Pakistan's chances in England this summer

[Tom Halsey]

why were they not so bad? in the first test when they should have got 500+ they got dismissed for 418. in the 2nd innings they didnt even make half of that. in the 2nd test they were 162/6 in the 2nd innings. and lets just not even talk about the 3rd test.
and Englands history of screwing up with the bat can be taken back a little longer, how many times during the Ashes was it suggested that their first innings scores was not good enough? surely almost everyone was disappointed with the 407 at edgbaston, given the pitch and the quality of bowling. they definetly messed up at Lords, they messed up in the 2nd innings at edgbaston when the game was there for the taking. they nearly lost the game with the bat in the 2nd innings at Trent bridge, and they batted poorly in both innings at the oval only for Pietersen and the australian fielders to save the game for them. By and large the pattern in the Ashes was - England screw up with the bat, and Jones and Flintoff save them with the ball.

Any score of over 400 can not be deemed a poor score.

And WRT The Ashes - England screwed up against Warne, and cashed in against the seamers.

 

[tooextracool]

Any score of over 400 can not be deemed a poor score.

And WRT The Ashes - England screwed up against Warne, and cashed in against the seamers.

err you have to look at the wicket and quality of bowling. scoring 400 on wickets like antigua isnt good enough, and if you score at 4-5 runs an over you are quite likely to end up losing. and yes England screwed up against warne, but thats only because by gillespie and kaspa bowled rubbish throughout the series. on the odd occasion that mcgrath played he still miraculously took wickets, despite not even being at his best.

 

[tooextracool]

There were some poor shots.

There were also some very good balls. You admitted that the new ball moved around a while ago. You then said that Shoaib took a high proportion of his wickets with the new ball, with the ball moving around.

1)the new ball moved around for no more than 7-8 overs, and even when it didnt do so appreciably. any half decent player is expected to survive such a period.
2) Shoaib barely ever swings the new ball
3) Almost all of his wickets came after the 7-8 over period.

 

[tooextracool]

Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee don't reverse it.

so im guessing you missed out on Australias tour to India in 2003? or Mcgraths performances against NZ recently? or perhaps you missed some of his reverse swingers at Old Trafford?
and while B.lee doesnt reverse swing it very often, you'd have to be out of your mind if you think the ball that got flintoff at Trent Bridge did not swing in appreciably.

Gough and White reversed it both ways, it was just ofte thought that when it went out, it was orthodox, when it wasn't.

are you serious? i'd like you to recall one time when either of those 2 reverse swung the ball away from the batsman consistently? because i can guarantee you that it never happened. Gough reversed the ball into the right hander for all of the Australian tour in 98/99 and for all off the tour of Pakistan in 2000. Craig white too did the same in Pakistan during the 3rd test match that won England the series.

 

[tooextracool]

Of course 7/12 is better than 4/12.

yet you just said that 3 more wickets hardly makes a difference?

You can't judge anything on one innings of 4 wickets (the crucial thing here is it's only 1 innings) - especially when they conceded 96 runs for those 4 wickets.

4/96 translates to 192/8. as said earlier on a flat wicket thats a good enough spell of bowling. combine pathan and SS's spell and you find that they have 7 wickets for not that many runs. Further SS has destroyed England in games thereafter so its more than 1 inning now.

 

[Richard]

I disagree with you on him being a novoice, however i do agree that he has learnt little since then.Now since he isn't a much different bowler since the last Aus tour then how can he be a threath to Aus this time around??

Because he's still got scope for big improvement...?

Sarfaraz worked on his action which was again unapproved and Shabbir ended up with a one year ban.It should be clear by now that Shabbir has very little chance of making a comeback, and to expect him to come back and do wonder against Australia is plain stupid.

No, it's not - it's less likely than more, but it's not plain stupid.
I'm perfectly well aware that Sarfraz worked with Shabbir, he was of course unable to do much good in such a short time. What I meant was that Shabbir could do to learn a little mentally from Sarfraz who has always been an extremely tough character.
If Sarfraz can do some technical and mental work with him I'm very confident Shabbir will come back a World-beater.

But you were talking about this Pak attack (which destroyed Eng) giving hard time to Australia, atleast you now do agree that Pak are unlikely to do anything against the Aussies if the series is played now.

No, I'm not talking about the Pak attack that "destroyed" Eng, because Pak's attack didn't destroy Eng - Eng self-destructed.
If you look carefully I said Pak have the makings of a very, very good attack, that would cause huge problems to anyone.
I did not say they have one now.

 

[Richard]

i dont know what you watch really. Sreesanth looks to me a better bowler than Munaf and certainly far better than Pathan. Hes certainly looked test class from almost the very first spell that hes bowled in test cricket.

I hardly see how he bowled better than Patel.
Certainly he's better than Pathan but that's hardly saying much - Pathan is pretty useless.
He clearly has potential, having watched him again but I was certainly far from impressed by his First Test.

