*Official** New Zealand in England

[marc71178]

who did say that? hes our most reliable slip fielder!

After Flintoff.

 

[marc71178]

see listen to the commentators ffs

"i think its been a good cricket pitch a good test cricket pitch"

So the 900 runs in the First 2 Innings then - please explain them...

serously.. there is such a big difference in the way nz/aus think than u guys think lol

Why? The number of runs in the first 3 and a half days can't all have been bad bowling?

 

[marc71178]

btw for this test i think the worst 2 things have been the pitch

Notice this comment didn't come on the first 2 days...

Im suprised smithys not there !~ =[

He's on the radio.

 

[Kent]

I'd be surprised to see Bruce Martin come over, to be honest, because he'd need time to get used to the Duke ball that the majority of league players have already had.

Sorry, I forgot about McMillan's place in the squad. Harris will now be the only slow bowling option I imagine.

 

[tooextracool]

Careful now - playing a match against a disabled team won't compare to Australia on any level, be it batting, bowling or fielding.

we did beat a relatively fit NZ side in the first test though....but you're right NZ are nowhere near australia regardless of fitness

 

[Loony BoB]

So the 900 runs in the First 2 Innings then - please explain them...





Why? The number of runs in the first 3 and a half days can't all have been bad bowling?

I guess it all comes down to what you consider a good pitch. I think a good pitch needs to be only two things:

1) Something you will get a result out of
2) Something that allows the bowler to control where the ball is going to go - ie, not much luck involved, only skill of both batsman and bowler.

A bad pitch can still be one of the two things, but unless it does both it's not a good pitch. This one was #1 but was not #2 - ask any of the batsmen on either team - you could be at the top of your game and the pitch could give you an awkward ball of a poor delivery and then you're walking back to the pavillion. Bowling in the right spot and hoping it hits the right crack should not be a tactic, as it's putting too much luck into it.

I admit the NZ bowlers sucked, but that doesn't mean the pitch wasn't awful to boot.

 

[PY]

Isn't that part of the game though? You get a crap ball, you have to shrug it off and get on with it.

I think people are too used to roads for pitches and I dearly hope that no-one complains officially about this one. The only thing I wouldn't be happy with is the dangerous bounce that was about which was decent off a length ball bouncing towards towards the heads which happened a few times.

 

[Slow Love™]

Notch another one up on the cubicle wall as England continue their march to the Ashes in 2005.

That may be - I sure wish the Aussies could beat the Kiwis this convincingly. And the performances of Strauss and Jones certainly sounds out a warning to people (like me) who have been of the opinion that the English batting has been a little thin up to now...

 

[PY]

That really wasn't meant as a serious comment.

I don't want to say things like that because almost every Ashes in last decade has been proceeded by comments like that and it's fallen totally to the floor for us so I'm keeping schtum.

 

[Pedro Delgado]

Originally Posted by PY
Notch another one up on the cubicle wall as England continue their march to the Ashes in 2005.

That may be - I sure wish the Aussies could beat the Kiwis this convincingly. And the performances of Strauss and Jones certainly sounds out a warning to people (like me) who have been of the opinion that the English batting has been a little thin up to now...

Wooooooahhhh there!

We've got to go to SA in the winter first, see how we look after that series.

To be honest I'll be happy if we give the Aussies a game for a change, instead of winning the odd dead rubber. A drawn Ashes series would be a positve start; I'm not being defeatist, it's just the Aussies are still the best and I'm not sure we're quite good enough to beat 'em yet.

 

[Pedro Delgado]

That really wasn't meant as a serious comment.

I don't want to say things like that because almost every Ashes in last decade has been proceeded by comments like that and it's fallen totally to the floor for us so I'm keeping schtum.

Ahhhh


Ignore my previous post then, my dear old thing.

 

[Slow Love™]

That really wasn't meant as a serious comment.

I don't want to say things like that because almost every Ashes in last decade has been proceeded by comments like that and it's fallen totally to the floor for us so I'm keeping schtum.

Well, early in the piece, yeah, but then you always have the few weeks previous to the Ashes where everybody who said that suddenly thinks "oh christ, suddenly I think we're gonna lose", and all that confidence just seeps away, never to be recovered.

