*Official* England in South Africa Thread

[tooextracool]

well I remember the SA batting back then was considered a weak link ,and i certainly cant think of a time in the last decade and a half when Australias batting could be considered weak.

SA's batting was never considered to be a weak link. they batted all the way down till number 10. they had several brilliant batsmen - kirsten, cullinan, mcmillan, klusener and cronje, and some who were fairly good - rhodes and hudson. australia had 1 great batsman, and 3 good batsmen - waugh, taylor(although taylor was struggling at the time) and ponting to an extent. the rest didnt even make the side consistently. and there was never any doubt that SA were by far the better fielding side, and had an excellent bowling attack even if they didnt have a quality spinner.

hayden was not a bad batsman..

then why was he dropped then? everyone knew it right then, hayden was poor. most even objected to his return to the side.

ponting was an outstanding batsman even then, however it is only in the last few years that he had truely converted his talents into runs.There was no doubt in my mind the first time I saw him play he was a class batsman.

kallis was almost considered a failure for the first four or five years of his career and he only started to get it going since the turn of the century.

yes he was, i only included him because he was part of the squad at the time. he was still a fairly good bowler back then though in his prime.

Gary Kirsten was a good batsman,and could make big scores, but he was always blighted by inconsistancy.

yes still better than most of the australian players.

..Cullinan was a player of a lot of talent in my opinion who again wasnt anywhere near as consistant as he should have been...I could go on.

of course, all the players performed worse than what they should have, which is precisely my point. they underperformed. if they had performed at their best they would have rolled over australia.

South Africa before say 2000 in tests were not a good batting TEAM. Players individually might come out with the odd good score each innings, but it wasnt the batting that won them games

as ive said earlier, they had far more depth in their batting and more talent.

 

[biased indian]

a decent patnership between kallis and gibbs but the rq RR is now 6.65 but if they can keep thier wickets it can be chased

 

[Swervy]

SA's batting was never considered to be a weak link. they batted all the way down till number 10. they had several brilliant batsmen - kirsten, cullinan, mcmillan, klusener and cronje, and some who were fairly good - rhodes and hudson. australia had 1 great batsman, and 3 good batsmen - waugh, taylor(although taylor was struggling at the time) and ponting to an extent. the rest didnt even make the side consistently. and there was never any doubt that SA were by far the better fielding side, and had an excellent bowling attack even if they didnt have a quality spinner.



then why was he dropped then? everyone knew it right then, hayden was poor. most even objected to his return to the side.

ponting was an outstanding batsman even then, however it is only in the last few years that he had truely converted his talents into runs.There was no doubt in my mind the first time I saw him play he was a class batsman.



yes he was, i only included him because he was part of the squad at the time. he was still a fairly good bowler back then though in his prime.



yes still better than most of the australian players.



of course, all the players performed worse than what they should have, which is precisely my point. they underperformed. if they had performed at their best they would have rolled over australia.



as ive said earlier, they had far more depth in their batting and more talent.

ahhh yes but the SA batting was considered to be its achilles heel back then...depth is ok, but without a truly world class performer (which SA lacked..australia certainly didnt) that depth was wasted by inconsistancy,and a lack of ability to push the score along (therefore putting not really being able to put themselves into a postion of real strength)..it was the batting that was the reason that SA never really pushed for a place as the number one team in tests.The bowling was the real strength.

yes the talent was there, but that is no use if the players cannot harness that to produce the goods

 

[Swervy]

shaping up nicely for a big assault at the end....SA need some fours now though

 

[Scaly piscine]

shaping up nicely for a big assault at the end....SA need some fours now though

Yep and most of them are coming from edges

 

[Swervy]

Yep and most of them will come from edges

still a valid way of scoring..infact its the best way of scoring

 

[wpdavid]

so you reckon that an aussie test batting lineup consisting of:
hayden(who was distinctly rubbish at the time)
mark taylor
elliott(rubbish)
waugh
waugh
blewett/ponting(who again wasnt anything special at the time)
bevan(wasnt good enough)

was better than

hudson
kirsten
kallis
cullinan
cronje
rhodes
mcmillan
?

incidentally that lineup was almost identical to the one that played against australia, and yet lost both series.



of course ive never actually said that SA performed better than australia. i said that SA had a far more talented side than australia. SA's losing to england was a classic case of their underperforming, as they did so very often in test cricket at the time. in ODIs they were performing as well as they could except in the big match situations.

Actually, yes I would favour the Aus lineup, if only because the Waughs were in a different class to any of the other players you listed from eithe side. beyond them, it was probably much of a muchness at that time of their careers.

As for SA against England, it's not just the 1998 series. As I said last time, Aus wallopped us every time in the 1990's - we were never at the races, apart from the start of the 1997 series, and even that one was easily won by Aus eventually. That just wasn't the case with SA, who also failed to beat us in 1994 and only won the series in the final test in 1995/6. Ultimately, if you're saying that SA regularly underperformed against Aus and regularly underperformed against England, where is the evidence that they were a more talented side than the Australians?

 

[Scaly piscine]

Yet another edge for 4

 

[Scaly piscine]

God knows what they're holding Hoggard back for, he's the only one in England's team who can genuinely take a wicket.

 

[twctopcat]

Should there not be a 3rd man in??

 

[Scaly piscine]

Should there not be a 3rd man in??

They're always too wide (god knows why, the edges that go fastest are the fine ones, so you'll cover most edges if 3rd man is fine - same goes with fine leg).

 

[twctopcat]

Lovely stuff

 

[twctopcat]

Is there a reason bell isn't bowling rather than tres?? I'd have thought he was a far more accomplished bowler going on what i've seen and heard.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Is there a reason bell isn't bowling rather than tres?? I'd have thought he was a far more accomplished bowler going on what i've seen and heard.

Yea I wondered the same in the last game, maybe they don't want to ruin his bowling average of 3.00

 

[Scaly piscine]

Hoggard's wasted bowling at this stage of the game, especially when he hasn't played ODIs for 2 years or something. G Jones gifting of 4 byes was atrocious.

 

[biased indian]

South Africa require another 51 runs with 7 wickets and 38 balls remaining

 

[biased indian]

last three overs produced 30 runs!!!!

 

[twctopcat]

We need some gough yorker central now!!

 

[Scaly piscine]

We need some gough yorker central now!!

We need miracle central even after getting Gibbs.

 

[biased indian]

the last three overs cost 35 runs !! its going up all the time

South Africa require another 34 runs with 7 wickets and 27 balls remaining
it should be easy from now onwards if they dont loose quick wickets