Here's an idea for Englands ODI squad!!

[Son Of Coco]

Would it make a difference.

In 10 years, Harmison could have 700 Test wickets, Flintoff 7000 runs and 300 wickets and Graeme Smith a career acerage of 35.

He'd still claim he's right.

I just thought that maybe in 10 years time he'd realise that maybe some of the stuff he was saying was slightly ridiculous, instead of being staunchly sure everything he thinks is fact, as he seems to be now. It's the impetuousness of youth i think. Then again, he could be proven correct (apparently others haven been lucky over a 10 year period, so why not Richard). In either case the gold plated ideas would be a brilliant gift.

 

[aussie_beater]

yeah Ambrose was a couple of inches taller...

Ambrose was a bit like Garner with the bounce and accuracy, but neither one of them was express pace, its just the steep angle of delivery made them both so difficult to play

Ambrose and Garner before him, had this remarkable ability to get an incredible amount of bounce right from just short of good length which would climb sharply into the rib cage of a batsman because its almost a good length delivery instead of the normal short stuff.They could do this at will in any type of wicket. This pretty much cramped most batsman and made life miserable and this primed the batsman into committing mistakes against a real short pitched snorter or something just moving away a little bit outside the off or stuff like that.

Ian Bishop who was Ambrose's contemporary was one bowler I really liked and who was immensely talented and IMO could have been a great bowler if injuries didn't destroy his career and he had to modify his action and cut down pace as well. When he started he had more pace then Ambrose ever had, and had the ability to sharply move the ball away from the right hander at a great pace on top of the ability to get steep bounce from just short of good length.

 

[marc71178]

Sorry to be pedantic, but considering they play about 16 Tests a year these days, thats 160 in 10 years, and 7000 runs + 300 wickets in that amount of time is not very impressive.

They don't play 16 every year - that's just been the last 12 months for England (3 Tours for 9 Tests last winter, but only 1 for 5 this time)

Admit I did just pluck those figures out the air as all round figures that would look very good as a career set.

 

[Swervy]

Ian Bishop who was Ambrose's contemporary was one bowler I really liked and who was immensely talented and IMO could have been a great bowler if injuries didn't destroy his career and he had to modify his action and cut down pace as well. When he started he had more pace then Ambrose ever had, and had the ability to sharply move the ball away from the right hander at a great pace on top of the ability to get steep bounce from just short of good length.

Yeah Bish was a great bowler...the last one WI produced I think (correct me if I am wrong on that one)

 

[Richard]

i do get the feeling that you think that anyone who played in that 2000 WI vs England series can do know wrong despite ist being a series to battle it out for the wooden spoon of world cricket...why is it an insult to compare Harmison to Ambrose , they are both tall, have similar actions..only Harmison is a bit quicker.

Well, we don't know that, Ambrose was only ever timed in 1998\99. He wasn't as quick then as he was in his early career (fairly obviously, given that he was 35 then). And I'd not call them similar actions. Ambrose's was straight in, straight up, straight through, Harmison's is much more up, down, through. About the only similarity is they both come from about 10ft.
And so what if the teams were perceived to be poor: there were many fantastic players on either side, the main reason England had largely been so poor was because there were so few occasions everyone played together; injuries were common, as were losses of form.

Ambrose most definately was a great, but he did improve throughout his career... allow Harmison similar space to improve, despite the fact he has had a bigger impact on international cricket much earlier on in his career than Ambrose did

And how can you really say Harmison is not as good as exploiting seam movement as Ambrose was, when in the same sentence you even say Harmison hasnt had the chance to do so...Ambrose really peaked as a bowler around 93 94 ish time, so was aged in his early 30's....Harmison has 5 years on him

Hmm, Ambrose's career as a great by universal acceptance started with his eight-for against England at Kensington (even though, bizarrely, his 46ao demolition is better remembered) - in his 19th Test, mind you, when he was aged 26. After that, he never ended a game with his average below 25. But he hasn't had the advantage of carrying a weak attack like Harmison has for the last 7 months - he had the most difficult of all starts imaginable, in amongst Marshall, Patterson and co.
Harmison is not as good at moving the ball off the seam as Ambrose was - if there was so much as a trace of seam-movement, he'd find it. Harmison, while he's bowled on seamers infrequently, has bowled on them occasionally and has struggled to seam the ball consistently.
It's a long time before we'll see whether Harmison is anything like as good as Ambrose - and seriously, there have been few better, Ambrose is a great among greats - and personally I doubt it. Then again, I don't suppose too many who saw Ambrose in his first 6 Tests would have guessed how good he was going to be.

