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

[Richard]

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.

No, he's not under pressure, but he feels the pressure the player he is supporting is under.
Because they do want the player to succeed as much as the player does.

 

[marc71178]

No, you cannot feel the same pressure, because you're not the one having to do it.

You're sat there watching, and hoping he can do it, but nowhere near as much as the person playing is hoping he can do it.

 

[Richard]

Yes, every bit as much.
You cannot feel the same pressure, but you can appreciate the pressure the player is feeling.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Yes, every bit as much.
You cannot feel the same pressure, but you can appreciate the pressure the player is feeling.

Feeling and appreciation are utterly different.

 

[Richard]

Yes, of course they are - but they are equally valid ways to learn of the pressures of the game.

 

[marc71178]

Yes, every bit as much.
You cannot feel the same pressure, but you can appreciate the pressure the player is feeling.

Does your livelihood depend on the players success?
NO.

Therefore there is no way you can want him to succeed as him, or can you feel anywhere near the same pressure as him.

 

[tooextracool]

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.

rubbish show me a wicket in england that didnt have any seam movement at any point in the match, no every wicket in england has some amount of movement in the first 20 overs. and no it does not swing considerably every where, it tends to do so in england though, and is it coincidence that bowlers like bicknell and hoggard thrive in these conditions?

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.

yet not long ago you said this "If you have bowled 3 inswingers and the batsman knows you can bowl the outswinger, do you not think he is thinking "when is the outswinger coming"?"
its amazing how the situation that you bring up is so very similar to what flintoff did to lara, except that he bowled a few short balls before getting one right in the blockhold. but of course since good batsman play every ball on its merit without worrying about the previous ball rudolph should really have just played that ball easily....indeed that ball wouldnt have got too many batsmen out since we all know that the build up doesnt matter. the ball that bicknell bowled was far from wicket-taking and you yourself know it.

To suggest that Rudolph lost sight of the ball is frankly ludicrous, he watched it (with dismay) onto the stumps.

which explains why he didnt try to play at it....

It does, there was nothing good about the ball except that it was probably going to hit the top of the stumps, anyway.

indeed if bicknell did the same thing and the batsman didnt even play at it he clearly deserves the wicket.

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.

that proves a lot then! so basically whenever we're not sure we should ask your dad because hes an expert?
believe me we've seen time and time again that decisions look out and several times when they dont, yet when we look at it in the replay we realise that it pitched a quarter of an inch outside the off stump. i watched that decision and everything looked perfectly set up, yet i couldnt say for sure whether it was out or not in real time. therefore any umpire that gave him out or not out certainly cant be blamed for it.

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.

and your point is? just because smith happened to make the same mistake twice in the same series it does not all of a sudden make bicknell test class neither does it mean that he deserved those wickets, especially considering that he had the conditions to his favour. and as i've said time and time again, all good batsman play around their weakness, but there are bound to be times when they get out to it too, waugh and kirsten are prime examples of that.

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..

except that in bicknells case it was 1 good one out of 4.....and i would also assume that the one good ball adds to harmisons tally of lucky wickets?

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

actually it was 1. the boucher one could easily have been left alone.

 

[tooextracool]

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.

the same commentators who dont know **** about pitches i would assume?

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.

and that conlcusively proves that he lost sight of all the 3 balls that flintoff got him out with.....yes that makes sense.
interestingly enough i doubt he lost sight of that ball, rather it was the pressure that got to him that made him play such a shot.

 

[tooextracool]

The flatness of the wickets is just the point - the figures would have been better on seaming or uneven pitches.

yes i know and the average taken in context is quite brilliant. one bad series is what he had. hes bowled on plenty of flat periods before and after that and succeeded.

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

2 can play at that game...if you take out the entire series against NZ he would be averaging in the low 20s! once again you have to resort to filtering out good performances and loooking at the bad ones, its become quite customary of you to act like an idiot.
if you look at it like any sane person would, he had 9 good innings and 7 poor ones...this from someone in what was probably the worst period of his career is quite amazing. of course when chaminda vaas fails we can just assume that it was one of his bad days.