 

[Richard]

Yes, but their bowling averages were over 30.

The pitches looked flat, but they weren't that flat. Pakistan's innings in the 3rd Test aside, no-one (team wise) really got away from the bowlers).

Come on, you can't be serious?
Just because no-one could score too quickly doesn't mean that a) run-scoring wasn't easy or b) wicket-taking wasn't very difficult.

 

[tooextracool]

I hardly see how he bowled better than Patel.
Certainly he's better than Pathan but that's hardly saying much - Pathan is pretty useless.
He clearly has potential, having watched him again but I was certainly far from impressed by his First Test.

anyone who can bowl outswingers with some sort of accuracy is always going to have potential. more importantly though shree santh uses his brain when he bowls and uses the crease quite brilliantly. not to mention of course that he can also reverse swing the ball a bit even if hes not a specialist.

 

[Richard]

incase you havent realised, there is a major difference between bowling just outside the off stump and bowling wide outside off stump. the main difference between mcgrath and shabbir on that day is that with mcgrath you cant be sure whether to leave it or not, because it might just come back and take the off stump. with shabbir there was no chance in hell of any ball hitting the stumps and if you arent threatening the stumps then why in the blue hell would any batsman want to play a shot against you?

To score runs?

 

[Richard]

anyone who can bowl outswingers with some sort of accuracy is always going to have potential. more importantly though shree santh uses his brain when he bowls and uses the crease quite brilliantly. not to mention of course that he can also reverse swing the ball a bit even if hes not a specialist.

I shall wait to see if he does it too often - something he doesn't really appear to have done in his First-Class career to date.

 

[Richard]

Hmm, so clearly England's scores in Pakistan weren't so bad then?

Those pitches aren't easy to bat on when you're not used to them, because the slow-and-low nature of them and the occasionally two-paced nature of them is so different from our conditions.

Well... there are slow and low pitches in England, you know.
A flat pitch is a flat pitch - good batsmen will almost always get runs on them, because good batsmen don't mind about how much pace and bounce there is - consistency is all they need.
Clearly both England and Pakistan batted poorly many times - the catching on both sides left something to be desired, as well.

 

[Richard]

The only reason Australia struggled against it so much was because they've never really faced it before (and incidentally, Akhtar has also destroyed the Aussies before when they faced him).

Swing, be it reverse or conventional, is a rarely-seen commodity at the current time and it's no surprise that Australia, who would have had problems with that however good they were at playing it, were so utterly perplexed due to the relative lack of it in recent years.

 

[Richard]

Erm, I meant Australia had never really faced quality reverse-swing before

Australia have rarely faced quality swing, full-stop, these last 4 or 5 years.

 

[Richard]

Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee don't reverse it.

Not very often they don't, but there have undoubtedly been occasions where they have.

Gough and White reversed it both ways, it was just ofte thought that when it went out, it was orthodox, when it wasn't.

Craig White rarely swung the ball away from the right-handers. Both his conventional and reverse-swing were into right-handers, away from lefties.
Gough was a classical swing bowler, too - out with the new, in with the old. Just like his mentor Waqar Younis.
Being able to swing the ball both ways using both techniques is a rare, rare skill indeed. I can only think of Wasim Akram who could do it with decent accuracy. Of course, there have been some bowlers (Martin Bicknell, for instance) who can bowl conventional-swing in both directions, but even they're very rare.

 

[tooextracool]

Erm, I meant Australia had never really faced quality reverse-swing before, not who has ever faced Simon Jones before, apart from the odd occasion.

No-one handles Shoaib comfortably when he's reversing it.

australia may not have played quality reverse swing before, but a bowler that reverses the ball both ways is far more difficult to handle than one that just does it one way.

 

[tooextracool]

To score runs?

you'll get the runs off the other bowlers. what is the point of playing at wide balls? you're quite likely to edge one and get yourself out.

 

[tooextracool]

I shall wait to see if he does it too often - something he doesn't really appear to have done in his First-Class career to date.

and you've watched so much of his FC cricket to date havent you? its not surprising that you've dismissed him based on his FC record.

 

[Richard]

you'll get the runs off the other bowlers. what is the point of playing at wide balls? you're quite likely to edge one and get yourself out.

So why then do not all bowlers bowl outside off all the time?
Wide balls are there to be hit.
You'll edge one eventually, but probably only after scoring about 170 runs.

 

[Richard]

and you've watched so much of his FC cricket to date havent you? its not surprising that you've dismissed him based on his FC record.

No, it's not - as you yourself have said, only very, very rarely does someone who's not been successful at the domestic level end-up being successful at the international.
No, I've not watched any of his First-Class cricket, but I think it likely that if he'd bowled that well he'd have a pretty good average, at least.