***Official*** England in India

[LongHopCassidy]

From experience, I'll tell you that spin in English youth cricket is very much encouraged, or at least now. Counties often pick up spinners who are clearly not as good as their rival quicks and don't do as well. I did trials for a county last year and didn't make it, but someone (who I feel is a similar standard to me) and bowled spin did get in. And their is actually a lot of wrist spin nowadays, due to the Warne factor I assume. I played a game last season including 5 leg spinners.

This issue is, good quality spin bowlers in youth cricket are very rare. I've found spinners just don't generate the pace and overspin on the ball to cause trouble. They bowl with good flight, but the turn is slow, and if you use your feet well, you can usually handle them pretty well.

In senior club cricket, you get some very good spinners, but they are very traditional English spin bowlers. Ones who bowl off spin without much turn, but just bowl on the spot all day.

This leads on to my original point - English batsmen have more trouble than most Test nations against spin because the standard at home (is that an affirmative action policy you're describing WRT leggies?) is just not enough to prepare them for international spinners.

Thanks for the clarification though - I was working under the delusion that the English leg-spin dream lived and died with Chris Schofield.

 

[Howe_zat]

Aye, Herath's a gun. Brudenell legend.

 

[Cabinet96]

This leads on to my original point - English batsmen have more trouble than most Test nations against spin because the standard at home (is that an affirmative action policy you're describing WRT leggies?) is just not enough to prepare them for international spinners.

Thanks for the clarification though - I was working under the delusion that the English leg-spin dream lived and died with Chris Schofield.

Yes, but while I think the standard is poor, it's not like it's not encouraged. I think there are just less spinners in comparison to what you'd get in India or Sri Lanka, meaning there are less likely to be as many good ones.

The leg spin dream is well and truly alive. In fact I'd go as far as to say that there are just as many, if not more, leg spinners than finger spinners in youth cricket in England at the moment. But Neil Pickup would be a better person to hear from, as I'm just speaking from playing experience in a small part of London.

 

[marc71178]

I said possibly with the exception of SA.SL's batting is far from solid. Apart from Sanga and Jayawardene the rest are not that threatening. Also look at their players stats abroad outside the subcontinent, not amazing batting averages.

Remind us how India batted their last 2 away tours.

 

[theegyptian]

England don't produce spinners because of the climate imo. As cabinet says there are plenty of spinners playing youth cricket because the ecb and the respective boards recognise this is a position where we struggle. The problem is as soon as you go out of the youth ranks and into the senior game at whatever level it's tough to get selected simply because conditions don't suit.

The mild, unsettled weather produces slow green wickets that are suited to pace bowlers and even dibbly dobblers. Just look at county cricket and the number of guys bowling 70mph stump to stump- these guys wouldn't be anywhere near first class cricket in any other country( except for possibly NZ) but conditions make them useful. Wickets never get hard and never overly dry. Spinners are always going to get shunted in favour of seamers simply because conditions are vastly in favour of seamers over spinners - and when it's occasionally really dry for a month the spinner hasn't bowled any overs all season and so is out of practice.

The ECB can put as much money as they can into producing spinners at youth level but conditions will never be in favour of bowling spin in this country.

At county level they could instruct counties to make slow turners but as you've seen in the past couple of years they actively discouraged this by penalising points from Hampshire and Lancashire (i think??) for poor wickets that showing excessive turn early on. And if they want to go further they could bring in a regulation that counties must play one spinner and put in a stipulation about spinners having to bowl say 10 overs per 50 but then the game becomes contrived.

And you still have the problem below county cricket where they don't have the facilities to produce hard or dry wickets regularly and so there are rarely decent spinners and anyones with promise rarely get the overs required to develop.

 

[vic_orthdox]

I'll tell you one thing, I reckon every Aussie spinner looks at English pitches envious. I know I do.

I think the small grounds is an issue that doesn't help; young spinners can beat a batsman, have him miscue sixes quite easily, and you can't blame the captain for not keeping him on when it happens a number of times. If the boundary was bigger, he could have three fa. Plus the lack of bowling restrictions in many leagues, which can make the standard better, does encourage your medium pacers that can get through 15+ overs straight.

Those damp wickets allow the ball to turn, even if it is slow turn, and keeps the spinners in the game.

 

[Daemon]

Good to see that curious strain of Indian hubris is still alive and well.

They're clearly the best at inspiring blind devotion amongst their fans, yay them

Serious point Spark, is there a subforum plan for this series as you guys may get quite a lot of work with Indian fans starting lots of threads over every minor thing in this series. Might be easier for you guys seeing as we will lose and they want revenge etc...

There's just two of them doing it atm ffs. Out of so many Indian posters on this forum, just two.

 

[Prince EWS]

There's just two of them doing it atm ffs. Out of so many Indian posters on this forum, just two.

Yeah but they'd probably make up over 50% of the Indian posting population if we didn't have a ban button.

 

[Prince EWS]

There's just two of them doing it atm ffs. Out of so many Indian posters on this forum, just two.

Yeah but they'd probably make up over 50% of the Indian posting population if we didn't have a ban button.

 

[Daemon]

Cribb posting twice means he thinks they'd make up 100%. WAC.

 

[uvelocity]

well at least it wasn't spark, he'd have posted that in the kabbadi thread

 

[Cabinet96]

First warm up match starts in 2 minutes.

 

[Daemon]

India A bat first. Pity there's no proper coverage of the game.

 

[Prince EWS]

Cribb posting twice means he thinks they'd make up 100%. WAC.

Over 100% actually.

 

[Cabinet96]

https://twitter.com/AlisonMitchell

England team, no Broad: Cook, Compton, Trott, KP Bell, Patel, Prior, Bres, Swann, Finn, Anderson

India A: Mukund, Vijay, Rahane, Tiwary, Yuvraj, Raina, Saha, Pathan, V Kumar, Dinda, Awana

 

[Viscount Tom]

So what do we reckon then Compton in for the Test side on this basis?

 

[Prince EWS]

Hmm, no Bairstow. Looks like Samit could be playing the first Test if he makes a decent fist of this match, as I'm sure they'd not just decide to 'rest' Bairstow from this one...

 

[Viscount Tom]

Hope not given how dire Samit's been in FC this season.

 

[Cabinet96]

Hmm, no Bairstow. Looks like Samit could be playing the first Test if he makes a decent fist of this match, as I'm sure they'd not just decide to 'rest' Bairstow from this one...

I reckon this will be the side they go with for the first test, with Broad in for Bres. Could easily change depending on what happens in the warm ups though.

 

[Trichromatic]

Samit shouldn't play if they are considering him as bowling option in tests.