players Who You Thought WOULDN'T Make It.............

[marc71178]

If all those games that were watched as a player were watched as a spectator that wouldn't make his skill as a sage any inferior.

Balderdash, tosh and codswallop.

There is no way you can gain knowledge of what's actually going on in terms of the pressure from watching from the boundary,

 

[tooextracool]

Yes, they are - and good bowlers can make a ball in the right condition swing anywhere, it's just a bit easier in England.

yes i know...which is why someone like bicknell thrives in such conditions.

There was no seam-movement off that pitch, at any stage, what rubbish "there almost always is in England" - dew has even less effect than England anywhere, because days in summer are longer in England than anywhere, given that England is the furthest cricket-playing country from the equator.
And there's nothing else that should mean the ball moves early on - that's just an assumption that's never been true.

no its not an assumption because if you look back at any test match in england you will most often there has been some amount of seam movement early on, along with the amount of swing that you can get surely that is all that bicknell needs.

He played rubbish for most of the series (except the Headingley first-innings), yes (though he didn't really have much to gain at Edgbaston or Lord's), but in this instance he was beaten by classic bowling, and couldn't have been expected to predict the inswinger when it came.

and good batsman dont get outhought.....if lara lost sight of that ball then so did rudolph if you ask me. this is typical of you to twist your own statements around whenever convenient. there was nothing special in that ball, a good batsman would have been prepared for an inswinger after he bowled 3 away swingers.

He was back - and outside the line. The Laws dictate that you can't be given out correctly when the ball hits you outside the line. Not to mention it was probably going over the top.
And yes, I have taped that day's highlights, too, and you're not going to fool me with your incorrect memory same way you couldn't with the Zoysa-Trescothick ball..

and in real time it was almost impossible to decide whether or not it hit in him in line or not...everything looked just perfect,kallis was back and squared up....you can look at a 1000 replays after that and then basically fault harmison for not deserving a wciket for a ball that hit the batsman a quarter of an inch outside the off stump, but the fact is that its one of those that can go either way....which doesnt mean that harmison didnt deserve that wicket

Which is why no-one except Bicknell has ever troubled him with the inswinger...

oh if you've watched closely, hes been troubled plenty of times with the inswinger, but the fact is that there are very few bowlers who have had the conditions and the ability to bowl the inswinger effectively to use it successfully. of course the fact that someone like smith who is quite capable of playing around a weakness will get around it most times...but that doesnt escape the fact that the wicket had more to do with batsman error than it did with good bowling.

No, I didn't - I've mentioned several times that it was a fantastic delivery that Kirsten had no realistic chance of playing, he couldn't have left it. It was, however, a leg-cutter, and Harmison hasn't proved very adept at bowling them intentionally, giving me the impression it was probably simply fortune.

oh yes so when harmison does in fact get wickets with brilliant bowling you just ignore it then? how convenient

No, I didn't, it's just you'd already mentioned that.

and if you can count, youd see that most of bicknells wickets came of non wicket taking balls....therefore by your counts he didnt bowl well in that test match.

 

[tooextracool]

No, I've never claimed anything of the sort.
I've claimed they make mistakes about the presence of pressure, but I've never claimed they can't tell when a batsman hasn't picked the ball up.

and the people who you claim said this are?

Fine, if you think I'm making it up - no-one else does!

no one else = you and who again?

 

[tooextracool]

Yes, and that includes the period from The Oval to Kingsmead, where he got good figures in 4 innings out of about 18 innings, all due to poor strokes.
McGrath had a short spell where his luck dried-up (mostly), and hopefully that might happen again as batsmen get the incorrect impression that he's not what he used to be.

what the hell are you talking about?
he had one bad series against NZ, perfectly acceptable given his consistent performances before that. after that he got figures of 3/94,3/13,2/70,2/43,3/35,1/95,3/28,5/21,3/42,0/56,1/26,0/54...
from what i see he had 7 good performances - 3/13,2/43,3/35,3/28,5/21,3/42,1/26 and given that 3/94 and 2/70 arent especially poor given the flatness of some of those wickets i wonder how long you are going to make up stuff that didnt happen?

Most of his wickets had nothing to do with the seamer-friendly conditions and were simply due to poor batting. So were plenty in New Zealand.

which is because of the stupid way in which you rate how well someone deserves his wickets or not. performances have shown time and time again that my theory that good bowling results in wickets of non wicket taking balls has been proven right....so much so that you could dismiss wickets taken off wicket taking balls as anomalies.

