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***Official*** Pakistan and England in UAE

Who do you think will win?!

  • Total voters
    88
Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
LegionOfBrad said:
I love that Jimmy can dance down the wicket and hit one to square leg when none of the muppets in the top order could.
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Said a couple of days ago that he's actually played spin better than most of the batsmen. Doesn't seem to have his feet glued to the pitch.
 
MW1304

MW1304

Cricketer Of The Year
Jimmy looks absolutely devo'd. Was a shortish ball tbf, there for a tailender to try and make the most of.

Skidded on as well, good ball.
 
C

CWB304

U19 Cricketer
Xuhaib said:
waiting for a CWB rant.
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:laugh:

There's no need, is there? My previous posts speak for themselves, and virtually every one of my predictions has come to pass. I take no satisfaction in having successfully predicted Pietersen and Bell's utter failure on this tour: I'm an England fan. I take no pleasure in having predicted that Bell, KP and Morgan would fail again in the second dig of this Test - in fact I rather naughtily said that they all might as well walk out to bat armed with toothpicks, for all the good their real equipment would do them.

Even when people were facepalming me and posting clips from popular US TV series to mock me, I persisted, because I knew that I would be vindicated by the action on the square, and so it has proved. There seems to be a lot less mockery and facepalming going on these days,but perhaps I've just been inattentive.

What I did notice though, a while back, was that one of my sternest initial critics had moved to a fall back position of "I always knew he had a point; I only took exception to the way he was exaggerating". Ah, so that was the problem, the way I was exaggerating. :D

How can criticism of batsmen who have pretensions to being amongst the game's elite, yet all too predictably fail whenever confronted with a serious challenge, ever be exaggerated? I did not get personal, or talk about off-field stuff; I just said that KP and Bell were not up to it, would fail, miserably, and that when they did they ought to be dropped.

KP's series average is 11; Bell's is 8.5. Anderson and Swann, not to mention the much-maligned Morgan, all have better averages. But what's worse than their run aggregates and batting averages is the way they've actually batted.

Anyone who denies the fact that KP has looked like a tailender pretty much whenever he's been up against Rehman and Ajmal bowling in tandem, and that Bell has been similarly inept when up against Ajmal and Gul bowling together is flat out lying. Quite literally they have looked as if they can get out to any ball at any time whenever they have faced those combinations in this series.

For me, they can never again be regarded as top class international batsmen. Anyone appending phrases like "world class", "best in the world over the past year/18 months, tbf" or even (for KP) the sadly diminished epithet of "dangerman" (which one mostly associates with the likes of McCullum and Ryder, who live up to it biennially), should be laughed to scorn. I'm sorry, but if you cannot be counted on to survive half a session against the sort of decent, high quality and accurate, but not ATG bowling they have been up against this series, then you are not a top batsman and don't deserve to be called one.

Which leaves me to my last point. Whilst having taken no satisfaction from England's demise, I must confessed to being pretty chuffed for Umar Gul. Some of the more parochial England fans here were denigrating him as some sort of pie chucker whom England's batsman would dismiss easily. I pointed out that he was one of the most effective bowlers at exploiting these conditions in the world.

I think his performances across the series have borne me out: he's been the second most penetrating and effective seam bowler on show here after Broad. (And I'm saying that as a big fan of Anderson). I predicted that he would get Bell on occasion, and he has done so twice, with Ajmal grabbing his wicket the other four times. The reason for that is that with Bell it's not just technical issues against spin bowling but also a temperamental and psychological problem. When there is top class seam AND spin bowling at either end he tends to lose his head and even if the spinner doesn't get him with his doosra/slider/wrong un etc within twelve deliveries as he normally does the seam bowler will - usually trying to relieve the scoring pressure by playing the sort of expansive forcing shot that not even the great Brian Charles Lara in his pomp could pull off.

Anyway I've explained all that before and now is not the time to be rehearsing it. The big question now is what is England to do with the 4, 5 and 6 slots in the team going forward?
 
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