Cricket Thread

BringBackSwales said:
Yes the good news is that the team in second place, who they haven’t catch, is Glamorgan and we have to play them twice. The bad news is 2 of our 4 remaining games are at OT where I think there’s been a lot of drawn games this season
Click to expand...
We play Glamorgan on Tuesday at OT
 
The other day, I heard one of the commentators compare Stokes to Botham.

Is the current England captain really that good?

I can’t see it myself.
 
Vienna_70 said:
There’s no question of that.

ITB should never have been given the captaincy, when he was. He was far too young, and had too much responsibility within the team at the time.
Click to expand...
Yep.

It’s tough to compare eras though. Stokes has probably been under-bowled as Anderson and Broad did most of the damage. Had they not existed, Stokes might have become a superstar with the ball.

Similarly, the bowlers they faced with the bat were different, so it’s not just a case of looking at averages.

Who knows how good they both could have been without their off field issues.
 
Alan Harper's Tash said:
Probably a slightly better batsman and a slightly worse bowler.

Far better captain though.
Click to expand...

Vienna_70 said:
There’s no question of that.

ITB should never have been given the captaincy, when he was. He was far too young, and had too much responsibility within the team at the time.
Click to expand...

People remember the legendary seasons — rightly so — but was it not the case that Botham had some pretty ropey seasons for England? Seem to remember that, but may be mistaken.
 
Nice restful evening and night for those cramped muscles (and treating them with whatever you treat them with), then Stokesy'll come back tomorrow and hammer out his century. Now that would be a fine thing.

Lead of anywhere between 200 and 250, and India will be fairly depressed going in. To think that you've got to get that, merely to make the other side bat again.
And a bit of deterioration in the pitch would be in order. Not too much, because we'll have to bat again too.
 
wattle said:
Apparently - it was a decade or so before my time - Grace was to cricket what Donald Trump is to golf - an utter cheat. He refused to be or until he decided to be out. Utter **** by all accounts
Click to expand...

“Taking advantage was second nature to the Graces, never infringing the laws but exploiting them to the full. In bowling too, E.M. (Grace) was the trailblazer, using the old underarm method…

… Perhaps the most notorious incident of this kind occurred at a crucial stage in the England-Australia match of 1882. As Wisden records, the young Australian S.P. Jones had completed a run, and ‘thinking wrongly but very naturally that the ball was dead, went out of his ground’ to repair the wicket. Grace put down the wicket and appealed for run out… the batsman had to go, but it was not within the spirit of the game. Wisden made light of it:

There was a good deal of truth in what a gentleman in the crowd remarked, amid some laughter, that Jones ought to thank the champion for teaching him something.

However, the champion seems to have deliberately misled Jones by carrying the ball over to the bowler, by which time the batsman was well out of his ground, then walked back and broke the wicket. [My italics].

.… WGs encyclopædic knowledge of the laws, disregard of convention, dominant personality and standing with the public put umpires in awe of him, and he grew worse as his fame spread. When cricket matches could be advertised as ‘Admission theepence. If W.G. Grace plays admission sixpence’, it is not surprising that umpires were reluctant to give him out until the spectators had got their money's worth… WG was so popular that accounts of his gamesmanship more often than not added to the fund of humorous stories about him [my comment: yeah, right!]. In particular the public loved — and still love — to hear the one about him being bowled first ball, replacing the bails and brushing aside the protesting umpire with ‘Don't be silly, they've come to see me bat, not you, umpire’ ”.

Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket (2003)
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
People remember the legendary seasons — rightly so — but was it not the case that Botham had some pretty ropey seasons for England? Seem to remember that, but may be mistaken.
Click to expand...
I think, like all top sportsmen and women, he had poor spells, but I don’t remember him having a whole season, where he didn’t perform well for England.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top