I simply said that he started taking wickets at a flattering average - that period started in Bangalore and ended at Trent Bridge against the same team.
I haven't made a thing up..

all because of the seamer friendly wickets where he thrives on.....interesting how his performances dropped when the pitches got flatter isnt it?

Yes, you can, quite easily...

and you can stop acting like one easily too

It works nowhere near as much for anyone as it worked for the West Indies quintet (or more) of the 70s and 80s.

so only the WI bowlers can bowl good short pitch balls then i assume?

It is "bowled well" with extreme infrequency, if that's the case!
Seriously, you see bowlers try it all the time - when it works, it was "done well", when it doesn't it "wasn't done well"

because everyone knows that you dont overdo it unless the batsman has serious problems with it, you pitch the ball up often and then try to bang a couple in every over.

Also I might add that if Anderson repeatedly swung the ball away outside the off he'd probably get lots of wickets - his problem is that he doesn't swing it enough and often drifts onto the pads. And drags it down. And basically does everything wrong that a swing-bowler shouldn't be doing wrong if he wants wickets.

and if you read carefully i said WIDE outside the off stump....

No, it might be perceived that the short-balls caused him to get out to the pitched-up ball but the fact is I've seen many occasions where a spell of persistent short, useless bowling is followed by a full ball that is dealt with without trouble.

and ive seen plenty of occasions that its happened otherwise.......nothing is guaranteed to work 100% off the time, if it works even 30% off the time you've done well.

The slower you are, the later you need to swing it.
You can't adjust to a full ball that swings just before it gets to you, no matter how slow it is.
However, when you're bowling at 80mph you don't need it to swing as late as when you're bowling at 70.

no the slower you are, it doesnt matter how late you swing it(not like most bowlers can control how late their ball swing either), you need pace and swing to be able to get the outside edge.

Yes, because there was something good about that ball - it moved to somewhere the batsman couldn't play for it going.If a poor shot does ensue from a ball that was simply different to previous ones, as far as I'm concerned that's far more poor than nicking an away-swinger you could have left.

dont you see that its all your stupid opinion that theres something good about it? quite frankly if you ask anyone else there is something good about the short pitch ball, its just that you dont like it and you just cant live with the fact that it gets bowlers wickets.

 

[tooextracool]

No, he's got better by practising and that has meant he's averaged in the 40s in Tests and the 50s in domestic-First-Class.
Improvement is caused by practice and is borne-out on the field - whatever level at..

no its not, you can only improve to a certain extent when you play rubbish bowlers in stereotypical conditions at home, any expert on cricket knows that. the reason why vaughans average rose was because he got to play in all types of conditions against quality bowlers and therefore it helped him play better in domestic cricket.

You would - because Harmison's domestic figures would probably have been pretty good judging by his Test figures..

no its just another one of your assumptions...

Anyone knows how to bowl to a good batsman, you've got to be totally stupid not to - the difficult part is learning how to do it and you do that by one thing - practice..

err seriously is there a time when you dont make yourself look like a fool?
'anyone knows how to bowl to a good batsman, but the difficult part is learning how to do it?' even you are capable of better.

We? I thought you were Indian.

and you thought wrong, almost everyone on this forum knows that im an englishman living in india.

Of course he should have been in the side from that Oval Test onwards, there could be no justification for otherwise.

but he wouldnt have been playing at the oval in the first place if people like you had something to do with it...

No, I won't - I'll just be stating that something that is the case is the case..

nope you will just continue to twist your statements around until people realise that you are all one big joke.

No, it's not - I know, I've been myself watching it - you have just made an assumption...

and ive been watching too...

Oh, they have been - nonetheless they've been very infrequent.

there have been extremely frequent, except that with your deceptive 'whatever harmison bowls doesnt deserve wickets ' eyes you just wont admit it.

 

[tooextracool]

Yes, true.
But any ball of such which takes a wicket is not a Jaffa and is in fact a RUD..

which is precisely my point, far more often bowlers bowl deliveries that on somedays might have taken wickets, but most often dont....but you dont give them credit for those deliveries and only look at the deliveries that actually got wickets.

No, it's not, it moves far more..

actually the slower ball moves more.

