**Official** England in New Zealand

[Son Of Coco]

Well done NZ!

 

[Shoggz]

Scaly must have been busy - he only had time to visit the Six Nations thread yesterday...

Well he won't have been able to crow a lot on there either!

It's not a good time to be an England fan of any sport.

Just wish the male cricketers were performing to the levels of their female counterparts.

I tried to stay up and watch the match through the night, but fell asleep just as the England innings was starting and didn't wake until 6:30 this morning. It was not a pleasant experience turning the tele on and seeing that scorecard.

All I can say is that I'm somewhat envious of you Kiwis. You've got a team to be proud of and I'm afraid we haven't.

With regards to the English media, I fully agree with Richard. They vilify the team for getting out if they're trying to attack and describe them as 'reckless' and now are crucifying them for being too negative.

They also have a bad habit of downplaying the opposition, which seems to encourage them. I remember before the 2006 Sri Lanka series, there was much talk of a 3-0 whitewash as Sri Lanka were 'poor travellers'. We know what happened there. Of course it is arguable that it was our poor catching in the 1st test that had the greatest galvanising effect!

 

[Richard]

Oh well, Bond ain't playing. Even Stevens

Of course. But that's not to say Flintoff wouldn't have made a difference.

Incidentally - while the chances of a return for either are fairly remote, seems to me, there's probably a slightly better chance we'll see Flintoff again than Bond. Even pre-ICL, Bond had made-up his mind, had he not, to stop playing Tests?

 

[Richard]

I've noticed that the England bowling line up bar Panesar is ageing a bit. Who are the up and comers? Broad is obviously one but who else? I've enjoyed the likes of Caddick, Gough and Hoggard in recent times but I'm not too sure whats coming through, any names?

James Harris, not yet 18.

Seriously, when Harris has reached an age where you can work-out whether someone's actually going to be a good bowler or not, Sidebottom and Hoggard will probably be gone from Test-cricket. As I discussed with chalky earlier, the situation is far from encouraging currently, but then again it wasn't exactly encouraging in 2002, 2003 sort of time either. But Hoggard and Flintoff emerged then (and, briefly, Simon Jones too - you could even say Harmison briefly too ) and you never know, we might get lucky and some decent bowlers might come out of the blue again.

TBH, it's unlikely to be a problem for a few years yet - hopefully Hoggard and Sidebottom can stay fit, there's an outside chance Flintoff might get fit again, and I still have hopes pinned on Chris Tremlett. Hopefully, whenever I next see him bowl again, he'll have got better again.

 

[Jamee999]

I think that we lost that as much in the first innings as we did in the last, there's no way that was a 480 pitch, and we collapsed partially because we needed 300 in a day, which I don't think we were ever going to get.

 

[Richard]

Great result. That win certainly proves NZ has a bit more depth than some have suggested.

Before and through-out the first few days of the test, Aggers was calling this a terrible NZ team..Atherton was saying NZ should be thrashed 3-0. Disrespectful comments from the English media aren't helping their teams cause.

Hated those Atherton comments saying England should cleansweep the tests and ODIs (think it was Atherton), just dumb comments. England are excellent on paper but we were always an unknown quantity.

Never a great fan of condescending comments towards entire teams, because it can only backfire, but I think that last sentence (Phelgm's) says it best, really. Truth is, this New Zealand team was unknown - not proven low-quality, unknown. Still, the reaction of plenty - characterised by those on the Sky team, but also seen on here - is of an "England lost" rather than "New Zealand won", which, well, couldn't be further from the truth for my money. If England had put down catches and given wickets away, then maybe you could have said that, but they didn't. New Zealand cashed-in on the flat surface, while England's bowling-attack struggled - as they were always likely to, none of this attack are bowlers I'd expect to knock a team over cheaply on a surface like that - and NZ got on top, and managed to convert that into victory via some of times brilliant bowling on the final morning.

What's even more annoying, as I've already mentioned, is the "England let New Zealand get on top by not scoring quickly enough" - well, as I say, I'm highly dubious of that one. Strikes me, frankly, as just yet another way to avoid the fact that New Zealand were better. Everyone seems pretty desperate to cling to the notion of England being obviously the better side by thinking along the lines of England allowed New Zealand to be better, that's what this "England should have scored quicker" lark is all about, and to an extent at least, this shows sheer ignorance. The bowler has more control over the pace of scoring than the batsman does. New Zealand bowled well, did not allow England to score too quickly. New Zealand simply bowled far, far better than England, and therefore regardless of the fact that England's batting is better than New Zealand's, New Zealand were still the better team.

I do maintain that this was the perfect surface for New Zealand to be the better team on, but if we got an identical surface at Basin Reserve, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see New Zealand win again. Nor do I have any complaints - I've always said the home team should play to their strengths. If we got a green seamer, I'd hope we could come back strongly, especially if we were lucky with the toss. Likewise, if we got an easy-paced surface that encouraged quick scoring, we might just have the better team.

But it really does annoy me that the biggest attention, by far, over here has been paid to (sometimes non-existant) faults in the England team than the fact that New Zealand were, really, pretty outstanding.

