*Official* West Indies Tour of England 2020

[Beamer]

Very powerful press conference from Jason Holder on the lack of funding for those outside the big 3. Hopefully the ICC heed his words

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Very powerful press conference from Jason Holder on the lack of funding for those outside the big 3. Hopefully the ICC heed his words

Good on him. I really hope that we (NZ) can make (and win) the World Test Championship final to strike a blow for the little guys. I'd rate our chances against England or India in the final, but not Australia.

 

[Beamer]

Good on him. I really hope that we (NZ) can make (and win) the World Test Championship final to strike a blow for the little guys. I'd rate our chances against England or India in the final, but not Australia.

I'll be supporting you guys all the way, except if we tour at the end of the year! Dread to think what Wagner will do if this lot get selected again.

Jase made some excellent practical points about the effect the lack of funding has on our ability to develop players. Unfortunately I don't see it changing and we just have to hope natural talent shines through.

 

[the big bambino]

Absolutely nothing to do with BLM. We have a superb bowling attack and they blew England away in the first test and our batters managed to scrape together 300. Don;t let this terrible performance fool you into thinking we did not win that first test on merit. We were the better side for the vast majority of that first test and deserved to win.

As the series went on, our bowlers got tired, England batted better and the gulf between the two batting sides really began to show. I have said it a few times, but we won;t beat a team as good as England away without improving our batting.

WI did remarkably well considering the comparative personnel in both sides and the conditions they were playing in. It is true the WI batting is woeful. You will lose if your top six and seven average in the high twenties and low thirties. Simply not test class. But the conditions also exaggerated the comparison between the bowling teams too. Most players naturally do better at home than away. It's difficult for touring teams to keep the gap in performance to manageable levels. The difference in averages between say Broad, Woakes and Anderson at home and Gabriel, Roach and Holder away is as high as 15 or 16 runs per wicket. That is an enormous advantage to concede.

However and congrats to the WI bowlers who managed to improve on their away records this series. They managed to exploit England's batting frailties and take a test and almost draw a series. They did their part in managing the disadvantage. But the English bowlers, particularly Broad and Woakes also improved on their home averages and reasserted their superiority in the conditions.

 

[Burgey]

Just barely, though. This is obviously not a popular opinion but the gulf that opened up between the sides by the end suggests that WI rode on the adrenaline of the BLM build-up initially and by the same token England might have been a little meek at first but as that factor abated something like the natural balance between the sides, at least in English conditions, was restored.

FMD what a patronizing post this is. And completely inaccurate given England's batting is as weak as piss too.

 

[Daemon]

Holder was quite disappointing in this series besides Day 1.

 

[honestbharani]

Forum looks awesome now

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Forum looks awesome now

I agree. Good work techie people.

 

[Beamer]

Holder was quite disappointing in this series besides Day 1.

I think he continued to bowl well. He beat the bat a ridiculous amount of times in the second test, was insanely unlucky.

His batting though, needs to improve. Or rather, his perception of his own batting. He has a sound technique and needs to bat at 6 or 7 if he is to go to the next level.

 

[Bijed]

I've put some mini-summaries of the England players in this series up on my blog in case anyone is remotely interested: https://gccricket.com/2020/07/29/england-vs-west-indies-how-did-they-do-part-1/

Usually I wouldn't jsut plug it like this but it's the first thing I've posted for absolutely ages so I'm eager to pretend that I get readers

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Well done West Indies on coming over and being part of a very enjoyable series. Good to win but in a way a draw would have been a better series result given the result wasn't that important given the situation the world is currently in.

As for Broad, why did they think dropping him was a good idea? Better than ever since he altered his delivery about 18 months ago. Could smash the Anderson end total to pieces as looks fit enough to carry on to a similar age as Anderson.

 

[Howe_zat]

You will notice that only three of the 8 teams in the No Changes league managed to stay in the spirit of the competition. While some of those that joined may not have quite grasped it, I odn't think there's any excuse for our own @harsh.ag making three whole changes in the pursuit of unprincipled glory.

When eliminating the five disqualified teams, I am happy to claim the victory, the basis of which amounts to selecting England's openers and Ben stokes as captain.

 

[harsh.ag]

I was playing in three different competitions. Terrible reason still

 

[nzfan]

West Indies yet again showed glimpses of their capability but deceived in the end. I was rooting for them. England too good in the end. Excellent comeback by England particuarly with so much bad weather around they still closed off 2 games. Waiting for NZ to visit England it's been a wee while since we visited.

 

[wpdavid]

in the 90s i can only remember a 96 win over india and an epic but incredibly umpire assisted win over south africa in 98 where england for once had gough, fraser and cork all firing at the same time (i think caddick was out of favour). i don't remember anything pre 93.

it was absolutely dire but the second half of the 80s and that legendary ashes where they selected a billion players does sound terribad.

Yup, the second half of the 1980s was the absolute worst time to be an England supporter. Five home series defeats on the trot without winning a single test in any of them. 1986, 1988 and 1989 especially bad for the cast-of-thousands approach to selection. Not saying that we were world beaters in the 1990s, but we were unlucky to draw in WI at the start of the decade, did draw with them twice at home, beat NZ twice away and a few other wins plus the ones you mentioned. Obviously Australia dicked us every time.