They rarely result in wickets ATM, because hardly any bowler can bowl them...

and who has used them effectively then?

Yes, it does, most of the time.
There are occasions (Harmison in Aus for example) where it doesn't, but generally the most accurate bowlers will be the most economical....

dont you get it? if you can dismiss his performance in australia as innacurate despite the ER, then you cant assume anything from the ER against SA.

I have heard many say that Marshall was as quick as Holding..

no you havent, you just love to make up stuff to suit yourself...

Even if he wasn't, they were both perfectly quick enough for most!..

and ive denied this?but obviously anyone who could bowl faster had some sort of natural advantage over someone who didnt.

No, not at all.
But it does mean Marshall should be given still more credit than Holding for the cheapness of his wickets.

and in the same way someone like harmison who uses his natural assets should be given just the same amount of credit for his wickets....

He could - but he didn't..

yes and you couldnt have predicted any sort of failure, so stop trying to act like a smart-ass just to try and make up for the times in which you were made to look like a fool.

No, because I never said you had ITFP...

then it was unnecessary to bring it up ITFP too.

Certainly does - it also takes natural gift, otherwise anyone who wanted to could.

concentration is a natural gift only to an extent, but players like kirsten and richardson etc had to build their concentration to the level that they got it to.

 

[Richard]

Balderdash, tosh and codswallop.

There is no way you can gain knowledge of what's actually going on in terms of the pressure from watching from the boundary,

You can gain all you need (which is nowhere near as much as is sometimes perceived) from watching in a crowd and sharing the emotions of the players.

 

[Richard]

no its not an assumption because if you look back at any test match in england you will most often there has been some amount of seam movement early on, along with the amount of swing that you can get surely that is all that bicknell needs.

There has been little or no seam-movement in most pitches of the last 3 seasons.
And as I say, if the ball's in the right condition it'll swing anywhere.

and good batsman dont get outhought.....if lara lost sight of that ball then so did rudolph if you ask me. this is typical of you to twist your own statements around whenever convenient. there was nothing special in that ball, a good batsman would have been prepared for an inswinger after he bowled 3 away swingers.

Or 4, or 5... how on Earth was Rudolph supposed to be able to guess when the inswinger was coming? No, that is the advantage of the bowler, and Bicknell used it to devestating effect.
To suggest that Rudolph lost sight of the ball is frankly ludicrous, he watched it (with dismay) onto the stumps.

and in real time it was almost impossible to decide whether or not it hit in him in line or not...everything looked just perfect,kallis was back and squared up....you can look at a 1000 replays after that and then basically fault harmison for not deserving a wciket for a ball that hit the batsman a quarter of an inch outside the off stump, but the fact is that its one of those that can go either way....which doesnt mean that harmison didnt deserve that wicket

It does, there was nothing good about the ball except that it was probably going to hit the top of the stumps, anyway. Even if the decision had not been a bad one (and I immidiately said "no way", so did my Dad, which proves that everything did not look perfect) I still wouldn't attach much credit for the wicket.

oh if you've watched closely, hes been troubled plenty of times with the inswinger, but the fact is that there are very few bowlers who have had the conditions and the ability to bowl the inswinger effectively to use it successfully. of course the fact that someone like smith who is quite capable of playing around a weakness will get around it most times...but that doesnt escape the fact that the wicket had more to do with batsman error than it did with good bowling.

He's been troubled plenty of times, yes, it can be a weakness, yes. People have, however, bowled it at him a lot - he's an opening batsman, he'll have to face it more often than not, you usually do with a new-ball.
You could argue similar to that I do with Hayden - that were there some better bowlers around in this age he'd have more problems than he does - that would be up to whoever. Personally I'd say Hayden has much the bigger weakness because he's nowhere near as proficient on the leg-side. Smith for most of his career has whipped inswingers straight through mid-wicket. But Bicknell used it twice in consecutive Tests to dismiss him, which other bowlers have not managed to do.

oh yes so when harmison does in fact get wickets with brilliant bowling you just ignore it then? how convenient

No, I don't ignore it - I say that with Harmison it was 1 good ball out of 4, with Bicknell it was 2 good ones out of 4.

and if you can count, youd see that most of bicknells wickets came of non wicket taking balls....therefore by your counts he didnt bowl well in that test match.

At least 2 came with wicket-taking balls, and he did bowl well in that Test-match.

