Day five:
Still no wicket for Woakes, and India have now run out of wickets for him to potentially take. Match over. In Woakes' defence he did only go for three runs an over on average in India's first innings and less than that in the second; on a good batting wicket he managed to keep an end relatively tight.
*****
I'm slightly surprised Moeen took so many wickets; India are a side (so I was informed) who are good at facing spin. It seems potentially promising for England's future to me if Moeen goes on to develop into a really good test level spinner.
*****
Cook and Bell both benefited from dubious umpiring decisions in the first innings; that said, they both went on to make runs on a good batting pitch, without needing further such decisions to remain at the crease.
*****
Good keeping and enthusiasm from Buttler. Also nice run-scoring.
*****
Can't see how Anderson's muttering at Rahane yesterday will have helped his [Anderson's] forthcoming disciplinary hearing.
*****
Regarding Cook as captain, a first win in eleven matches doesn't remove my doubts as to whether he should be leading the England side - he needs to turn it into a streak, taking this series 2-1 or 3-1 (weather permitting) to convince me that at least for now he's capable of holding down the position. And if he can't stop his bowlers from mouthing off (and maybe getting themselves banned) I don't see that he's helping himself as captain.
Nice that he's back scoring runs though.
Apparently I'm not sufficiently cynical. I was expecting at least a match suspension for Anderson, to go along with Jadeja's pre-existing fine, since apparently something unpleasant has been going on between them - but today both Anderson's and Jadeja's disciplinary thingummies have miraculously vanished in a *puff* of smoke. No punishments for anyone!
I'm doubtful that this will encourage more civil conduct in the long-run.
Fourth test, Day 1:
No wicket for Woakes.
England back to dropping chances again (and one of those *would* have been a wicket for Woakes) and once they batted, a promising new Indian bowler, Aaron, regressed Cook back to his getting-out-just-into-double-figures days.
Would have been India's day, to my mind, but for the small detail that India won the toss, opted to bat, and (bar a fighting captain's innings from Dhoni, with some support from Rahane and Ashwin) were destroyed anyway (despite the dropped catches) by Broad, with some assistance from Anderson.
Honours to my mind maybe even at close of play, or just a shade in England's favour (though losing Ballance in the last over did *not* help England).
Eighth Dwarf:
On the subject of the Commonwealth games, very good performance from Australia at an 'away' games; presumably you'll be back topping the table at the next one. ;)
Edit:
I must admit I was surprised England has apparently discovered quite such a good gymnast as Fragapone looks to be developing to be. Assuming she remains uninjured, have to watch out for her in Rio in two years' time.
Fourth Test, Day 3:
I'm frankly baffled how that happened. Woakes finally took a wicket in the series and England won by an innings and 54 runs, despite some at times inoffensive England bowling - AND England missing their most effective wicket taking bowler of the India first innings in the Indian second inngs, thanks to Broad getting a face full of cricket ball from Aaron's enthusiastic bowling.
Oh yes, and I've actually noticed the BBC actually allowing comment again in one of their cricket threads for the first time in a week or two... Possibly indicative of a turn-around in England fortunes???
I suppose since the second test, when India humiliated England, India have been lacking the use of one of their more effective bowlers, Ishant Sharma, due to his being injured. And Matthew Prior removed himself from the England lineup, due to ongoing injury problems, and Buttler was brought in to replace him. The second may be at least as significant as the first, if what I've heard said that a wicket keeper is often at the heart of what goes on when a side is in the field is true.
England still need to see consistent batting from Cook and Robson (I'll be interested to see if Robson gets shown the same patience by the selectors on the run-scoring front as Cook was), and improved bowling from some of their support bowlers. Nice to see Moeen apparently coming on in leaps and bounds though, in terms of working out how to play at test level. :)
Cook made runs, Bell made a lot of runs, Anderson remembered how to bowl, Broad remembered how to bowl...
Interesting from the women's but I haven't actually seen any play.
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Sorry, late to the thread, and I haven't read it all. Will reading it help me understand cricket? Because I find the game bewildering.
