Not blaming him, but the phrases "trying too hard" and "looking for the magic ball" have now become cliche when describing the new ball bowling efforts for a while now. Wondering if it's become so ingrained, it'll take it's time to get sorted out.
yeah I get what you're saying. The "that's what's great about this team" and "someone stands up at the right time" and all the feel-goodery...it comes out of Southee's mouth a lot, and it does sound a lot like Baz.
Still think South Africa's batting looks fairly rubbish tbh.Been commented on alreadyPeople either shortening to stphn or just using stephen!
Have been surprised at how negative everybody was over the SA side. SA was not going to just turn into a terrible cricketing nation overnight. We had a really bad year last year, but if you look at it in context, we went to India and were given absolute rank turners (having just lost Kallis and Smith), Amla had his worst year in ten years (after getting captaincy!) And we lost most of our front line bowlers to injury... our confidence was shot coming into a series against an England team playing well. We still had batting issues and our front line bowlers were still missing (I can`t see Stokes doing what he did against the experience of Steyn and Morkel).
Now you can see Amla back in form, a little more confidence in the batting coming out, a proper opener in Cook. Faf and Duminy showing some form and our frontline seamers available and suddenly we are not the terrible cricket nation. If we had a really good quality allrounder then I could see SA getting back to number 1 quickly, right now we struggling to balance the team.
LO team is crap (not that I`m that worried to be honest) I would like us to go ahead pick a few allrounders in the team (Pretorius, Morris, Parnell, Wiese, Andile whoever) and just give everybody a license to go out and score runs, only need 1 off Hash, QDK, or AB to come off to get a good LO total. With Rabada, Morkel and Tahir as primary bowlers.
Ugh, it seems like an age ago that Boult was ranked behind only Steyn. That damn back of his. Great for Wags though. Have come to really enjoy watching him load himself into a cannon and firing himself at a brick wall over and over until it cracks.
They're like England, really. Lots of question marks in their top and middle order but they've got good depth all the way down to 7 and 8. Extremely dependant on their strike bowlers.
They're not really as exaggerated on that front though. Having Philander and Rabada at 8 and 9 is useful but it's nothing compared to having Moeen and Woakes there, which England would at full strength at the moment. On the flip side, South Africa's weak top order players aren't really as bad as England's... Duminy aside (who is realistically only in for injury at the moment), all South Africa's top six batsmen average at least high 30s. It's a similar dynamic but South Africa are much closer to having an orthodox batting lineup IMO.
Oh you know what I mean. I didn't say they were identical.
Yeah, when AB is back I think we have a fairly solid top 7. In Ab and Amla you have two ATGs. With Cook and Elgar solid pair of openers, nothing flashy but that's what we need right now. With QDK at seven we have another Gilchrist potentially, and Faf and Bra T are both solid, can't go too wrong with them in your side. Faf is probably the most vulnerable right now, but he deserves to be in the side again, I think.
How do you rate Moeen vs Piedt, in bowling terms?
Piedt is for sure better, but I don't think either team wants to have to rely on their spinner for an extended period.
Yeah, I agree.
Whereas mkst teams would cry out for players of Duminy and van Zyl's class.South Africa obviously need players of the class of Hales and Vince to stiffen their weak batting line up.
tbf, neither would be in their full-strength lineup.
