Depends on the structure
All on his way to such a fabulous 60. Ive watched Vaughan bat plenty, and there have been billions of occasions where hes come in and looked brilliant and then got out. In fact you could expect more from him when hes come in and scratched around over the years than when hes looked brilliant from the go. 3 innings cannot be ignored just because they were 3 innings, because the bottom line is that he failed in them.
which is all fair and good except you are conveniently listing the numbers and not the test by test performances. To clear up the matter, Vaughan had 1 good test, 2 poor ones and 1 ordinary one against what was arguably the worst bowling attack to set foot in England in the last decade. When you throw that in with his other failures- against SA, Aus and Pak, you can easily say that he was dire in said period. Given the attacks he played during this time, his average looks very ordinary indeed.
and clearly border averaging 50 is equivalent to Vaughan averaging 34. and as we all know the bowling attacks that each of them played were so comparable as well.
say that to his record. i thought he was absolute codswallop in SA, and the one time he actually scored he barely even looked like scoring a run.
http://statserver.cricket.org/guru?...edhigh=;csearch=;submit=1;.cgifields=viewtype
That is something that i did consider and one that i personally think would be an excellent idea. However the reason why i swayed against it is because of the reaction it would cause back in England with their favorite son being dropped. Id like to see Owais in for Flintoff in tests, i think Flintoffs bowling and batting havent been near as good as they should be and some exposure to domestic cricket would help him a lot, besides unless England manage to really do the impossible they should still win this series quite comfortably without him.
coach should only have to pick from 12 players IMO on the day of the test match along with the captain. I wouldnt mind it if they were on the selection panel provided they were any good, but giving them 100% control over the 15 is ludicrous.
Well given that selection committees have never been influential on an overseas tour that's hardly relevant.
That 60 was indeed as good a 60 as you could wish to see, far better than either of his centuries in 2 Tests' time IMO. That's quite different to looking good for a 20-odd then getting out (which he did, plenty, as an opener, and would have done far more if he'd been caught \ given out every time he should have been), because 60 is actually a substantial score.
Not really, and in the context of the following innings - against an attack that was little worse, NZ and WI were both very poor - it wasn't too much of a failure.
As I say - I'm listing innings by innings, because that, unlike for bowlers where it works match by match, is the way it works. Vaughan's innings in the summer of 2004 were quite satisfactory where I stand.
Except that I'm not throwing them in, I'm talking purely about that summer. I've never said he wasn't poor in the summer of 2005, nor in the 1 Test he played as a middle-order batsman in Pakistan.
You know perfectly well what I mean - I am simply saying that being the worst in your side is not in itself important.
And I thought he looked OK most of the time and happened to get a lot of excellent deliveries that would dismiss most batsmen most times.
What, like Strauss (who you seem semi-convinced is going to be gone from the Test side before long) or Collingwood (who is certainly far from a proven Test player)?
Ever heard of change? Vaughan didn't used to be an especially good captain, now he is.
As you know perfectly well, I was referring to the summer, not the calender-year.
Kidding arent you?
Sorry to bring this out of nowhere.
I don't read Wisden Cricketer so I wouldn't know. But the idea behind the thread title was rather obvious.
a 60 is a neither here nor there total. its a bit like saying someone played the best 20 ever. fact is it is not good enough because no player deserves credit for failing to score a 100 on a flat pitch and a poor bowling attack when hes done all the work to get settled in.
surprisingly enough, the WI bowling attack was really the only attack that he got runs against, and that to in all of 1 test in that magical summer of his.
i have absolutely no reason to rate either of those innings given the quality of bowling and the flatness of the wickets. Had he scored those runs at Old Trafford where both Collymore and Bravo bowled remarkably well in conditions that actually offered something, i might have considered.
and clearly he deserves to be in the side for this summer because of his exploits against those fabulous players like Omari Banks, Tino Best, Fidel Edwards and Pedro Collins from 3 years ago, while we can completely ignore his performances against the likes of Ntini, Pollock, Nel, Mcgrath, Warne and Shoaib. Once again logic has taken a beating in our arguments.
Collingwood is a far more proven player than Vaughan or Strauss are ATM. Yes so hes superior on slower subcontinental wickets than he is on fast, bouncy wickets but so was trescothick and a bunch of other players and it didnt stop them from having an extended career.
And hes changed your mind so much while hes been sitting at home and not playing test cricket in the last year?
That's just silly - 60 is far more of a substantial score, regardless of the pitch, than 20 ever is.
So people must score runs every innings?