(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.

oh once again i sense someone has lost the argument, you dont look at goughs performances in context,or for that matter vaas in england yet you look at mcgraths in context. of course we all know that its up to mcgrath to bowl better than everyone else in the side in every test match now....1/26 at an average of 26 isnt bad at all.....and if i remember correctly its far better than chaminda vaas' career average

(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..

so its just magic that so many wickets come of non wicket-taking balls then? and so many of those wickets came because the build up was good?

(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.

except if you had watched most of those matches closely you would have seen that they were, incidentally he got only 2 wickets at basin reserve (and failed in the previous innings) and both of those took quite a while to get,and only a fool would suggest that eden park wasnt a seamers paradise.....
regardless i dont see how the 1 odd occasion that someone managed to get lucky wickets proves anything.....in fact it refutes your theory in that luck doesnt last forever, therefore mcgrath and pollocks wickets have had to do with something other than luck

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..

and how many times have you said that short balls dont get good batsmen out? so the WI fast bowlers were anomalies then? and harmison and flintoff obviously arent good enough to be in that anomaly group i would assume?

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

no we havent seen it being used often enough by quality bowlers, bowlers with pace who were actually capable off bowling short and accurately, when we have like the WI in the 80s it has worked successfully

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.

err what? so wide balls get wickets then?

Which it works nothing like so often..

it has, but you've dismissed them as anomalies in your own little world where vaas can fail as many times as he wants and still be a quality bowler....

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.

and it doesnt matter, because when its slow, even if its late swing the batsman wont have too many problems getting runs off it.

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

actually it has got wickets just as often, but you've just dismissed them without even considering them to be good balls.....

 

[tooextracool]

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)..

yes something he would not have got to do had he been playing domestic cricket.......therefore intl cricket has helped him get better just like it has to harmison.

It's a pretty fair assumption..

no its not because time and time again we've seen player stay stagnant at the domestic level. the fact that the improvement coincided with his short intl career suggests that it is because of that that he has improved.

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...

then why did you say this?
'anyone knows how to bowl to a good batsman, but the difficult part is learning how to do it?'

so apparently we need to not know how to bowl to a good batsman but to learn to do it??
and yes you do need to know how to bowl to good batsman, believe me several bowlers bowl to short in domestic cricket, bowlers like harmison get carried away with their pace and bowl short, only when they play in the intl level do they learn to pitch it up. certainly in intl cricket they would learn from experience what to do when players like glichrist smash them all around the park. only at the intl level will they learn how to bowl on different pitches and different conditions.

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

well now you know, of course anyone would have found it the slightest bit weird that an indian would be perpetually posting in every english thread and arguing about every english cricketer.

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

and he wouldnt have had the chance because he would have still been the wayward harmison in domestic cricket.

Well rest assured that'll never happen...

again you mean?

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

and why would i watch you ITFP? i've been watching just about as much cricket as you pretend to be doing.

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.

which is just one of your generalisations, by which we should be saying that the WI bowlers in the 80s didnt deserve most of their wickets either.....

 

[tooextracool]

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..

but yet you would give them credit if the same ball got the outside edge, despite the fact that the bowler didnt do anything different. no it doesnt work that way at all. any bowler who gets a considerable number of outside edges is unlucky, and if he ends up taking wickets of decent balls later, he certainly deserves them

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.

yes i know.......which is why the slower ball moves more

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

donald and martin certainly havent, and most of the others have struggled in flat conditions....certainly mcgrath has been just or rather more effective than several of the bowlers on that list on flat wickets.

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

and he quite clearly wasnt accurate...which is why you were calling for his axing just after that.

Says you, and not many people besides..

oh yes, mr 'if you eliminate all of mcgraths good performances, he averages more than 40'

Yes, of course they did..

and just because it was a natural gift it doesnt mean that they didnt deserve their wickets....

Not if they come off mostly poor strokes...

and they havent, you yourself have shown me occasions when they havent. if you analysed all of harmisons wickets, you would realise that they havent.

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

yes you did you claimed that anyone could have predicted that hick would fail with such an obvious weakness.

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

oh except the theory about harmison gone wrong, the theory about oram, the one about richardson etc etc etc

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..

whatever

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

no they couldnt because batting requires far more than concentration, otherwise chess players would be the best cricketers in the world.

 

[FRAZ]

 

[Richard]

Does your livelihood depend on the players success?
NO.

