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***Official*** Australia in South Africa 2018
- Thread starter Spark
- Start date
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
Apparently he actually lives in Sydney though. I always had him pegged as a Queenslander. I don't know what to think anymore.
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
Wow I was way off. Ignore my flurry of Queensland jokes.
TT Boy
Hall of Fame Member
He appears rather emotional. Seemed to worship some of the members of the team and was their attack dog, so this has really impacted him. Poor sod.
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TT Boy
Hall of Fame Member
Yes, Telford was a good read when he worked for Cricinfo. Seems to have lost the plot in recent years. Cricbuzz's South African contributors are the best at present.
Marius
International Debutant
Who writes for them? Just having a quick look I see Tristan Holme is one, and he's pretty good. Better than the hack that covers SA for Cricinfo at any rate.
Might have to change my go-to cricket website...
Gnske
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Winners' privilege, also a cheat-free state.
TT Boy
Hall of Fame Member
Luke Alfred contributes from time to time. I don’t read or own many cricket books but Alfred’s ‘Lifting the Covers’ is one of the better books I’ve read on South African cricket.
SeamUp
International Coach
Got to agree. Really enjoying CricBuzz's continual growth and Holme (a Zimbo) and Alfred are two fine cricket scribes.
jimmy101
Cricketer Of The Year
For some reason, yeah, it's alright. Dunno wtf is up with fullstrength XXXX though. Poison.
quincywagstaff
International Debutant
Lalor had pitched in so squarely in the Oz camp after the QDK/Warner issue that after this latest saga he was almost obliged to go the other extreme and say the 3rd Test should’ve been immediately abandoned.
Speaking of jingoistic Oz journos, former journo and current CA lackey Malcolm Conn’s twitter feed is hilarious. Always one ready to take potshots at other countries, his Twitter feed has somehow made no mention of this saga and he’s done tweets on Oz women’s cricket and criticising Pauline Hanson as if everything is going smoothly with the men’s team (leading to much mocking of him on Twitter).
Furball
Evil Scotsman
I would have assumed it was on an upwards trajectory tbh.
My description of the article was poor/incomplete. It focuses on his achievements and style as a captain and bat. It goes into the quality of his batting, but not the quality of his captaincy, which is conspicuous in its absence in the way I would describe the quality for a similar article- you can’t exactly rip into a guy in a retirement piece like that. I’m in no way disputing the breadth of his achievements as a captain. I just think the achievements came in spite of, not because of his quality as a captain and were a result of the length of his career and the talent available to him
Maybe removing both Jennings and Klusener was good for the team. Hard to either authoritatively dispute this or take it at face value. No idea what Klusener was like, but 2 previous captains had worked with him without this issue. The most obvious conclusions are that this was either a personality clash, or that they were better man-managers than him. Jennings, while he got results at provincial level, seemed less than a bundle of fun, and I could see the potential for others removing him as well, but we dont have comparative information as for Klusener. The fact the remains though that both were removed from the setup because they couldn’t see eye to eye with Smith, whether or not he was correct. Refuse to toe the line with Smith and get removed as a player or coach. It didn’t exactly encourage statements about the quality of his captaincy to be any less than positive. Even if this assessment is incorrect, is anyone going to chance this if it was what the media was screaming?
I think we should almost never accept the comments of players and coaches on their captains for similar, if less extreme, reasons to Smith. It’s extremely difficult to get any kind of honest commentary on captains in general that is divorced from results- quality of the captain is ignored somewhat until the team is over or under performing. Even in the case of Smith, the negative attention he attracted from media and opposition players at the start of his career would not have come if he had not been abrasive- the poor (by RSA standards) results were somewhat expected, it was only his mouth that caused such a level of negative commentary on his captaincy.
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My take on CWs positive perception of his captaincy is as follows- his initial relative lack of success was expected, and people do not mind forgiving (relatively) poor performances. After this he became such an institution that it was not even thought to question the quality of his captaincy at all. This was made easy to do by the fact that he had clearly developed somewhat, was getting better results etc. After this he finished as a (relatively) good captain with good results which left a good taste in people’s mouths and led to an assessment of his overall captaincy as greater than the sum of its parts.
I’ve got a bunch of problems with this. While we might excuse/understand his relative lack of quality and results at the start of his career this doesn’t mean we should discount them. It was understood from the get go that at 22 he was too young to be peak quality and the he would grow into the role. Fine. The understanding was that having an initially poor (relative to career) captain would be compensated by having a good captain for a long time. Unlike other players, who became institutions because of their quality, he became an institution because of the expectation that he would become quality. He was given way more leeway to be poor than anyone else would have than anyone else would have got because of this strategy.
While you won’t agree with all of this, I think this framework gives us a useful middle ground on which to engage. We can agree that he was picked on the expectation of being able to grow into the role of a good captain and that he would not be expected to perform to his future capacity immediately. And that he was not fully developed as a captain when first picked but grew better at it as his career went on? Agreed? Good, we have some middle ground. Now let’s disagree on the details of how long it took him to develop and how good he was at stages in development J.
My take, to simplify, is to split the career into thirds. In the first 3rd he was very poor, in the second he was poor and in the third he was fine. He basically gets bumped down a notch on each stage because he was tactically poor on the field (admittedly he developed in this regard too). To me this is a career assessment of poor.
What’s your take on career phases and quality?
StephenZA
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I don't know the quality of Aus beer, but as far as the Germans and Belgians go most of SA beer would barely qualify as dishwater. And rightly so.
Typically I’d wholeheartedly agree with this. Too much weight is attached to the captain when the quality of the sides matter more. In this case, I think the comparison is reasonable.
4 captains of the same country in the same era (broadly).
Comparable talent pools for each of them if looked at on average. TBF, perhaps Faf has a bit of an advantage on this one, but he compensates for this with a vastly superior win record.
Comparably strong opposition on the whole across the years. Some teams were stronger and some weaker. There might be some arguing the 90s were stronger, but I doubt too many people will argue smith faced better opposition on the whole than the others, with the exception of 1 team, which isn’t going to impact your record too heavily.
Fair point on the series victories being more important than games. I'm not sure what the details are on this. Pollock and faf are so far ahead in win % that they must be streets ahead in series too. Even Cronje, the worst of them by far is 30% better than Smith, so series analysis won't change things that much.
I’m still overstating relevance of win record tbf. Plenty of other factors will impact on it. It’s not a perfect measure even when the teams are so unusually comparable. It is the only measure we have though.
Burgey
Request Your Custom Title Now!
A Keatingism. Naturally.
Senile Sentry
International Debutant
I think Australia did itself some favour by getting in a red hot Renshaw and Maxwell. There is only so much time for SA bowlers to prepare for these replacements and do their homework.
I get a feeling that it will be SA who will have to focus more on the 4th test and guard themselves against complacency. Aus has absolutely nothing to lose but also are bereft of some baggage. And with the infusion of the three it looks like a squad raring to go and put the events of past three days beyond them.
I get a feeling that it will be SA who will have to focus more on the 4th test and guard themselves against complacency. Aus has absolutely nothing to lose but also are bereft of some baggage. And with the infusion of the three it looks like a squad raring to go and put the events of past three days beyond them.
kykweer.proteas
International Debutant
Bunch of snobs lol watch this video.
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/newlands-spring-brewing-co-ad-video/