*Official* Australia in Sri Lanka 2016

[Daemon]

Yeah was going to say this. Blokes who are tall and/or bowls 140+ gets something out of them while blokes who bowl in mid 130's don't and Aust have many who are tall and fast. It also helps that the batsmen pile up 500+ regularly.

Personally i don't think that Aust batsmen are that worse than anyone at playing on dust bowls or in seaming conditions cos everybody struggles on such wickets (not because the modern batsmen are **** at playing on such wickets or anything but its pretty ****ing hard to score on dust bowls or seaming wickets and i'm pretty sure many teams would have folded against Herath on this track for a similar score but since Aust bats are probably much better at filling their boots on roads, they get noted out when they fail on these sort of wickets more by usual armchair experts.

Yeah I guess everyone feels they're terrible against spin on slow wickets (they are) because they've done **** like lost a warm up game, got asked to follow on in another, then proceeded to get whitewashed in the test series, twice. There's a tendency to then extrapolate this shitness into an assumption that Australians are worse than the norm on raging turners. It's a valid assumption if you watch them bat, but I guess statistically there's not much evidence besides how they did in a couple of games in India (where half the side isn't playing now anyways) and Voges' debut.

 

[burr]

Just saw that Smith shot. That was terrible - hang your head in shame Steve.

 

[burr]

That was shoddy from Aus - we continue to give the impression of extreme susceptibility to falling like a pack of cards whenever we get spooked in foreign conditions. We have such a long tail. Peter Nevill needs to do something with the bat sooner rather than later. Mitch Marsh, well, yes, he's not remotely close to a number 6, as we all know. You compare it to England with their ridiculous middle/lower order. I guess the upside is our bowling attack is genuinely exciting - one I'd pay to watch.

 

[91Jmay]

That was shoddy from Aus - we continue to give the impression of extreme susceptibility to falling like a pack of cards whenever we get spooked in foreign conditions. We have such a long tail. Peter Nevill needs to do something with the bat sooner rather than later. Mitch Marsh, well, yes, he's not remotely close to a number 6, as we all know. You compare it to England with their ridiculous middle/lower order. I guess the upside is our bowling attack is genuinely exciting - one I'd pay to watch.

Yeah, but Australia's top 5 is so much stronger than England's. As people often point out, almost no team ever has a strong top 7 with players averaging over 40+ all the way down.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Australian pitches definitely suit Australian batsmen and bowlers because with the exception of some pitches in South Africa you don't get pitches with the same pace or bounce anywhere else in the world.

It's why Australia's batsmen have been rubbish in Asia recently, they've struggled to adapt to slower wickets with less bounce and it's why batsmen from elsewhere strugglein Australia.

Spot on

Personally i don't think that Aust batsmen are that worse than anyone at playing on dust bowls or in seaming conditions cos everybody struggles on such wickets (not because the modern batsmen are **** at playing on such wickets or anything but its pretty ****ing hard to score on dust bowls or seaming wickets and i'm pretty sure many teams would have folded against Herath on this track for a similar score but since Aust bats are probably much better at filling their boots on roads, they get noted out when they fail on these sort of wickets more by usual armchair experts.

Nah Australia are definitely worse than most

 

[burr]

Yeah, but Australia's top 5 is so much stronger than England's. As people often point out, almost no team ever has a strong top 7 with players averaging over 40+ all the way down.

I don't know. I'd probably take Root and Cook over Warner and Smith. The rest are all pretty iffy except for Voges obviously - but he won't last that long. Basically I'd say stronger but not nec. 'so much stronger'.

 

[91Jmay]

Yeah but Cook/Root and Warner and Smith are a wash, so Voges goes up against 3 spuds along with Khawaja who is better than any of the other 3 England bats as well. Probably to early to tell with Burns although from the little I've seen not massively convinced he is the answer.

Essentially Aussies have 1 good, 1 very good and 2 great top order bats. England have 2 great top order bats. Not really comparable in my opinion.

 

[Midwinter]

The Lyon -SOK Gauge

Lyon 3 -17
SOK 2 -23

It's close on the numbers and also in the context of the game.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Second innings prediction:

SOK 5/35
Lyon 0/50

 

[Dan Jamson]

Interesting how highly you rate Khawaja. He made a few runs against a mickey mouse West Indies team and on some incredibly flat drop-in pitches in NZ. Will be watching to see how well he does against some half decent bowling attacks this Aus summer.

 

[Black_Warrior]

Neutral groundsmen for Tests should come into a consideration. Home team-favoring pitches just leave a bad taste IMO.

I'd be pretty disappointed if Australia did it to touring sides.

I don't want to get into the debate about whether Australia prepares pitches to help themselves or not.

