not that big a surprise to see these young batsman in particular struggle.

I think this is a big thing. Who has the best core of players in that 27-32 mark, and you'd have to say it's England and SA. When a country is at its optimum, you can create a decent team of guys in that bracket, a la India around 2003, and Australia could do it for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

There'd be big holes in Australian, Sri Lankan, Indian and Pakistani batting line-ups at the moment in that age group.

 

[Spark]

Sort of a missing generation, the entire bracket between 26 and about 32-33 for us. Of the batsmen, only two, Watson and Clarke, have had real success at international level and even Watson isn't quite doing justice to his ability.

 

[Arachnodouche]

Really? If anything I thought Watson was over-performing at no.1. About time things cooled down a bit for him.

I think India will have a fairly stable middle order in the future once Kohli, Pujara, and R. Sharma (still hands down the most classically talented young batsman in the world today) start getting regular spots. It's the bowling that will let us down. One hopes people like Ishant have a Srinath-like renaissance after spending an year or two with some county (provided someone's willing to take him, before some smart guy pops in)

 

[uvelocity]

pitches have helped, but the bowlers need to do the business, and backing by the fielders and captain. Indan tour of Australia I'm talking about.

 

[Flem274*]

They weren't, IMO.. Just that the pitches gave them something that was not there in 2004 and 2007..

An unbeaten triple century for Clarke against Zaheer?

 

[benchmark00]

pitches have helped, but the bowlers need to do the business, and backing by the fielders and captain. Indan tour of Australia I'm talking about.

Yep. I don't think the bowling has improved that much or the batting has deteriorated that much. It's just a case of pitches being prepared are more bowler friendly and the bowlers are cashing in on it whilst there is a period of adjustment that the batsmen aren't handling as well.

 

[benchmark00]

An unbeaten triple century for Clarke against Zaheer?

I was there for the first three days of that game, and Clarke was untouchable, but despite what it may seem with India being bowled out cheaply in the first innings, that pitch was FLAT.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Really? If anything I thought Watson was over-performing at no.1. About time things cooled down a bit for him.

I think India will have a fairly stable middle order in the future once Kohli, Pujara, and R. Sharma (still hands down the most classically talented young batsman in the world today) start getting regular spots. It's the bowling that will let us down. One hopes people like Ishant have a Srinath-like renaissance after spending an year or two with some county (provided someone's willing to take him, before some smart guy pops in)

Agree, but you know when that'll be? When they're in the age bracket that I described. That should keep India pretty competitive throughout.

 

[uvelocity]

there is a period of adjustment that the batsmen aren't handling as well.

which is good becuase all batsmen are ****s

 

[honestbharani]

An unbeaten triple century for Clarke against Zaheer?

yeah.. it is much easier to thwart one bowler in favorable conditions as opposed to 3..

 

[Flem274*]

Yadav and Ashwin are hardly terrible.

 

[honestbharani]

Yadav was, in that particular innings.. And Ashwin is good as part of a decent attack but when runs are coming from the other end, he is thrown off his gameplan and does not have the attacking tools of the great spinners to get back at the batsman. Very much in the Kumble mould that way..

 

[kingjulian]

You see, this line of argument really ****s me off. I don't mean to single you out here, because you are far from the only person who believes this.

If every person who said what you have said was right, then cricket was at its peak in the 1700s and has declined ever since. It's rose tinted glasses and nostalgia, and nothing more. The Ashes 2005 featured Ashley Giles ffs.

You know how you just said bowling has improved but batting has gotten worse? They're directly related to each other. You cannot get periods where every batsman averages 40-50 and every bowler 30-20. The maths doesn't work. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. The batting is currently **** because ****s like Philander are walking all over them. In the 00s, batsmen walked all over bowling attacks.

International cricket was, is, and always will be, cyclic and ever changing. Just like individual matches, and series in isolation, sometimes bowling will dominate a period and sometimes batting. Sometimes they will be fairly even, in which case you get a whole pile of batsmen averaging in the late 30s and bowlers in the low 30s with a few stand outs in each side. You know what people will say then? They will say everyone sucks and Ponting/Marshall would destroy the bowlers/batsmen in that era.

It's just blatant crap. I've been waiting for someone to point to this mythical pinnacle of cricket standards for some time. Some point me to the 80s, others the 90s, but in those eras there were some very **** teams, **** players and on the flipside there were some very dominant players, who were part of dominant teams.

Someone has to win, and someone has to lose.

Rarely have i seen a post in CircketWeb that i agree to this extent...

Some may say that's a bad thing for you.

 

[Furball]

I think the quality of cricket has generally deteriorated. The present state of teams makes for exciting cricket, pulsating cricket, but I'm not sure I'd put it on the same page as Ind-Aus '01 or the Ashes '05. The bowling has stepped up a peg or two as compared to the previous decade when there were 5 all-time greats dominating the game. Batting has surely plummeted, even fielding seems to be experiencing a bit of a downturn; traditionally strong fielding sides like Australia seem to be mucking up far too often these days.

Ashes 2005 had quite a lot of bad cricket.

It was a great series because it was so close and tense for 4 Tests out of 5, but it wasn't a series of absolute top quality.