Jarquis

In the League phase, each team plays the others in their group once. Teams get 5 points for a win and 1 bonus point for an innings or 10 wicket win. There are 3 points for a first innings lead, the reason why there are so many draws, teams would rather win toss and bat long. This is IMO the single most significant factor responsible for bringing down the overall quality of the Ranji Trophy. Ideally they should reduce that to just 1 point, and perhaps even penalise the home team for a draw.

Incidentally, the selectors tend to overlook Plate players for national selection because of the lower quality of cricket in the League. Ironically the Indian captain plays for a Plate Team Sreesanth plays for a Plate team too. Pujara has always been a heavy scorer who was overlooked for a long time because Saurashtra was a Plate team too. It's only now that they've managed to get promoted to Elite League and he's done well for India A that he's been seen as belonging to the top level.

Sure, The Ranji Trophy has two leagues, similar to County Championship - The Elite League comprising 15 teams, and the Plate League with 12 teams. Each League is divided into two groups ( 7 teams and 8 teams in the Elite groups, and 6 each in the Plate groups).

The top 3 teams from each of the two Elite groups, plus the top team from each of the Plate groups (lol minnows) make up the quarterfinal lineup.

The Elite and Plate divisions with promotion-relegation has been in existence for a while now, but they've made around 3 or 4 changes to the knockouts format this past decade, so this quarterfinals format is not guaranteed to persist.

Unfortunately, he's stumbled onto Twitter, and has been spamming the **** out of my Twitter account, asking me what I think about KP going a bit grey. Been a surprising lack of Australia are awesome talk, weird that.

wot?

What did you post in the chimpy thread?

Marcuss, I've deleted your post out of the Ponting thread. I know you didn't mean to put it in there, but given that there's already been a warning not to sledge in there I've deleted it.

Videos that match your query: barry richards is the only footage of him on the net I'm aware of - and I was there too - perfect day really - a Richards masterclass and a Lanky win

Graeme Pollock never played County cricket so I didn't see too much of him. Barry Richards on the other hand played for Hampshire for years - it was said he found it difficult to motivate himself without the challenge of test cricket - I can well believe it - on his day he was the best batsman I ever saw - no one made batting look easier

Yeah pretty much. You'll be ranked around 130-140 after the next rankings which means you'll generally be seeded at Challenger level.

Cool

Hey Marcus, are you still doing the Ashes battle? I thought it was a cool thread.

You on gtalk?

Was Gillespie ftr

Thanks for the tips Now to hope they stay unpicked!

As far as rating Indian batsmen goes, if he's a Mumbai player, better take any praise with a pinch of salt, IMO. Mumbai has provided us with most of our players until the end of the 90's, and ex Mumbai players tend to form an old boys club and talk up their own. They'll praise Gavaskar for his record against the West Indies, but strangely stay mum on the outsider Kapil, who had probably the best record against them among the 4 big all rounders. (Kapil had a higher batting average and more centuries in the WI than Vengsarkar, for instance ).

He had the reputation of being a gutsy batsman. People always bring up his 3 centuries at Lords when talking about him, and IIRC he was a major factor for us beating you guys in England in 86.

But its also telling that he's almost never in contention for all-time India XIs, let alone an all star XI of the 80s. Statsguru shows that he scored 13 of his 17 hundreds in India. He did have 6 against the WI, but they were all scored at home.

Gillespie would easily have been considered one of the topmost bowlers of his time. IMO he suffered by being overshadowed by McGrath. The 2004 series they won here probably has me biased in his favour, but 26 is a fine fine average.

I'd take Gillespie anyday.

okay! go ahead

I am intrigued. What would I have that you require?

Jason Gillespie

Pick Alan Knott if I am not online in the calendar draft. ****! cun...cu...c....................................................................plz?

I get what you're saying but Saffa is quite seam-friendly so I don't think that's ever going to wash.

TBH I think Jimmeh is the shizzle, defo world XI material and could win us the Ashes. But from an Aussie POV, he was fairly anonymous for the second half of the series last year and that was when the sun came out, so he does need to prove himself.

Just let his bowling do the talking...I believe he will