The Shining Fool wrote: Sorry, late to the thread, and I haven't read it all. Will reading it help me understand cricket? Because I find the game bewildering.
** spoiler omitted **
Are you familiar with Baseball?
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I'm familiar enough to understand the basics, though perhaps not its complexities.
Cricket as I understand it:
There are two teams on the pitch, which is roundish. The batsman and the bowler are at opposite ends of a narrow ally in the middle of the pitch, each in front of a wicket which is three stakes (I don't know what these are called) with 2 bales balanced atop them. There is a catcher behind the batsman. The bowler's team is around the pitch and serve, I imagine, a similar role to out-fielders in baseball. I have no idea where the batsman's team hangs out, do they have a dugout or something?
The bowler bowls, or pitches, and the batter tries to hit. Is the bowler trying to hit the wicket? If he does, does he get points? I have no idea.
The batter hits the ball and then runs back and forth on the ally, between the two wickets. Does he get points for making a circuit? Or each time he reaches a wicket?
I have no idea how a batter gets out, other than one of the fielders (or, I suppose, the bowler) catching the ball when he hits it. There seems to be an at bat for each person on the one team, then each person on the other team, and each batter bats until he gets out. I have no idea how many of these cycles they go through before a game is done.
Is this even in the right ball park?
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On page 4 I copied an excellent Cricket for baseball fans explanation.
Link.
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GeraintElberion wrote: Cook made runs, Bell made a lot of runs, Anderson remembered how to bowl, Broad remembered how to bowl...
Interesting from the women's but I haven't actually seen any play.
It seems to be an very bowler-friendly pitch at Wormsley! Charlotte Edwards & co. are better than 92 all out.
Hopefully the pitch + atmospheric conditions will be helpful in the morning session, and England can get the last six Indian wickets before the Indians can knock the runs off.
I've caught some of the radio coverage of the women's match, before the Oval test started and that took over the air-waves.
Regarding the Oval test, the Indian batsmen, excluding Dhoni, seem to have suddenly and inexplicably lost any interest in winning. Maybe too much cricket's burnt them out?
Hmmm. Well that's that at Wormsley. Charlotte Edwards after the match said that her England team should have played better on the first day. Looking at the scorecard, I think there might have been a element of being on the wrong end of the toss and a somewhat dodgy pitch, but if it inspires them to work harder on their games...
*****
At the Oval, the Indian men seem to have been the ones on the wrong end of a toss and an initially slightly dodgy pitch yesterday, but still Dhoni showed the rest of his team it should be possible to fight through it (and rather showed up most of his top order, too).
And at the Oval then England were batting today, and India were dropping catches (Cook, twice!!!) - looks like the wheels are coming off India.
Not sure whether this means England are improving as much as the end result of this match may suggest. If half the opposition are thinking more about going home (or the one day series?) than trying to win the current match...
Still, all England can do is do their best to beat whatever's at the opposite end of the wicket in a professional fashion.
Oval Test, 3rd day, shortly before tea; India lose match by an innings and a silly number of runs and the series 1-3
Well that was ignominious. If India didn't throw that last match, they certainly showed every sign in their second innings of having given up on even trying to win it. :(
Edit:
They weren't even trying to draw it, which might have been feasible if they scored enough runs and the weather went their way...
Bell only got 7 in the England innings. Robson only got 37; does that mean it might be the end of the road for Robson for now?
I just noticed the next test series the Indian men have is against Australia. I wonder if we'll see any test matches over in less than two days, if India play like that in Mitchell Johnson's back yard.... :D
I think that could be the end of Robson.
Bell has a track record and made some decent scores; Robson has a poor average.
GeraintElberion wrote: I think that could be the end of Robson.
Bell has a track record and made some decent scores; Robson has a poor average.
So if Robson goes, do they give Carberry or Compton another try when they go to the West Indies next spring? Or someone else?