Therefore there is no way you can want him to succeed as him, or can you feel anywhere near the same pressure as him.

Does an international career define whether or not you make a living?
NO.
You've always got a money-making career to come back to even if you fail at the international level.
And let me assure you, very few players are thinking of their livelihood when they're playing in a match! They're thinking about one thing and almost only one thing - winning.

 

[Richard]

rubbish show me a wicket in england that didnt have any seam movement at any point in the match, no every wicket in england has some amount of movement in the first 20 overs.

Err, for Test-matches, try: both at Lord's 2002; The Oval 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004; Old Trafford 2002; Edgbaston 2003.
And also, look for a reason why pitches in England should move off the seam at a certain time when those elsewhere don't.

and no it does not swing considerably every where, it tends to do so in england though, and is it coincidence that bowlers like bicknell and hoggard thrive in these conditions?

Except that they've not always done so - both have failed.
Because good bowlers will swing the ball dangerously anywhere, with the ball in the right condition - however, if you're not getting it right, it won't swing, even in England.

yet not long ago you said this "If you have bowled 3 inswingers and the batsman knows you can bowl the outswinger, do you not think he is thinking "when is the outswinger coming"?"

I did indeed - Rudolph would have known the inswinger was probably coming, but could never have predicted when it would come.

its amazing how the situation that you bring up is so very similar to what flintoff did to lara, except that he bowled a few short balls before getting one right in the blockhold.

Eh? When the hell have I ever mentioned the dismissal at Old Trafford in the first-innings?
Before which, IIRR, incidentally, there were 4 balls, 2 of them short (and one completely harmless as it went for what should have been 5 wides).
All I've ever referred to are the deliveries which Lara lost sight of - one of which cost his wicket and one of which clearly led to his losing his wicket.

but of course since good batsman play every ball on its merit without worrying about the previous ball rudolph should really have just played that ball easily....indeed that ball wouldnt have got too many batsmen out since we all know that the build up doesnt matter. the ball that bicknell bowled was far from wicket-taking and you yourself know it.

No, it wasn't - no-one could possibly have expected the inswinger when it came. It was a fantastic piece of bowling.

which explains why he didnt try to play at it....

No, that is explained by the fact he wasn't expecting it to swing back.

indeed if bicknell did the same thing and the batsman didnt even play at it he clearly deserves the wicket.

Yes - because it went somewhere he couldn't have expected it to. Harmison's ball to Kallis was simply a ball that went exactly where everyone expected, and Kallis played the wrong line. Still did enough to avoid dismissal, though.

that proves a lot then! so basically whenever we're not sure we should ask your dad because hes an expert?
believe me we've seen time and time again that decisions look out and several times when they dont, yet when we look at it in the replay we realise that it pitched a quarter of an inch outside the off stump. i watched that decision and everything looked perfectly set up, yet i couldnt say for sure whether it was out or not in real time. therefore any umpire that gave him out or not out certainly cant be blamed for it.

Yes, he can - because there was clear doubt and the Laws state clearly that BOD to batsman.

and your point is? just because smith happened to make the same mistake twice in the same series it does not all of a sudden make bicknell test class neither does it mean that he deserved those wickets, especially considering that he had the conditions to his favour.

Which every swing bowler always has as long as the ball's in good condition -that's the great thing about swing bowling.
So it's just coincidence that Smith never missed a single ball that was hitting the stumps against any other seamer all series, and he missed two against Bicknell?
It could be, yes - but personally I don't think so.

except that in bicknells case it was 1 good one out of 4.....and i would also assume that the one good ball adds to harmisons tally of lucky wickets?

No, it was a good ball - but I don't think he could possibly have bowled it deliberately.

actually it was 1. the boucher one could easily have been left alone.

It could indeed - but as I've never referred to it it doesn't matter.

 

[Richard]

the same commentators who dont know **** about pitches i would assume?

No, different ones actually - but just because they make a mistake on the complex subject of how a pitch is playing does not mean they are likely to make a mistake on the simple matter of whether a batsman picked the ball up or not.

and that conlcusively proves that he lost sight of all the 3 balls that flintoff got him out with.....yes that makes sense.
interestingly enough i doubt he lost sight of that ball, rather it was the pressure that got to him that made him play such a shot.

