thats besides the point. G.jones was never passable for the simple reason that he was picked FOR HIS BATTING. as such averaging in the mid 20s and less in every series in his first year in international cricket isnt exactly passable for most countries in the world, let alone one which had far superior keepers playing cc in england.
consider the options? you can count the number of quality England bowlers in ODI cricket history on one hand.
Robin Smith was never test class, not when you consider that he couldnt plant his front foot out with any sort of confidence against spin. He may have had a successful test phase, but the fact is that plenty of players do so before getting found out. Doesnt change the fact that he was a quality ODI batsman, especially as an opener.
Err how does this prove your argument? On the one hand you talk about how we need wicket taking spin bowlers and then you say 'had dalrymple and panesar taken more wickets we might have won'.
except that panesar and dalrymple did take wickets, they took one each, which is about as much as they are likely to take more often than not on flat wickets.
I think you've completely misread my post. I never said that either of those sides were brilliant, infact ive argued otherwise(IIRC with you wasnt it?) in the past. The point i was making was that they got the disciplines right, they just didnt have the talent to be supremely succesful for consistent periods in ODI cricket. At the end of the day, theres no replacement for good fielding, good running and disciplined bowling and that side if anything should be hailed for accomplishing so much with so little talent.
Id be interested in hearing how many people thought nick knight would have a successful test match career, despite having a clear technical flaw outside his off stump.Nor did he for that matter take any part in the 1992 world cup for that matter.
Cant really remember a time in the 90s when we had a core of test and ODI players tbh. there were plenty of ODI specialists that came and went, from Irani to Ealham and everyone else. You could argue that they didnt have much success, but if you did a count, youd find that there were as many if not more successful ODI specialists than there were those who succeeded in both forms playing for England over the last decade.
The reason for this situation as ive said so many times before is the quality of domestic cricket. Just watching Strauss bat you have to wonder how anyone can look to score runs merely by hitting boundaries rather than taking singles. The england batting has no sense of taking singles, look at the last ODI for example how more than half of them managed to come in and get bogged down, slowed the scoring rate and got themselves out. These test match players are not being taught the disciplines of taking quick singles, of running fast between the wickets and taking the first run quickly, their fitness levels are poor and they are unable to bowl without conceding extras. Which is precisely why you pick players that might not be as talented, but who have these basic disciplines engrained within them either on their own or from someone else at a very early age.
Err in Hicks case, not being dropped everytime he had one poor series? And of course denying him the chance of scoring his first and what would have been only Ashes century and leaving him in tears couldnt have helped his career could it?
Once again the English selectors outdo themselves really. One wonders if there is ever any thinking that goes on in compiling these teams in terms of stats and video highlights, or whether they just pick the same players that have been tried, tested and failed over the last 5 years.Out of those 30 players there are i think 5 players(Loye, Bopara,A.Khan, Onions and Chapple) who have never played for England before, while the rest have either been complete rubbish or barely good enough
So who should they have selected then?
Is there a point in selecting players who have been proven to be useless in ODIs before? Solanki, Plunkett, Mahmood etc have been given so many opportunities, yet they are pencilled in instead of giving some young unproven quantity the chance of representing England. This is exactly the problem with the English selectors, they are completely predictable. I mean would a side with Sajid Mahmood and Vikram Solanki at the world cup fill you with any sort of hope or would you rather pick a few youngsters that have made an impression in domestic cricket recently. Looking purely at List A stats, ive selected a few players who look to be quite capable and surely couldnt be worse than the current lot:
Broad Why? Does a List a record of 41@5.59 from 12 games really fill you with confidence?
The fact that you were hooraying about Gough never playing ODIs again when you've hoorayed (prematurely) about it before.
We did?
In all previous correspondance you said Ealham was pretty average because you thought (wrongly) that he'd never had his figures damaged by bowling in the last 10 overs and so should have had an economy-rate of under 4. Yet I then showed quite clearly that if you knock-out overs in the last 10, he DID have an economy-rate under 4. Had he been handled better, he'd probably be not too far behind Gavin Larsen's class.
Smith wasn't that much worse against spin than Stewart. Are you saying he wasn't Test-class because he was pretty poor against spin (especially when first coming in)? Smith, in any case, was good enough to succeed against average spinners and there were few top-quality in his day so it's hardly surprising that he had a (relatively lengthy) successful period.
That was a poor decision, no doubt about it, though I can understand Atherton's reasons, but ironically, of course, it had no immidiate effect - he was still playing well for another year.
Next Anderson, Harmison, Kabir Ali, Plunkett, Mahmood, Bresnan coming-up...
I'm not completely convinced about the batsmen but it's utterly baffled me why Taylor and Mascarenhas (along with Robin Martin-Jenkins) have seemingly NEVER been considered, it makes no sense at all (especially given that Mascarenhas and RMJ can bat a bit too). Tom Smith I'm certain will get a chance, though honestly I'm not too sorry he didn't get it right now, he seemed to be sort of running-out of steam at the end of last season having started brilliantly. Hopefully a time at the Academy might put some real stamina in him and hopefully he might go well all season this coming year.
Very simple. Broad's "a wicket-taker" (even though his record shows quite clearly that he's to date been nothing of the sort). Smith is already stereotyped as "nagging" (read his CricInfo profile) and while plenty of good judges have also described him as "promising", no-one seems anywhere near as excited about him as Broad. Broad has, indeed, taken more wickets in First-Class cricket, but due to his inaccuracy his record isn't that much better.