 

[Richard]

If you truly believe that McGrath and Pollock get the results they do through luck then, as i've said before, maybe you don't pick up as much as you think from the couch. You need to combine your observations with a sound knowledge of the game, and in calling two of the better players of the current era "lucky" you don't seem to be doing this. Combining accuracy with consistently good seam position pretty much guarantees you at least a small amount of movement in quite a few different conditions. Just because you're not swinging the ball a foot doesn't mean nothing is happening. Where these two guys come into their own is that when there's no reall assistance for the bowlers they have their impeccable line and length to fall back on - and even on the worst track you're going to get a bit of movement here or there on occasions. They're definately not straight up and down bowlers, you have to move it quite a bit of the wicket, at decent pace, on a good line and length to get one past batsmen the caliber of whom generally play international cricket believe me.

Oh, believe me, I know that some bowlers (not by any means just McGrath and Pollock) can get small amounts of movement more often than not. Neither McGrath or Pollock swing the ball all that often (not never, though, not at all).
However, while you don't need to move it a foot, moving it an inch won't cause problems very often. Three or four, yes, if you get it in just the right area ball after ball, but even that isn't easy to achieve.
And whether or not, the fact is I've watched most of the wickets both these two bowlers have taken in the last 3 years - and most of them have come from poor strokes, with the occasional exception of matches which have been played on pitches offering seam or uneven bounce (or both, in the case of Trent Bridge 2003). On those occasions, they've tended to take quite a few wickets for not very many in not that many overs.

 

[Richard]

yeah Ambrose was a couple of inches taller...

Ambrose was a bit like Garner with the bounce and accuracy, but neither one of them was express pace, its just the steep angle of delivery made them both so difficult to play

The fact is, we don't know that - we will never know how quick bowlers were before 1998.
We can only go on the perception, and another good example is Nasser Hussain's comment 10 minutes ago - Sami often seems quicker than Shoaib when you're batting, because of his trajectory. Perception is always going to be quite faulty.
Indeed, speed-guns initially upset a few people because their perceptions of bowlers' pace were proved so wrong! I don't think anyone could quite believe that Mark Ealham was only 4 or 5 mph slower than Andy Caddick, because Caddick had always seemed so much quicker.

 

[Richard]

Yes, but the concept is still more accurate than you just thinking things.

The sheer weight of numbers watching add pressure even when they all want you to perform well, when they want you to fail, it will only magnify the pressure.

How come you know differently despite never having even experienceda crowd all willing you to succeed?

I've experienced a crowd wanting a player\team to fail when I want that player to succeed every bit as badly as the player himself does.
That is the best I can explain it as.

 

[Richard]

So you know how much pressure the players are under?

You know what it's like to have 5000 people all wanting you to fail?

You can tell all that from sitting watching the game?

I can make a pretty good guess, given that I've sat and watched, while wanting the player to perform as badly as he himself would have wanted.

 

[Richard]

Another one he still denies is the fact that taking a wicket in an ODI will slow the run rate.

It won't - if you bowl 2 Long-Hops to a batsman on 78, then a ball that gets him out, then 2 more Long-Hops to the new batsman, they're each just as likely to go for runs.
What often happens is that bowlers are bowling trash, get a wicket, then manage to tighten up to the new batsman (occasionally, captains have some sense and bring the field in, if it's in the pre-40-over stage), so the scoring-rate drops.
However, if you spray it around to a new batsman, he's just as likely to hit you for runs.
However, that is not to say that wickets are irrelevant - you don't have to bowl as well at a team that is 160 for 8 in the 40th to contain them as you do to a team that is 160 for 3 after the same time.

 

[Richard]

Would it make a difference.

In 10 years, Harmison could have 700 Test wickets, Flintoff 7000 runs and 300 wickets and Graeme Smith a career acerage of 35.

He'd still claim he's right.

