Does anyone think Australia's situation is not actually that dire?

[the big bambino]

Seeing the amount of south sea islanders that have played/play for your rugby teams it must be a bit of a shame for Oz (and NZ) that the south sea islanders don't play cricket to the level that they play rugby.

Vunipola?

Btw we have a large population of islander decent born here. As does NZ. The idea that they are some how not Australian bcos they aren't European is past its use by date. It'd be like claiming your African athletes aren't really English.

 

[91Jmay]

Think you are a bit touchy over this, don't you mate?

 

[Tom Halsey]

Really? Don't rate form?

Two things with this.

Firstly, this is about the overall health of Australian cricket, not hot or not six month bursts.

Secondly I could be completely mistaken here (genuinely not sure on the details) but I seem to recall Pickup posting some sort of evidence that form in most cases is basically a bit of an illusion and can be again attributed to statistical variance. If that turns out to be true then no, I don't rate form much anyway.

 

[Top_Cat]

Articles like this are cause for some optimism in the (very) long term.

Germany the latest to ridicule Australia's cricketers

Over-fed with drama for the past year, we thought this Ashes series would ignite another glorious summer. Trent Bridge tricked us. Lord's told the truth. However much the English want a 5-0 victory they would prefer a contest first.

.....

The year that keeps on giving has decided to be less liberal with its gifts. One-sidedness has replaced gnawing tension. Only England's margin of victory in this series appears in doubt. At least now we know we can always call the Germans in and call it Der Ashes.

**** off, sing when you're winning mate. That's why the Aussie Test side were dominant for so long; being spanked for most of the 80's gave the players coming afterward the determination to crush anyone who went past the boundary line with them. There was no such no humility and wishing for a contest when Australia were dominating and you can bet there will be none if they get back to the top of world cricket.

 

[Top_Cat]

Two things with this.

Firstly, this is about the overall health of Australian cricket, not hot or not six month bursts.

Secondly I could be completely mistaken here (genuinely not sure on the details) but I seem to recall Pickup posting some sort of evidence that form in most cases is basically a bit of an illusion and can be again attributed to statistical variance. If that turns out to be true then no, I don't rate form much anyway.

The statistical position is that instances at bat are independent events but it's arguable depending on definitions.

 

[hendrix]

Seeing the amount of south sea islanders

what is this? Sounds like a form of a turtle.

Do you mean Pacific Islanders?

Would like to note that New Zealand is a Pacific Island. It's not particularly strange that there are Pacific Islanders inhabiting the largest and wealthiest Pacific Island.

 

[Cooky Monster]

A turtle? haha ok mate, still NZ and Oz have been pillaging those islands for their best rugby players for years.

 

[the big bambino]

A turtle? haha ok mate, still NZ and Oz have been pillaging those islands for their best rugby players for years.

Vunipola?

 

[the big bambino]

Think you are a bit touchy over this, don't you mate?

Lol. Sure buddy. We're touchy about the amount of Saffers we've got in our team.

 

[hendrix]

A turtle? haha ok mate, still NZ and Oz have been pillaging those islands for their best rugby players for years.

This is very off topic, but you don't seem to understand the difference between "pillage" and "geography".

The people "pillaged" who are very good at rugby are not "South Sea Islanders". "South Sea Islanders" are largely Melanesians (primarily Solomon Islanders) who have been living in Australia for >80 years.

Pacific Islanders represent a very good playing pool. New Zealand is a Pacific Island. In fact, Maori are Pacific Islanders indigenous to New Zealand. Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, has the largest population of Pacific Islanders in the world.

Australia also has a very large population of Pacific Islanders. There are more Maori in Perth than there are in Hamilton.

This is not pillage.

It is geography.

 

[hendrix]

We may as well accuse the West Indies of pillaging Africa.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

A turtle? haha ok mate, still NZ and Oz have been pillaging those islands for their best rugby players for years.

Typically selective Pommy memory. It's getting pretty hard to point to an Englishman in your Rugby team these days, and let's face it, complaining about Southern Hemisphere nationalities has been England's only way of getting through 30 years of turgid, godawful rugby. Your post is such a tired, cliched pile of steaming turd that I think it was originally released on Shellac at 78rpm; if not wax cylinder.

 

[Top_Cat]

Kids, kids, you're Both. Just. Awful.

 

[Dan]

Right now we're discussing rugby in the Ashes subforum.

Back onto the topic, lads.

 

[Backlash]

It's fairly dire. The breeding ground for test cricketers in Aus is not healthy. England didn't just happen on their current team. They - to their enormous credit - made fundamental changes to their set-up at domestic level. This idea our problems stem from picking too many openers is absurd. Root has (thus far) succeeded in two positions at test cricket because he's a talented and patient young cricketer.

This isn't a cycle. We shouldn't be this bad. We shouldn't be as good as early 2000s, but we shouldn't be this bad either. Excusing it as a cycle is just lazy. Anyway, I do agree we need to persevere with some of these underperformers. Constantly making changes isn't going to instill confidence in anyone.

All I ask for the remainder of this series is some fight, and I think at this stage it's all most Australian fans are asking for. If we lose 5-0 but can rack together some hundreds, some winning sessions and some gritty performances then, frankly, I'll be thrilled.

And what about when the Australia series which comes around in about 4 months? Will some "fight" be good enough in that one? I don't think most of those Australian fans who bought tickets which weren't cheap didn't get them to maybe see some "gritty performances". To say Cricket Australia have dug Test Cricket in this country is an understatement. I guess they can always fill that hole in with the corpse of Australian Test Cricket after this summer I guess.

As for the OP, yes it is as dire as it gets. Australian Cricket is rotten to the core from top all the way to the bottom, Aussie kids are turning away from the game, First Class Cricket is dead and Test Cricket will follow suit soon enough while 20/20 rises in its place.

 

[Arachnodouche]

Incentivize time spent at the crease in Shield cricket. Raising a generation of stonewallers is surely preferable to this.

 

[morgieb]

Does CA employ a pitch inspector for FC games? Maybe they should do that and dock points for poor pitches.

 

[Spikey]

they only started in the middle of the last summer. lowering the quality of the shield and 2nd XI by force feeding young players into the system will remain a popular "that's where it went wrong" suggestion btw. really i think the main impact 'result' pitches have is just that those matches are effectively useless when it comes to Australian selection, and with only 6 teams/10 shield rounds a player can't really afford too much totally devalued matches in a season

 

[Spark]

so we're still blaming greg chappell right

 

[Spikey]

Yep

WHAT WENT WRONG?

"As an organisation we were probably a bit slow to recognise how the world had changed and international cricket had pulled away from domestic cricket.

"The next generation weren’t getting to bat against the best bowlers.

"The experiences and challenges that threw up to previous generations have gone missing from domestic cricket.

"That’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it’s happened.

"We’ve made some decisions over the last five years to rectify that.

"Going back we had something like nine batsmen under 23 on state contracts.

"It was taking four years on average to get players from the under 19 program to be on state lists.

"That was a huge gap. Four years in the wilderness basically meant that players weren’t getting the opportunities that they needed.

"Now 17 batsmen under 23 are on state contract lists.

"That’s a step in the right direction and we could do with more."

Read more: No Cookies | thetelegraph.com.au

Greg Chappell predicts several more years of struggles for Australia's batsmen | Australia Cricket, Live Cricket, Cricket Scores | Fox Sports