 

[Richard]

and the people who you claim said this are?

The commentators on at the time, can't actually remember who they are - they said it at Edgbaston with the one he didn't pick-up there, too.

no one else = you and who again?

Err, everyone else I've ever heard mention the matter - even marc, the number-one fan of that Old Trafford-Bouncer-wicket-ball, has eventually admitted that Lara lost sight of it, just said that Flintoff deserved credit for him losing it.

 

[krishneelz]

my god u ladies quote alot. But i really thought Chetan Chauhan was never going to make it

 

[FRAZ]

my god u ladies quote alot. But i really thought Chetan Chauhan was never going to make it

Hey watch it dude !!! Just be friendly . India is the best cricket team in the world . Happy !!!

 

[krishneelz]

Hey watch it dude !!! Just be friendly . India is the best cricket team in the world . Happy !!!

Sorry dude and i agree 100%

 

[Richard]

what the hell are you talking about?
he had one bad series against NZ, perfectly acceptable given his consistent performances before that. after that he got figures of 3/94,3/13,2/70,2/43,3/35,1/95,3/28,5/21,3/42,0/56,1/26,0/54...
from what i see he had 7 good performances - 3/13,2/43,3/35,3/28,5/21,3/42,1/26 and given that 3/94 and 2/70 arent especially poor given the flatness of some of those wickets i wonder how long you are going to make up stuff that didnt happen?

The flatness of the wickets is just the point - the figures would have been better on seaming or uneven pitches.
When taken in the context of the New Zealand series, once you remove the Wanderers game in which South Africa's batting was about as bad as batting can possibly be (an innings and 300-odd runs, they lost by), means that he'd had a massive 4 good performances in 8 Test-matches (1-26 isn't that good when you look at Lee and Warne's figures), all of which were down, as usual, to poor strokes.

which is because of the stupid way in which you rate how well someone deserves his wickets or not. performances have shown time and time again that my theory that good bowling results in wickets of non wicket taking balls has been proven right....so much so that you could dismiss wickets taken off wicket taking balls as anomalies.

Rubbish, as I've told you many times "poor-shot-due-to-pressure" wickets come far, far less frequently than wicket-taking-ball wickets.
Even then "poor-shot-due-to-pressure" wickets don't come infrequently enough to be described as anomalies.

all because of the seamer friendly wickets where he thrives on.....interesting how his performances dropped when the pitches got flatter isnt it?

No, not all because of seamer-friendly wickets - there was no seam when he got wickets right at the end of the Basin Reserve Test-match, nor when he benefited from some poor batting at the end of both innings at Eden Park, nor did most of his wickets at Edgbaston have anything to do with seam-movement. Nor did either of the pitches at Old Trafford, Lord's or Trent Bridge offer seam.

and you can stop acting like one easily too

Except I'm not.

so only the WI bowlers can bowl good short pitch balls then i assume?

No, just that when you've got four or five who could all do it session after session, day after day, match after match it's a bit different to half a session against two bowlers.

because everyone knows that you dont overdo it unless the batsman has serious problems with it, you pitch the ball up often and then try to bang a couple in every over.

And we've seen that tried many times, and in my experience it's mostly played with the utmost assurance.

and if you read carefully i said WIDE outside the off stump....

The wider the better (long as not into wide-calling territory), because that will mean the batsman has less and less chance of controlling the shots he'll almost inevitably play eventually.

and ive seen plenty of occasions that its happened otherwise.......nothing is guaranteed to work 100% off the time, if it works even 30% off the time you've done well.

Which it works nothing like so often.

no the slower you are, it doesnt matter how late you swing it(not like most bowlers can control how late their ball swing either), you need pace and swing to be able to get the outside edge.

It does matter how late you swing it, and no, no-one can control how late you swing it - that's what sorts the club-standard from the international-standard.

dont you see that its all your stupid opinion that theres something good about it? quite frankly if you ask anyone else there is something good about the short pitch ball, its just that you dont like it and you just cant live with the fact that it gets bowlers wickets.

It gets far, far, far fewer wickets than full balls in my experience.

 

[Richard]

no its not, you can only improve to a certain extent when you play rubbish bowlers in stereotypical conditions at home, any expert on cricket knows that. the reason why vaughans average rose was because he got to play in all types of conditions against quality bowlers and therefore it helped him play better in domestic cricket.