No, he only lost sight of one of the balls that Flintoff got him out with.
Another of those 2 balls he lost sight of did quite clearly cause his dismissal - but the pressure was hardly due to the bowler doing something right - it's no credit to Flintoff that Lara didn't pick-up a ball.

 

[Richard]

yes i know and the average taken in context is quite brilliant. one bad series is what he had. hes bowled on plenty of flat periods before and after that and succeeded.

No, he had poor strokes played against him with more regularity than he did in that period.

2 can play at that game...if you take out the entire series against NZ he would be averaging in the low 20s! once again you have to resort to filtering out good performances and loooking at the bad ones, its become quite customary of you to act like an idiot.

No, if I wanted to do that I'd take out every ball that ever had a wicket against it's name, and just look at the rest.
It's become quite customary for you to have to resort to this "you're taking out the good performances and looking at the poor ones" rubbish.

of course when chaminda vaas fails we can just assume that it was one of his bad days.

We can - it happens about half the time. Of course, some would prefer put it down to the ludicrous idea of him being unable to bowl seam and swing.

oh once again i sense someone has lost the argument, you dont look at goughs performances in context,or for that matter vaas in england

Oh, yes I do - just not the context you want.

yet you look at mcgraths in context. of course we all know that its up to mcgrath to bowl better than everyone else in the side in every test match now....1/26 at an average of 26 isnt bad at all.....and if i remember correctly its far better than chaminda vaas' career average

Well done on one of the easiest pieces of maths ever.
1 wicket isn't that much of a brilliant achievement (especially coming from the stroke it did), given that a single edge for four would turn it from a good performance into a bad one.

so its just magic that so many wickets come of non wicket-taking balls then? and so many of those wickets came because the build up was good?

No, no magic at all - it's just not the case.

except if you had watched most of those matches closely you would have seen that they were, incidentally he got only 2 wickets at basin reserve (and failed in the previous innings) and both of those took quite a while to get,and only a fool would suggest that eden park wasnt a seamers paradise.....

And hence I've not suggested it. I've simply said that Hoggard's wickets were nothing to do with the fact that it was a seamer's paradise, just poor strokes.
He might have got 2 wickets at Basin Reserve - they were still at a poor average - but nonetheless it could so easily have been 0-60 instead of 2-60.

regardless i dont see how the 1 odd occasion that someone managed to get lucky wickets proves anything.....in fact it refutes your theory in that luck doesnt last forever, therefore mcgrath and pollocks wickets have had to do with something other than luck

Hoggard's luck lasted a long time - but eventually it ran-out. Therefore it is nowhere near as inconceivable as people are attempting to suggest that Harmison's will do the same. Indeed, no-one could conceive that Hoggard's average would go up like it did.

and how many times have you said that short balls dont get good batsmen out? so the WI fast bowlers were anomalies then?

Of course the West Indies fast bowlers of the 70s and 80s were anomalies - do you see any other period in the game's history where there have been so many bowlers of a similar type playing for the same team in such a short period of time?

and harmison and flintoff obviously arent good enough to be in that anomaly group i would assume?

Err, are there 7 or 8 other bowlers similar to them around, playing for England?

no we havent seen it being used often enough by quality bowlers, bowlers with pace who were actually capable off bowling short and accurately, when we have like the WI in the 80s it has worked successfully

So the fact that this is the only time in the game's history that it has worked successfully means...?

err what? so wide balls get wickets then?

Of course they do! Doesn't mean the bowler's earnt them, but you see batsmen hitting balls in the air (or edging them in the air) all the time, because they can't reach them properly.

it has, but you've dismissed them as anomalies in your own little world where ... BLAH BLAH

I've done nothing of the sort - if something happens 30% of the time, it is not an anomaly.
However, if it happens 5% of the time (or less) it can be called such - and I'd say short, straight balls getting wickets happen about that often.

and it doesnt matter, because when its slow, even if its late swing the batsman wont have too many problems getting runs off it.

He will - if something swings just before reaching you, it's not possible to adjust.
Of course, "just before" changes as the speed of the bowler changes.

actually it has got wickets just as often, but you've just dismissed them without even considering them to be good balls.....

It has got wickets nothing like as often.
If it had, I would consider them good balls.