But with regard to your point about neutral groundsmen and home team favouring pitches, from my understanding of cricket history, this is how pitches have been prepared for most part of cricket history. It is an integral part of what test cricket is all about and the whole concept of home and away tours. If pitches all over the world were prepared by neutral groundsmen according in the exact same way, (firstly that's not even possible in a practical way as each geographical location will be shaped by it's specific physical factors), don't you think test cricket would become less exciting? Part of my excitement of the up coming test season is things like wanting to see Williamson in South Africa and India this year, Root in India later in the year, Shafiq in England, New Zealand and Australia this year. I find it so much more fun this way.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I don't want to get into the debate about whether Australia prepares pitches to help themselves or not.

But with regard to your point about neutral groundsmen and home team favouring pitches, from my understanding of cricket history, this is how pitches have been prepared for most part of cricket history. It is an integral part of what test cricket is all about and the whole concept of home and away tours. If pitches all over the world were prepared by neutral groundsmen according in the exact same way, (firstly that's not even possible in a practical way as each geographical location will be shaped by it's specific physical factors), don't you think test cricket would become less exciting? Part of my excitement of the up coming test season is things like wanting to see Williamson in South Africa and India this year, Root in India later in the year, Shafiq in England, New Zealand and Australia this year. I find it so much more fun this way.

You misunderstand, no one thinks all Test pitches should be the same. It's good that conditions all around the world reflect their differences.

"Neutral groundsmen" is a stupid idea for a lot of reasons. I was just using it as a vehicle to express my annoyance.

 

[Gnske]

Interesting how highly you rate Khawaja. He made a few runs against a mickey mouse West Indies team and on some incredibly flat drop-in pitches in NZ. Will be watching to see how well he does against some half decent bowling attacks this Aus summer.

I have some bad news for you

 

[TheJediBrah]

Interesting how highly you rate Khawaja. He made a few runs against a mickey mouse West Indies team and on some incredibly flat drop-in pitches in NZ. Will be watching to see how well he does against some half decent bowling attacks this Aus summer.

That must be why all the players in that series averaged 60-70+

Oh wait, they didn't

 

[Black_Warrior]

You misunderstand, no one thinks all Test pitches should be the same. It's good that conditions all around the world reflect their differences.

"Neutral groundsmen" is a stupid idea for a lot of reasons. I was just using it as a vehicle to express my annoyance.

What we're seeing now is a return to the days of the 80s and 90s when home teams pressed on the home advantage. A large part of the noughties saw a slight change in that pitches were not favouring the home teams to that extent but in the last few years, I am seeing a return to that.

Having said that, this should not be a conversation in a thread about Sri Lanka's home series because I have found them to produce the best or most sporting pitches in the last few years. Some of the most exciting test matches have taken place in Sri Lanka in the last few years because I find that the pitches offer movement to seamers, turn for spinners but quality batsmen like YK or Sanga can still score big hundreds.

 

[TheJediBrah]

What we're seeing now is a return to the days of the 80s and 90s when home teams pressed on the home advantage. A large part of the noughties saw a slight change in that pitches were not favouring the home teams to that extent but in the last few years, I am seeing a return to that.

Having said that, this should not be a conversation in a thread about Sri Lanka's home series because I have found them to produce the best or most sporting pitches in the last few years. Some of the most exciting test matches have taken place in Sri Lanka in the last few years because I find that the pitches offer movement to seamers, turn for spinners but quality batsmen like YK or Sanga can still score big hundreds.

I wouldn't say it's at epidemic proportions, but it tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth if it's perceived that a deliberately manufactured pitch has an influence on the result.

I would use Australia tour of India in 2013 as an example of pretty good conditions iirc, they were spin friendly, but not excessively so or deliberately accentuated in their nature as far as I can remember. Not every home friendly wicket is "doctored".

 

[Black_Warrior]

I wouldn't say it's at epidemic proportions, but it tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth if it's perceived that a deliberately manufactured pitch has an influence on the result.

I would use Australia tour of India in 2013 as an example of pretty good conditions iirc, they were spin friendly, but not excessively so or deliberately accentuated in their nature as far as I can remember. Not every home friendly wicket is "doctored".

Agreed. But we should also be careful to filter out vast majority of 'opinions' accusing home team of 'doctoring' pitches on social media because most of them are just bitter fans who can't handle a defeat. Bitter fans like that will always have a bad taste in their mouth when their team loses. Once we have that filtered out, I think a normal conversation on pitches is possible.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Agreed. But we should also be careful to filter out vast majority of 'opinions' accusing home team of 'doctoring' pitches on social media because most of them are just bitter fans who can't handle a defeat. Bitter fans like that will always have a bad taste in their mouth when their team loses. Once we have that filtered out, I think a normal conversation on pitches is possible.

It should be, but this thread recently is sufficient evidence that it's often not.

 

[Burgey]

Second innings prediction:

SOK 5/35
Lyon 0/50

You know your avatar looks like a 60 something year old Nathan Lyon, right?

 

[Dan Jamson]

That must be why all the players in that series averaged 60-70+

Oh wait, they didn't

Point still stands. Khawaja still has a lot to prove before he's considered a top test batsmen.