*Official* Fifth Test (The Oval, London) 27-31 July

[loterry1994]

So you think it's proportionate that having 19 overs unbowled across the series is worth the equivalent of two full Test matches?

I mean, why stop there? Ban teams who bowl slowly. Break the legs of bowlers who don't bowl overs quickly enough. Put the captains' heads on spikes. It's an effective deterrent after all.

"It's an effective deterrent" is not a reasonable or sufficient justification for penalty on its own. Proportionate punishments matter in this case as in literally every single other case.



Or perhaps it's because a really good concept that could be vital in maintaining the health of Test cricket long term is being ruined by consistent ineptitude on the ICC's behalf in designing a reasonable scoring system.

hoenstly it looked like they missed more overs the whole series. You can’t be using up the 30 extra minutes everyday and having a spinner bowl a decent amount of overs those days and miss the over rate a lot of days. My issue also is with umpires letting it happen things like bowlers taking to their captain frequently, asking for balls changes, delays deliveries being bowled, gloves and drinks requests etc. That 4th test was a fine example of it needing to be fixed asap. The penalty points might be harsh but something definitely needs to be done about it and both teams should of got warned about it earlier in the series but it kept going on every day.

 

[Spark]

hoenstly it looked like they missed more overs the whole series. You can’t be using up the 30 extra minutes everyday and having a spinner bowl a decent amount of overs those days and miss the over rate a lot of days. My issue also is with umpires letting it happen things like bowlers taking to their captain frequently, asking for balls changes, delays deliveries being bowled, gloves and drinks requests etc. That 4th test was a fine example of it needing to be fixed asap

I'm all for the umpires making far more active efforts to speed the players up. That's why my actual suggestion was a bowling clock; bowl your ball within x seconds of the ball being dead, as decided by the third ump, or it's a no ball. This is why sports which have faced the same problem have implemented this as a solution and it's worked basically immediately.

I'm amazed that this is apparently too big a distortion of the game according to some but nixing results and effectively overturning the results of an entire series is not.

 

[Qlder]

So it's official, Australia won the WTC Ashes with 18 points to England's 9

 

[Spark]

The main thing that frustrates me is that I just cannot see what exactly is wrong with a simple, easy-to-understand and easy to implement system that makes every Test match meaningful and gives every decent team a reasonable shot at success. 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss. 2 bonus points for a series win. Top four go to semi finals, played 1v4 and 2v3 simultaneously, held consistently in England to make logistics easy. Final between the winner. Easy to implement, easy for fans to understand, makes every Test match meaningful. I genuinely do not understand why this is so ****ing hard.

The only reason you would need to complicate it is by adding a multiplier for teams that don't play as many games. But that's the only reason.

 

[loterry1994]

I'm all for the umpires making far more active efforts to speed the players up. That's why my actual suggestion was a bowling clock; bowl your ball within x seconds of the ball being dead, as decided by the third ump, or it's a no ball. This is why sports which have faced the same problem have implemented this as a solution and it's worked basically immediately.

I'm amazed that this is apparently too big a distortion of the game according to some but nixing results and effectively overturning the results of an entire series is not.

just goes to show most these players couldn’t care less about the WTC and the points. But I think the points the deduction ain’t that harsh that was as bad as time wasting as I’ve seen in a while. Both teams won’t complain about the points loss one but. I’m even more surprised England got docked more points the Aussies looked worse at times for times wasting

 

[trundler]

Would you support Australia being declared series winners?

No that's not the point at all. I don't have to say that. If you end up multiple overs short in 4 out of 5 tests in a series then you should perhaps get a serial offender penalty too. Sure, the format needs work as most teams play 2-3 test series and series of over 4 or more tests are very infrequent and weighing the 2 appropriately is difficult. The format needs work. The whole reason people are moaning about this though is because England lost a lot of points.. but they let a lot of overs unbowled. Ass backwards logic again. They failed to meet the minimum standard which most teams have no trouble meeting most of the time for almost the entire dusting of a series ffs.

I hope you're not involved in designing systems that affect other actual human beings. "If people complain about it, it must be working!"

People complain about umpire's call all the time and propose worse systems to replace it all the time. Nerds bickering is background noise. I did explain why any effective system in this context would have people complaining. If it doesn't influence WTC standings then there's no point.

The main thing that frustrates me is that I just cannot see what exactly is wrong with a simple, easy-to-understand and easy to implement system that makes every Test match meaningful and gives every decent team a reasonable shot at success. 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss. 2 bonus points for a series win. Top four go to semi finals, played 1v4 and 2v3 simultaneously, held consistently in England to make logistics easy. Final between the winner. Easy to implement, easy for fans to understand, makes every Test match meaningful. I genuinely do not understand why this is so ****ing hard.

The only reason you would need to complicate it is by adding a multiplier for teams that don't play as many games. But that's the only reason.

I mean yeah and that's pretty significant when some teams play twice as many tests as others lol

 

[loterry1994]

The main thing that frustrates me is that I just cannot see what exactly is wrong with a simple, easy-to-understand and easy to implement system that makes every Test match meaningful and gives every decent team a reasonable shot at success. 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss. 2 bonus points for a series win. Top four go to semi finals, played 1v4 and 2v3 simultaneously, held consistently in England to make logistics easy. Final between the winner. Easy to implement, easy for fans to understand, makes every Test match meaningful. I genuinely do not understand why this is so ****ing hard.