In the women's one day series, Charlotte Edwards has scored a hundred today (and carried her bat right through the innings, finishing 108 not out), and England have gone 2-0 up against India. Very good Indian bowling today, but Edwards is highly experienced and made sure England had what turned out to be (just) enough runs for the England bowlers to sink India. Good bowling from Jenny Gunn, who broke a crucial Indian partnership at a time when India were looking like they might pull the chase off, and who took 4 wickets for 23 runs off her ten overs. Series in bag for England, one match to go.
Men's one day series, England VS India, second match:
Well, that was a pathetic England performance with the ball. Woakes had a good start, but then India (especially Raina) virtually murdered the England bowling 'attack', Woakes included.
The fact that India can do *that* in a one day match leads me to suspect that at the very least they were sulking and/or couldn't be bothered to do any more than go through the motions in the last two tests, and probably made the England test side look better than they might be.
Half time thought based on the match so far: Well, at least England can't be whitewashed now in this series, the first match having been lost to rain. They're certainly going to lose this one unless the middle order produce something incredible or Hales does something astonishing.
Edit:
Hmm. Rain arrived in Cardiff - another 'no result' impending?
Nope. Just a sprinkling of rain; nowhere near enough to save England from being bowled out for 161 in the thirty-ninth over, way short of their target.
:(
India (men) continuing to show all the style and panache that so mysteriously disappeared in the last matches of the test series.
Another thrashing by them of England.
Cook seems to have given some of his bowlers a few too many overs, but given what options the selectors gave him to use against this India side, his best hope once India won the toss and inserted England was for his side to make a big score - which it failed to do against the Indian attack.
Nice to see Cook get forty odd, but a shame it wasn't more. :(
????? ! ?
Australia have lost a one-day match to Zimbabwe.
Okay, playing on Zimbabwe's home turf, and the Australian captain picked up an injury when he was going well, which must have impacvted the Australian final score, but still...
*Link*
Either that was one dodgy pitch or Zimbabwe seem to have found a good bowler or two from somewhere by the look of the scorecard.
Nyumbu: ten over one maiden, thirty runs for one wicket.
Williams: ten overs, two maidens, twenty-one runs for two wickets.
Mind you, some of the others weren't so economical; Chatara went for fifty-six runs off his eight overs, and didn't bowl any maidens or take any wickets....
Hah! The England women continue their usual beat-down service. They beat South Africa by nine wickets in the first game of their twenty-twenty series yesterday!
:)
Annnnd, England women take their twenty-twenty series with one game still to play, with a win by 42 runs. Charlotte Edwards scored seventy-five not out (off a mere sixty-one balls at that) in the England innings.
And that is how an England side successfully plays one-day cricket (or whatever twenty-twenty counts as).
3-0 to the England women, and they take their series in a clean sweep!
(Mind you, South Africa got within 8 runs of the England total this time, before running out of overs.)
Lauren Winfield in the runs today for England (74 from 60 balls).
Hmmm. (Possibly inspired by the earlier women's match?) Eoin Morgan led the England men to a twenty-twenty victory over India to wrap up the England summer.
Nice to see Morgan back in the runs... :)
That's the best thing about T20: that last over run chase and Dhoni looking for a six (or four) from the last ball.
And the clown-squad are back to being thrashed by Australia, this time in the fifty over format. Unsurprising for the clown-squad against Australia, playing in Australia.
Still, at least under Morgan they managed to beat India in Australian conditions the other day.
Can't see the clown-squad winning the upcoming world-cup, though, if they couldn't win today at Hobart against an Australian one-day squad hit by injuries and with a captain out on a one-match suspension. The clown-squad are almost certainly going to end up playing the Australians somewhere in an elimination match if the clown-squad make it out of the group stages, and the clown-squad aren't going to win that match, based on the two most recent clashes.
Well. Looks like the Australia (men's) team get to defeat England (again) in the triangular series final...
:D
And, as predicted: Link
England (men) completely outclassed, and wiped out by the Australians.
The England men's team simply don't seem to be good enough to beat other teams on their (that is to say their opponent's) home-turf these days, unless their opponents are truly awful. They can manage to maybe beat other teams on 'neutral' turf (or even turf friendlier to England than to the opposition) as shown by their defeats of India in this series, but they're incapable of winning in one of the other side's strongholds.