No, it's because he got the chance to practice against all types of bowling, with a very, very high-quality batting coach (Duncan Fletcher).

no its just another one of your assumptions...

It's a pretty fair assumption.

err seriously is there a time when you dont make yourself look like a fool?
'anyone knows how to bowl to a good batsman, but the difficult part is learning how to do it?' even you are capable of better.

Do you really think it is not incredibly obvious how to bowl to a batsman of any standard?
It's far more of a fool who thinks otherwise than one who thinks so.

and you thought wrong, almost everyone on this forum knows that im an englishman living in india.

Well I'm not one of them, your nationality has never come-up in any conversation.

but he wouldnt have been playing at the oval in the first place if people like you had something to do with it...

No, he wouldn't. But his performances from then on made that none-too-important.

nope you will just continue to twist your statements around until people realise that you are all one big joke.

Well rest assured that'll never happen.

and ive been watching too...

No, you haven't been watching me, so you don't know whether I've been watching or not.

there have been extremely frequent, except that with your deceptive 'whatever harmison bowls doesnt deserve wickets ' eyes you just wont admit it.

Nothing to do with "whatever Harmison bowls doesn't deserve wickets" (something only you and marc have ever said - I never have), simply something to do with short-balls don't deserve wickets.
And short-balls which have ended-up with wickets against their name, to him or anyone else, almost invariably don't deserve them.

 

[Richard]

which is precisely my point, far more often bowlers bowl deliveries that on somedays might have taken wickets, but most often dont....but you dont give them credit for those deliveries and only look at the deliveries that actually got wickets.

Yes, I do.
Because I don't like to give an especially large amount of credit for play-and-misses - the best bowlers get loads of them, too - they just keep bowling there until the nick comes.
There are other bowlers like Collymore, Flintoff etc. who get loads of play-and-misses but don't get the poor strokes. With Flintoff since Sri Lanka, of course, that has been different.

actually the slower ball moves more.

How much the ball moves has nothing to do with the pace - rather the pace is a result of there being more impartation of the thing that will make the ball move.

and who has used them effectively then?

Donald, Ambrose, Holding, Chaminda, Wasim, Waqar, Gough, White, Imran Khan, Srinath, Fleming, Martin...

dont you get it? if you can dismiss his performance in australia as innacurate despite the ER, then you cant assume anything from the ER against SA.

No, I can't - but I don't need to, because I watched almost every ball of his in the South Africa series.

no you havent, you just love to make up stuff to suit yourself...

Says you, and not many people besides.

and ive denied this?but obviously anyone who could bowl faster had some sort of natural advantage over someone who didnt.

Yes, of course they did.

and in the same way someone like harmison who uses his natural assets should be given just the same amount of credit for his wickets....

Not if they come off mostly poor strokes.

yes and you couldnt have predicted any sort of failure

No, I couldn't, and I never claimed I could, because I didn't watch at the neccessary time.

so stop trying to act like a smart-ass just to try and make up for the times in which you were made to look like a fool.

I don't need to make-up for anything.

then it was unnecessary to bring it up ITFP too.

Oh, it was neccessary - they're some of the stuff that has been said, I was testing to see if you believed any of them like you believe so much other conventional rubbish...

concentration is a natural gift only to an extent, but players like kirsten and richardson etc had to build their concentration to the level that they got it to.

Yes, they did - but equally if they'd not been naturally gifted concentrators anyone who wanted to could be like them.

 

[marc71178]

You can gain all you need (which is nowhere near as much as is sometimes perceived) from watching in a crowd and sharing the emotions of the players.

Erm, not you cannot even go close to experiencing it.

 

[Richard]

You can - and just because you cannot when playing in and watching a concert is not justification for that.

 

[marc71178]

What about when sat at an International game then?

Nobody in the crowd feels any tension that they have to perform.

 

[Richard]

No, but they do want the players to perform (well, the most dedicated do) as much as the players themselves want to perform.

 

[marc71178]

No, they do not want the player to succeed as much as the player themself does.

And secondly, the spectator is under absolutely no pressure whatsoever - the crowd won't turn round and laugh at you if Vaas is on one of his off days.

Well they might turn round and laugh at you (but that would only be if the tannoy announcer mentioned you would be signing copies of your book "The Art of Captaincy" in the lunch interval)