 

[Richard]

I think that we lost that as much in the first innings as we did in the last, there's no way that was a 480 pitch, and we collapsed partially because we needed 300 in a day, which I don't think we were ever going to get.

It may not neccessarily have been a 480 pitch, but with swing virtually non-existant in the first-innings, are you really surprised to see some good, sensible batting (which is exactly what we saw from How, Taylor and Vettori) result in a substantial score?

I'm not, TBH. I hate cricket-balls that don't swing, but currently, if we don't get one (or a green pitch), our bowling-attack is stuffed. Without Flintoff, we have no bowlers who can get the ball to do anything off a non-seaming pitch.

 

[Richard]

Despite being 33, I think because Martin hardly breaks down with injury, we may just get 2 or 3 years of good service from him now. He's training very hard and is always running in with purpose. I've been very impressed with him over the last 6 months.

Given-up the fags, has he?

 

[Richard]

My God, England have disintegrated since the Ashes.

The players seem to treat cricket like a chore.

Agree with Bob Willis - do guys like Harmison really deserve 250,000 pounds each year?

This is another thing I'd like to know TBH - I wonder where people get their information that they can comment with such certainty from.

Sure, Hoggard and Harmison looked underbowled. But has Bob (and the several others who said exactly the same thing) got concrete evidence that they hadn't been doing the work they should be?

If they haven't, if they do treat the game like a chore, I agree completely that it's extremely poor - they don't deserve 1\10 of £250,000 if so. But there seems to be too much assumption here, to me.

Frankly, there needs to be some answers from some people. Instead of bashing-on on TV about how these bowlers are underbowled, wouldn't Bob and co be much better going and talking to them? Finding-out how much bowling they've actually been doing, and making suggestions about what might be changed? And wouldn't they be more likely to get truthful answers if the players then knew Bob and co weren't going to go shouting about it on TV 5 minutes later?

As I said earlier this morning - much of the time a "selling" cricket media works completely contrary to a successful team.

 

[Beleg]

England's batting in this test was truly pathetic.

 

[Richard]

Which get-out shots did you think were pathetic, then, Yawer?

 

[BoyBrumby]

Fair play NZ; **** off England.

Not minded to say anything more constructive than that.

 

[Langeveldt]

Haha, can't wait till the English summer.. Weirdest test match, well done NZ

 

[Richard]

Oi namesake, do you have any bright ideas on how to convert VCR to MPEG?

It's just occurred to me that I need to do that to post this Harmison interview, and I've never thought about how to do it before.

I presume I need a scart-to-USB connection, but where I might get one of such things I don't know.

 

[Prince EWS]

Oi namesake, do you have any bright ideas on how to convert VCR to MPEG?

It's just occurred to me that I need to do that to post this Harmison interview, and I've never thought about how to do it before.

I presume I need a scart-to-USB connection, but where I might get one of such things I don't know.

Know anyone who has a TV Tuner PCI card?

 

[Richard]

Nope, never even heard of them until now.

Easy to get hold of?

 

[Prince EWS]

Nope, never even heard of them until now.

Easy to get hold of?

Yeah. They just go into a PCI slot (ie. those ports where your soundcard, graphics card etc are) and then you have coaxial and A\V in connections.

 

[Richard]

Rightyho, will go and see if I can find one of them tomorrow.

How much am I looking at BTW? In £££s rather than AU$s if poss.

 

[Prince EWS]

Rightyho, will go and see if I can find one of them tomorrow.

How much am I looking at BTW? In £££s rather than AU$s if poss.

Not much I'd imagine. I had a quick look on ebay for you and there's a brand new one currently sitting at £5 + postage with 6 hours left on the auction. Obviously you can expect that to go up a bit in the next 6 hours, but I don't think it'd set you back a lot.

 

[TheEpic]

I can't bring myself to say anything apart from that was the most disgraceful cricketing performance I have ever endured from an international side. Some heads need banging together fersure, the slide that we have been on since the summer of 2006 has been shocking. Obviously we miss the cricketing ability of Trescothick and Flintoff, but we also seem to miss their general presence in the team. There's no doubt Bell, Cook etc are talented players, but they seem to go missing when they're really needed, which really epitomises the England team at the moment. We seem spineless, lacking confidence and severely disorganised and undercooked.

How on earth Steve Harmison is still in the side is beyond me. The man clearly needs to consider whether his body and mind can withstand the pressures of international cricket, be brutally honest with himself, and then act accordingly. If that means dropping out of the serious game and dropping by every year in the IPL to collect a fat cheque for him and his young family then so be it, but I cannot take another wretched performance from him in England colours.

Credit to Sidebottom and that's about it really. Unfortunately, we seem to be missing a generation of fast bowlers, only Broad around to step into the side, with several years to see whether the likes of Harris and Finn will make the grade.

I hope to see a vastly improved performance in the next Test but somehow I can't see it. We just seem like a limp imitation of the side 3 or 4 years ago, when we were full of swagger, aggression, positive intent and genuinely skilled cricketers at the height of their game. It's a sad sight and Moores needs to wake up and realise several of this team are just not performing and have not consistently for an awfully long time.