 

[Richard]

yes something he would not have got to do had he been playing domestic cricket.......therefore intl cricket has helped him get better just like it has to harmison.

And of course playing helped so much, didn't it?
There are good coaches who don't travel round with international teams, too, you know.

no its not because time and time again we've seen player stay stagnant at the domestic level. the fact that the improvement coincided with his short intl career suggests that it is because of that that he has improved.

It started before his international career started to improve.

then why did you say this?
'anyone knows how to bowl to a good batsman, but the difficult part is learning how to do it?'

so apparently we need to not know how to bowl to a good batsman but to learn to do it??

Err, yes - everyone with some decent cricket knowledge - eg you and me - know how to bowl to a good batsman.
Being able to do it is another matter.

and yes you do need to know how to bowl to good batsman, believe me several bowlers bowl to short in domestic cricket, bowlers like harmison get carried away with their pace and bowl short, only when they play in the intl level do they learn to pitch it up. certainly in intl cricket they would learn from experience what to do when players like glichrist smash them all around the park. only at the intl level will they learn how to bowl on different pitches and different conditions.

And of course they can't possibly observe that this short stuff isn't doing much good, no...
The fact that they cannot but do so, and yet continue with it, suggests to me that they need to learn to pitch the ball up - practice doing it - rather than know they need to do so.

well now you know, of course anyone would have found it the slightest bit weird that an indian would be perpetually posting in every english thread and arguing about every english cricketer.

Not to mention plenty else about World cricket - eg Pakistan, India and Australia.

and he wouldnt have had the chance because he would have still been the wayward harmison in domestic cricket.

Except that he wouldn't have been - he'd have been the accurate Harmison, and if he'd been getting consistent sets of good figures, he'd have been pressing for a recall.

again you mean?

No, if I'd meant "again" I'd have said "again".

and why would i watch you ITFP? i've been watching just about as much cricket as you pretend to be doing.

I highly doubt that - I've been pretending to watch no cricket at all.

which is just one of your generalisations, by which we should be saying that the WI bowlers in the 80s didnt deserve most of their wickets either.....

I've never commented on that - simply said that having 8 or 9 bowlers bowling the same stuff session after session, day after day, is rather harder to resist than the routine short rubbish.

 

[Richard]

but yet you would give them credit if the same ball got the outside edge, despite the fact that the bowler didnt do anything different. no it doesnt work that way at all. any bowler who gets a considerable number of outside edges is unlucky, and if he ends up taking wickets of decent balls later, he certainly deserves them

If you say so.
Personally I say that lots of play-and-misses are part of the game for a really good bowler - the really, really good ones keep bowling there, and by law-of-numbers one has to hit the outside-edge eventually.
IMO this bowler is better than one who gets a straight ball played around after 4 play-and-misses. Or one who doesn't, which is far more common.

yes i know.......which is why the slower ball moves more

No, it's why the ball that moves more is slower.

donald and martin certainly havent, and most of the others have struggled in flat conditions....certainly mcgrath has been just or rather more effective than several of the bowlers on that list on flat wickets.

If you think Allan Donald and Peter Martin can't bowl cutters, you've not watched them closely enough.
Mind, that wouldn't be anything unusual.
Donald, incidentally, has been hugely effective on flat, grassless pitches plenty of times.

and he quite clearly wasnt accurate...which is why you were calling for his axing just after that.

No, I was calling for his axing because he wasn't getting any wickets, because I don't believe bowlers should play Test-cricket just to keep the runs down.

oh yes, mr 'if you eliminate all of mcgraths good performances, he averages more than 40'

If you eliminate all his good performances (ie the balls that have wickets against their names) he actually averages infinity.
None of which changes the fact that I haven't made-up that I've heard plenty of people say Holding and Marshall had no significant difference in speed.

and just because it was a natural gift it doesnt mean that they didnt deserve their wickets....

Which has what to do with what?
I've never said a bowler doesn't deserve wickets just because he's quicker than someone else.

and they havent, you yourself have shown me occasions when they havent. if you analysed all of harmisons wickets, you would realise that they havent.

I've shown just that - occasions.
I have already analysed all but all his wickets - when I watched him take them. And I came to the conclusion that they had come mostly from poor strokes with the balls having nothing wicket-taking about them.

yes you did you claimed that anyone could have predicted that hick would fail with such an obvious weakness.