The only reason you would need to complicate it is by adding a multiplier for teams that don't play as many games. But that's the only reason.

because those bozos want half the nations to play like 12 tests while the top 3 play like 20 tests a cycle . So a point is system is pretty much out the picture. I even said a few days ago I’d much rather they give more points/percentage to teams that win tests and series away also

 

[trundler]

because those bozos want half the nations to play like 12 tests while the top 3 play like 20 tests exhibited . So a point is system is pretty much out the picture. I even said a few days ago I’d much rather they give more points/percentage to teams that win tests and series away also

The reason they don't reward series wins is to avoid incentivising teams to play for the draw after getting a lead in the series. Each match getting weighed equally is definitely the right call imo.

 

[Xix2565]

The main thing that frustrates me is that I just cannot see what exactly is wrong with a simple, easy-to-understand and easy to implement system that makes every Test match meaningful and gives every decent team a reasonable shot at success. 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss. 2 bonus points for a series win. Top four go to semi finals, played 1v4 and 2v3 simultaneously, held consistently in England to make logistics easy. Final between the winner. Easy to implement, easy for fans to understand, makes every Test match meaningful. I genuinely do not understand why this is so ****ing hard.

The only reason you would need to complicate it is by adding a multiplier for teams that don't play as many games. But that's the only reason.

Well the big boards don't want to make a Test championship. They just want to pretend that this bilateral format can somehow work as one.

 

[Adders]

its a disingenuous thing they claim to discredit the real issue just like how they all don’t care about wtc yet post saying that they don’t care about it everytime

If thats aimed at my comments then that's not the case at all.

I'm on record here as saying the WTC "should" be important.....but as it is now it's a farce and I'm certainly not alone on ranking it a fair way down my list of test priorities. Fix the format and make it genuine and even contest amongst all test playing nations then I'll take it seriously.

As for over rates it do get its a problem and that is a big bone of contention to some people.......but personally it just isn't to me as I think there are far more pressing issues to address in cricket. That said I'm not going to argue with anyone that does think it is a major problem. I've just got a different view.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

England clearly wasted too much time getting their bowlers off the park for rest breaks.

 

[the big bambino]

Why not just allow an extra half hour in countries which bowl a higher percentage of pace bowlers?

Joe Root has the solution. Just keep playing until 10pm. Wonder why he doesn’t mention it.

The quota is 30 overs a session. Just keep playing through the lunch and tea breaks until they catch up. I mean the tv stations are still there and I imagine would rather have play than KP and others giving their thoughts. An extra 30 minutes after six would be good but I’m not sure if that would interfere with programming.

 

[Line and Length]

The ridiculous aspect of this whole slow over rate penalties is that it only applies to sides when an innings goes beyond 80 overs. Taking it to an extreme hypothetical, a side could bowl just 79 overs in a day and a half and, by dismissing a side in the 79th over, escape sanctions.

 

[trundler]

The ridiculous aspect of this whole slow over rate penalties is that it only applies to sides when an innings goes beyond 80 overs. Taking it to an extreme hypothetical, a side could bowl just 79 overs in a day and a half and, by dismissing a side in the 79th over, escape sanctions.

This is clearly meant to account for those tests in SA where 4 seamers are played and matches wrap up in under 4 days because 12+ wickets fall per day. Not having this caveat in place would lead to over rate penalties in those cases, which would be worse.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

The problem is, it's not really the same limits for a match in Sri Lanka as it is in England.

England and Australia have just produced arguably the most entertaining Test Series for 20 years played in front of full houses. England have been rewarded with less than the W Indies managed from a rain affected draw in a 2 Test series that was watched by virtually no one.

BG with the 36/9 and the Gabba was more entertaining

 

[Prince EWS]

I'm all for the umpires making far more active efforts to speed the players up. That's why my actual suggestion was a bowling clock; bowl your ball within x seconds of the ball being dead, as decided by the third ump, or it's a no ball. This is why sports which have faced the same problem have implemented this as a solution and it's worked basically immediately.

I just genuinely don't think this is an issue unless the time-wasting is deliberate so I wouldn't support this either, but yeah it's a better solution for sure.

We could even make the bowling clock stop when the bowler started running in as opposed to when they actually bowled it to stop the bias towards bowling spin or others with short run-ups that other methods would create.

 

[Daemon]

Trundler being an idiot in this thread. Behave yourself.

 

[the big bambino]

Trundler is an idiot but there are better examples of it than this thread.

 

[Shri]

how do county teams bowl 90 overs a day, day in day out?

 

[Shady Slim]

If you really believe this is true then you should be consistent about this. Would you support Australia being declared series winners? After all, 8 overs is now worth a Test win. So Australia won the series 1-0. Do you think that would be what the spectators want to see? That's meant to be the entire point of this stuff after all. I'm sure people getting into the sport for the first time will think it entirely reasonable that you can have entire results scrubbed out because you were effectively one and a half hours late across over fifty hours of sport; they definitely aren't going to go "lmao what a complete joke of a sport that they actually have that as a set punishment, purportedly to ensure fan engagement."

The other alternative, of course, is that we're not consistent about this, we don't actually believe this to be place, and thus this renders the WTC a farce. Which it was already.



I hope you're not involved in designing systems that affect other actual human beings. "If people complain about it, it must be working!"

i mean i don't need to jump in here because clearly a) the argument doesn't involve me and b) you're clearly a lot more passionate about this than i am but this isn't the same thing. the docking from the opposition of an equivalent amount of points to that which you get for winning a match isn't equivalent to actually winning the match proper