You're starting earlier, I see. Seriously though, IMO there's more reasons for confidence than there actually were all those other series, so why not be excited? Get pumped. And if you lose, blame the pitches and/or injuries. It's the only honorable way, and it's how I'm going to deal with the Aussie tour of India.

 

[Loony BoB]

Isn't that part of the game though? You get a crap ball, you have to shrug it off and get on with it.

Sure, if it's the odd bad ball, so be it. When it's as bad as it was over the past couple of days, I'm sure anyone who batted can vouch to say that there was too much luck involved in that one. I'd rather be out to a good ball (and there were some, I know) than to an awkward pitch bounce that the bowler didn't have control over in any way (and there were more of those).

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Sure, if it's the odd bad ball, so be it. When it's as bad as it was over the past couple of days, I'm sure anyone who batted can vouch to say that there was too much luck involved in that one. I'd rather be out to a good ball (and there were some, I know) than to an awkward pitch bounce that the bowler didn't have control over in any way (and there were more of those).

Its not luck when you know where to pitch it to get it to react that way, England did that and New Zealand didnt, thats where the skill is surely?

 

[tooextracool]

well anyways anderson has been added to the 12 man squad for the next test....colly has been left out again!

 

[tooextracool]

meanwhile freddie flintoff says that he'd love to captain england in the future....article can be readhere

 

[Loony BoB]

Its not luck when you know where to pitch it to get it to react that way, England did that and New Zealand didnt, thats where the skill is surely?

Like I said, the NZ bowlers were crap, but the NZ batsmen deserved more of the luck to go their way in that last innings. I don't think NZ deserved to win (what with their bowling), but I believe if we had the luck of the English then I think we'd have easily gained a draw. But, I suppose, that's cricket. You can't always be lucky. If you read the numbers and never saw any commentary / visuals, you'd think it was the NZ batting that failed, not the bowling - and that's a bit unfair. Because they did, really, and it was just unlucky.

I'm not making excuses for the loss, I'm saying the pitch should have been better - for both teams' sake. I don't mind watching my team lose, but I do mind not getting to see some real skill involved. I enjoy cricket because I like to see what the team will do next, not to see someone bowl to a line and wait for something to happen.

I'm not making excuses for NZ losing, we lost and so be it - deservedly so. I was just very disappointed as a cricket fan because the pitch made the game far less than it could have been.

 

[PY]

but I believe if we had the luck of the English then I think we'd have easily gained a draw.

How were we lucky?

I know you are New Zealander but you have to admit that you bowled rather poorly against us in first innings. We went from having 2 100 partnerships in a row with Thorpe/Flintoff and Flintoff/Jones to having 5 of your men down in about 2 hours. This didn't just happen as soon as the England innings concluded, England just put the ball in the right places a hell of a lot more than NZ did.

For me, it is as simple as that. Your bowlers (exception Styris) did not turn up for days 3 and 4.

 

[Loony BoB]

How were we lucky?

I know you are New Zealander but you have to admit that you bowled rather poorly against us in first innings. We went from having 2 100 partnerships in a row with Thorpe/Flintoff and Flintoff/Jones to having 5 of your men down in about 2 hours. This didn't just happen as soon as the England innings concluded, England just put the ball in the right places a hell of a lot more than NZ did.

For me, it is as simple as that. Your bowlers (exception Styris) did not turn up for days 3 and 4.

I'm not talking about our bowling, I'm talking about our batting. We were unlucky. Our bowling was crap, yes, but our batsmen shouldn't have been out that easily. And it shouldn't be that way with a pitch. Like I said, I'm not complaining that we lost, I'm complaining that the pitch should have been better, for cricket's sake. If we lost because of our bowling, I'd be satisfied - and we would have lost because of our bowlers (our batsmen could not win it from the end of England's first innings).

I guess you could say that a pitch shouldn't be about bowling to the right spot and hoping for the best, it should be about a bowler manipulating the batsman and tricking him. The bowler. Not the pitch.

EDIT: Maybe a better way of putting it is to say that even if our bowlers did put it in the right spot and got you guys out in the same way and then our batsmen did well because your bowlers didn't put it in the right place, I'd definitely sympathise with England because that's not the way anyone should lose. There wouldn't have been as much satisfaction for me in such a victory. I think bowlers should be able to do what they want with the ball and the batsmen should retaliate. That's cricket.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Surely better than a flat pitch which ends in a tame draw.