He didn't play it in those 2 series, no. I hardly make such assumptions based on those 2.
No, we can't "ignore" them. We can take them in context. For one thing, any player worth his salt will perform lesser against better attacks, for another Vaughan was clearly completely out of nick in the summer of 2005 (even you said such a thing) and played just 1 Test in Pakistan in the middle-order.
Collingwood is proven because of 1 double-century and 2 big scores on 2 of the flattest pitches in history? Plus a load of runs against some of the worst bowling and catching in you could ever wish to see?
So when was the latest occasion I said he wasn't an excellent captain?
60 is not good enough on a flat pitch. as said earlier, 60 is the sort of score for which players should be chastised for for not going on with it and getting 100.
because thats clearly what vaughan did that summer. he had one good test, the fact that his average goes from decent to rubbish if you remove that test says a lot about his consistency during that summer.
as i have already said, its quite ludicrous off you to claim that he was in nick for all of 1 test in the last 3 years and out of nick for the rest. im fairly certain if it were collingwood you would have said that hes merely a flat track bully who cashed on against a poor bowling attack during the 1 test of 2004. ironically later on in this post of yours you argue that collingwood isnt proven for exactly the same reason for which vaughan is apparently an excellent batsman- for his exploits in 1 test on a road at Lords from the summer of 2004.
there is always the opportunity for him to miss the first couple of tests to get match practice before he gets back later in the series(assuming hes scored runs). You wouldnt expect it to cost England much in a series against the WI this summer
collingwood is proven because of the quality of attacks he has faced and scored runs against. Because scoring runs agains Shoaib, Naved(in top form), Kaneria, Clark, Mcgrath, Lee, Warne, Harbhajan, Kumble and Sreesanth is better than most players across the world, let alone the ones in the England side. Given that Strauss has failed against every single one of these attacks, and you still have him as a proven player, i would venture to say this wouldnt mean anything to you.
almost every single time anyone on this forum has gone so far as given him the faintest of praise for his captaincy during and since the last ashes series.
As far as I'm concerned it does. Yes, he might have gone on to get a century, but that 60 was a good innings as far as I'm concerned and you're not going to change my mind on it.
Most short-term (10 innings) averages will go down quite a bit if you remove the best game. I have never said Vaughan had a superlative summer, just a good one - which if you include that game, which there's no reason not to, he did.
Except it's not just that - there were other good innings that summer and also in the following winter. He was out of nick only at one time - the summer of 2005, that much was obvious by the fact he several times simply missed straight balls which did nothing, something he very obviously was not doing at any other time in the previous year.
Indeed it shouldn't, and maybe - only maybe - that might be the best course of action. It's not going to happen, though, and we already know it.
Strauss proved himself beforehand, when Collingwood was not even playing. Most of those bowlers you name are no real threat on the flat pitches on which the games were played (Rana, who took 2-131 in the relevant Test, Kumble, Harbhajan, Kaneria, McGrath, Lee, Sreesanth).
The last time of which, I repeat, was when exactly...?
I have absolutely no reason to include it. Scoring runs against that sort of substandard attack on a flat wicket is about the same as scoring runs against bangladesh and zimbabwe IMO
I sorry but that is nothing but a lie. strauss needs to prove himself against far more than 1 half decent attack. 1 successful series against a good side in a whole career spanning some 3 years, especially given the blatantly obvious fact that they bowled to his strengths all series, is not going to make me think of him as test class.
given that he played all of one test match since the last ashes, i find it hard to believe how you quite managed to change you opinion about him since. And i know for a fact that you mentioned that his captaincy was nothing special many times after the ashes of 05.
And that's just silly. The presence of Pedro Collins alone makes it better than most Bangladeshi and any post-Streak Zimbabwean ones have ever been.
The difference being that that's all Collingwood has done. If Vaughan's Test career had started in 2004 I'd say exactly the same thing. But it didn't - and in between 1999\2000 and 2001\02 he showed he could score runs in any variety of conditions. Not as many as you might hope he would, but enough to demonstrate he could never be called a flat-track bully.
Given that he's only faced 2 (at best) other half-decent attacks I'm not going to write him off either.
There was enough movement in the air and of times of the pitches in South Africa where he barely stopped scoring.
They did, but that was almost exclusively through his own fault. Collingwood survived where Strauss' impatience got the better of him.
I mentioned that it was overrated, especially the "he outdid Ponting at every turn" stuff which people never shut-up about. I never said it was nothing special, as it wasn't - it was first-rate. However, people do have a propensity to overstate the importance of good captaincy and I'll always talk them down when they do.