 

[grecian]

Yup, the second half of the 1980s was the absolute worst time to be an England supporter. Five home series defeats on the trot without winning a single test in any of them. 1986, 1988 and 1989 especially bad for the cast-of-thousands approach to selection. Not saying that we were world beaters in the 1990s, but we were unlucky to draw in WI at the start of the decade, did draw with them twice at home, beat NZ twice away and a few other wins plus the ones you mentioned. Obviously Australia ****ed us every time.

It's oft been a point made by me that we were worse in the 80s than the 90s, but never pretend we were good in the 90s, because we were dogshite for the most part.

In the end, it's why many of us feel such a love for the Noughties period, and sometimes beyond when we actually felt a brilliant cricketing side, all-round.

We still are probably better than those two aforementioned decades, but we are at times fighting against recent history, still feel

Cook
Strauss
Trott
Pietersen
Bell
Collingwood
Prior

is a batting line-up that we'd dominate the World with if they were all at their best. Obviously people Like Tres, Horrible racist Brexity ****, and Thorpe were just before, or around, all who would walk into our current line-up. then the likes of Flintoff, Swann.

We were are focusing on just before 2009 which was a rare bad time in this thread, but TBH, it was a fun time to be an England cricket fan, comparatively.

 

[wpdavid]

Yeah, we have a tendency to be very good for only a very brief period of time. Then, for whatever reason, it all goes pear shaped. I read Simon Wilde's 'England the biography' whilst away on hols this week (not a million miles from your neck of the woods, actually) and he reckons that hubris got in the way for the 2004-05 and also the 2010-11 sides. Obviously the former wasn't helped by losing Tres and Simon Jones, but I suspect he has a point regarding some of the others. Just before 2009 was Peter Moores' time, wasn't it. Again from Wilde's book, apparently Moores' player management was absolutely dreadful for international players, as we all knew from KP's attempt to have him sacked. However, he deserves credit for bringing in Anderson & Broad to replace Harmison & Hoggard and also Swann and Prior. And also Sidebottom, who seems to have cropped up here.

 

[JOJOXI]

WI did remarkably well considering the comparative personnel in both sides and the conditions they were playing in. It is true the WI batting is woeful. You will lose if your top six and seven average in the high twenties and low thirties. Simply not test class. But the conditions also exaggerated the comparison between the bowling teams too. Most players naturally do better at home than away. It's difficult for touring teams to keep the gap in performance to manageable levels. The difference in averages between say Broad, Woakes and Anderson at home and Gabriel, Roach and Holder away is as high as 15 or 16 runs per wicket. That is an enormous advantage to concede.

However and congrats to the WI bowlers who managed to improve on their away records this series. They managed to exploit England's batting frailties and take a test and almost draw a series. They did their part in managing the disadvantage. But the English bowlers, particularly Broad and Woakes also improved on their home averages and reasserted their superiority in the conditions.

Saw a thing from CricViz and the expected bowling averages of the main bowlers were all pretty close - unsurpisingly Broad slightly ahead of the rest but it really is pretty close and Archer, Stokes and Wood all with lower expected averages then any of West Indies seamers in this series. Which unfortunately highlights how big a problem the batting is. Chase, Holder and Dowrich normally get some runs in fairness to them and all offer a secondary skill - in Holder's case the batting is probably his secondary skill. But the top four is a problem - unfortunately it seems there isn't a whole lot of depth - calls for Pooran but would want him to play some FC cricket first - if you drop Hope and include Pooran when does Hope merit re-selection on the basis of his white-ball game he seems a decent bet for the West Indies test side - the same criteria being used to promote Pooran. Also where would Pooran bat? If it isn't in the top four I question the need for him. Would be unfair on Chase, Dowrich, Holder which has often been the strongest part of the batting and Blackwood has been one of the more impressive batsman this series. Especially with Hetmyer waiting in the wings too.

 

[vcs]

Obviously Pietersen-gate didn't help team morale much but the 2010-11 team just got deservedly displaced by a superior SA team. They took over the ranking by beating us emphatically in 2011 and held it for a year, but I think SA were always the best team of that 2008-2014 era overall.

2005-06 team was unlucky that they had to replace Trescothick so soon, Jones was made of glass, Flintoff was never the same after he overbowled himself in 2006, Vaughan was on the way out with his injuries as well. Plus they had to compete with an Aussie team full of aging ATGs, determined to avenge 2005.

 

[Flem274*]

i think england focus on a small number of games too much and overreact. if they win a few games against a better team they're all of a sudden the greatest side to walk the earth and then if they lose to a team they thought they would beat they're the worst team in history, drop them all. sometimes there's also some seriously blind optimism or over the top pessimism before series. this causes a real sugar high mentality and the english media do not help this national psyche.

england have been a solid side for 20 years with a couple of brief peaks and maybe a few troughs as well. always very strong at home and inconsistent away due to some technical challenges with the bat and preferring to bowl with the duke ball.

the talent pool has been pretty consistent in quality - tresco, cook, strauss, kp, root, bell, thorpe, colly, trott, stokes, flintoff, prior, swann, gough, caddick, anderson, broad - but equally you haven't thrown out a ponting or a mcgrath in a long time. root and stokes can become atgs but atm they're not clearly above your other best players since 2000.