No, I never claimed "anyone could have" - I said someone did - hence showing that it was not the case that no-one predicted his failure.

oh except the theory about harmison gone wrong, the theory about oram, the one about richardson etc etc etc

So far I think I've shown pretty conclusively that I was correct on all three counts.

no they couldnt because batting requires far more than concentration, otherwise chess players would be the best cricketers in the world.

Except that it's a very, very different kind of concentration - added to the fact that not all the best chess-players have the neccessary eye, or the requistite love of cricket.

 

[marc71178]

Does an international career define whether or not you make a living?

OK then, how many non-International players do nothing in the Winter?

How many non-International players can retire and not have to find a full time job?

And let me assure you, very few players are thinking of their livelihood when they're playing in a match! They're thinking about one thing and almost only one thing - winning.

And you know this how exactly?

 

[tooextracool]

If you say so.
Personally I say that lots of play-and-misses are part of the game for a really good bowler - the really, really good ones keep bowling there, and by law-of-numbers one has to hit the outside-edge eventually.
IMO this bowler is better than one who gets a straight ball played around after 4 play-and-misses. Or one who doesn't, which is far more common

and because you cant get a batsman to play and miss that often in the modern era with the flat wickets, its quite likely that when they do, they deserve credit for the wicket that they get sooner or later.

No, it's why the ball that moves more is slower.

which is the same thing

If you think Allan Donald and Peter Martin can't bowl cutters, you've not watched them closely enough.
Mind, that wouldn't be anything unusual.
Donald, incidentally, has been hugely effective on flat, grassless pitches plenty of times.

rubbish both peter martin and allan donald werent particularly brilliant bowling cutters. and yes donald was effective on flat grassless pitches and maybe just maybe that had something to do with the pace that he had? incidentally he got hammered when he lost that pace towards the end of his career.

No, I was calling for his axing because he wasn't getting any wickets, because I don't believe bowlers should play Test-cricket just to keep the runs down.

so he was accurate, and he picked up wickets at the oval, yet you wanted him dropped? and that turned out brilliantly too didnt it?

If you eliminate all his good performances (ie the balls that have wickets against their names) he actually averages infinity.

and given that any intelligent person would know that by 'performances' i meant innings which could include figures such as 1/40 etc.

None of which changes the fact that I haven't made-up that I've heard plenty of people say Holding and Marshall had no significant difference in speed.

like who your dad with oh so much experience against them?

Which has what to do with what?
I've never said a bowler doesn't deserve wickets just because he's quicker than someone else..

yet when harmison gets wickets using his pace and bounce you say that he doesnt deserve them because it doesnt require much skill

i've shown just that - occasions.
I have already analysed all but all his wickets - when I watched him take them. And I came to the conclusion that they had come mostly from poor strokes with the balls having nothing wicket-taking about them.

and hes got far more than 4 wickets, infact hes been a considerably better bowler since then so why not analyse some of his wickets since then? and the compare it with the number of wickets that vaas gets of wicket taking deliveries

No, I never claimed "anyone could have" - I said someone did - hence showing that it was not the case that no-one predicted his failure..

and every player to ever grace the game has a weakness and no one can be anywhere near 100% certain that anyone will succeed....whats your point? you seemed to be making it out as though you were a real smart ass and that you saw everything coming, yet if hick had succeeded you'd be saying something about how players with good first class averages always succeed. the article that you speak off doesnt make a point or even try to prove something. its just another case of you bringing up irrelevant things to try and provoke arguments.

So far I think I've shown pretty conclusively that I was correct on all three counts..

yes harmison wont take wickets with pace and bounce- turned out brilliant that. oram who has bowled just about as well as vaas on non flat wickets must be a seamer pitch bully, and richardson whos had more successes than failures on seamer friendly wickets is clearly and FTB.

Except that it's a very, very different kind of concentration - added to the fact that not all the best chess-players have the neccessary eye, or the requistite love of cricket.

no its not a different kind of concentration at all, all concentration requires people to focus on something again and again or in this case ball after ball. anyone who can concentrate as much in chess should have no problems concentrating ball after ball in intl cricket. do you actually believe that all it takes to succeed in intl cricket is concentration???