If nothing has changed WR Harmison and Flintoff-the-bowler, yes, I'll still claim the same thing I claim now - that it's through poor strokes.
If Graeme has an average of 35 I'll say he's underpeformed and he's got himself only to blame.
If Flintoff bats anything like he's batted this summer I'll also give him full credit.

 

[Son Of Coco]

It won't - if you bowl 2 Long-Hops to a batsman on 78, then a ball that gets him out, then 2 more Long-Hops to the new batsman, they're each just as likely to go for runs.
What often happens is that bowlers are bowling trash, get a wicket, then manage to tighten up to the new batsman (occasionally, captains have some sense and bring the field in, if it's in the pre-40-over stage), so the scoring-rate drops.
However, if you spray it around to a new batsman, he's just as likely to hit you for runs.
However, that is not to say that wickets are irrelevant - you don't have to bowl as well at a team that is 160 for 8 in the 40th to contain them as you do to a team that is 160 for 3 after the same time.

If you bowl crap to the new batsman then you might possibly get hit yes, but a bastman who is yet to get his eye in is less dangerous than one who has been there for 2 hours.

You say that often a bowlers bowls crap, gets a wicket and then tightens up after that. Isn't it just as likely that the bowler was bowling quite well, took a wicket and then troubled the new batsman moreso due to the the fact that he's just in?

 

[Richard]

I just thought that maybe in 10 years time he'd realise that maybe some of the stuff he was saying was slightly ridiculous, instead of being staunchly sure everything he thinks is fact, as he seems to be now. It's the impetuousness of youth i think. Then again, he could be proven correct (apparently others haven been lucky over a 10 year period, so why not Richard). In either case the gold plated ideas would be a brilliant gift.

I've never said some stuff is fact - no, "good" bowling is solely down to perception.
I've never said "McGrath is not a good bowler on flat, grassless wickets", I've just said "in my opinion he's not.

 

[Son Of Coco]

I've never said some stuff is fact - no, "good" bowling is solely down to perception.
I've never said "McGrath is not a good bowler on flat, grassless wickets", I've just said "in my opinion he's not.

He's taken 400 wickets and you refer to him as a lucky bowler Richard.

 

[Richard]

Yeah Bish was a great bowler...the last one WI produced I think (correct me if I am wrong on that one)

Err... Ambrose, Walsh?
Are you talking about the last to start a career or finish one?

 

[Richard]

He's taken 400 wickets and you refer to him as a lucky bowler Richard.

To be fair I can only refer to the time from summer 2001 onwards with any certainty (114 wickets). I've just kinda assumed that something that's been the case for the last 3 years was probably the case for the 8 before that.
In that time he's been devestating on seaming and\or uneven pitches and rather anodyne on ones that have offered neither. Except when he's had poor strokes played to him.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Personally I think McGrath is very good on 'flat, grassless wickets' that have pace and bounce in them (after all most Australian wickets are like this) I can't think of many bowlers who are good (at taking wickets not merely restricting run rate) on slow, flat wickets.

 

[Richard]

If you bowl crap to the new batsman then you might possibly get hit yes, but a bastman who is yet to get his eye in is less dangerous than one who has been there for 2 hours.

You say that often a bowlers bowls crap, gets a wicket and then tightens up after that. Isn't it just as likely that the bowler was bowling quite well, took a wicket and then troubled the new batsman moreso due to the the fact that he's just in?

Of course that happens too, I've just seen it slightly less.
2 good overs to a batsman who's flogging the rest around, followed by dismissing him, followed by 2 more good overs at the new player. Not unusual at all.

 

[Richard]

Personally I think McGrath is very good on 'flat, grassless wickets' that have pace and bounce in them (after all most Australian wickets are like this) I can't think of many bowlers who are good (at taking wickets not merely restricting run rate) on slow, flat wickets.

Good batsmen aren't any more troubled by lowish bounce than they are by highish bounce. You hardly ever see top-edged pulls and splices or gloves to short-legs in modern-day cricket.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Good batsmen aren't any more troubled by lowish bounce than they are by highish bounce. You hardly ever see top-edged pulls and splices or gloves to short-legs in modern-day cricket.

A bouncy wicket offers far more to the bowlers than a wicket with lowish bounce (balls that skim along the ground etc. excluded). Anyone who has watched cricket for more than 5 minutes would know this.