Dude don't get depressed it makes hating England less fun... Come now chaps, stiff upper lip, and all that, what what, tallyho...
The 8th Dwarf wrote: Dude don't get depressed it makes hating England less fun... Come now chaps, stiff upper lip, and all that, what what, tallyho... Right now, I feel that the England men's side ought to be banned from playing overseas matches against anyone else 'major' - except maybe Zimbabwe - for at least the next couple of years. (And of course the politicians in London likely won't let the men's team play against Zimbabwe...)
Something has gone very badly wrong with men's cricket, at the international level, as far as the 'England' team go. And based on recent performances it's going to take years to correct it. If it can be corrected.
Gah! England women let New Zealand get a 150+ run opening partnership in the first match of their one day series and then lost chasing the New Zealand total of 240 by 67 runs.
And in the meantime, the other England 'team' in the vicinity of Australia/New Zealand lost a warm-up match to Pakistan; a lot more of those (i.e. losses) to come, I suspect...
Ah, that's better. 90 run win for the England women in their second one-day match. :)
And the England team which isn't female have lost to Australia yet again. No surprises there. Presumably at some point bookmakers will stop offering odds of any kind on Australia getting a 'not losing' result against this particular side, at least when playing in Australia.
Nope. Lost another one. England starting to look incompetent in all forms of cricket now, of either sex. (Granted, the women are still *miles* better than the men.)
Given that supposedly the 'English' game is one of the best funded in the world it's difficult to understand what's going so catastrophically wrong. Over-management? Too many psychologists, and sports-therapists, and number-crunchers buzzing around, when what the players ought to be doing and thinking about is actually playing to their best and not what some boffin with half a mile of 'letters' after their names says that they ought to be worrying about?
To anyone who disputes that the 'English' game has gone catastrophically wrong, I refer them to the previous 'world' competition where the England (men's) squad managed to decisively lose to that major cricketing superpower, The Netherlands. Then, of course it was assumed that Ashley Giles was the problem, and simply sacking him would make everything better again, at least in the one day game - to which I can say that clearly it hasn't.
And in the meantime, if the problem is over-management, the idiots in charge at the moment seem to think that the problem can be cured with even more management and even more statistics and computer-analysis and other whatnot, of course making the problem worse - not least because the players themselves are being told 'given all the effort we're throwing at you, you ought to be getting better'.
Oh well. Maybe the country should invent another sport, and they might prove good at that for twelve months, until someone else with a less complicated approach comes along and thrashes them at it.
Or maybe the country should just stick to what the Australians refer to as 'sitting down' sports. Such as Cycling. And Rowing... :D
Not enough space in the country to develop new talent in schools
Football being the glamour sport now in the UK
Good to hear that just as the English captain doesn't sound English, the Scottish captain doesn't sound Scottish!!
Migrant popn into the UK no longer prominently from ex-empire cricket loving nations
thenovalord wrote: Not enough space in the country to develop new talent in schools
Football being the glamour sport now in the UK
Good to hear that just as the English captain doesn't sound English, the Scottish captain doesn't sound Scottish!!
Migrant popn into the UK no longer prominently from ex-empire cricket loving nations
Except I suspect (I may be wrong) that the Netherlands has at least as little time given over to cricket at school-level as the UK; that football is at least as much a 'glamour sport' in the Netherlands as it is in the UK. And yet The Netherlands humiliated England in a 20/20 game in Bangladesh in March last year.
Hence my suspicion that the EWCB is managing to utterly scramble all its international level 'England' players' minds, by over-management; that the 'England' players are being told so many different things to do and think by so many different people that they're incapable of simply going out there and playing professional international level cricket any more.
And unfortunately I can't see the current EWCB recognising that this might be a problem of their own creation any time soon (if that is indeed the case), but I can see them instead assuming the problem is 'not enough management' and throwing ever more managers and coaches and psychologists at things to try and 'fix' them, as likely as not only making the situation worse instead.
Well either that or the 'England' teams are doing so consistently badly because sufficient of them are as bent as corkscrews and trying to 'throw' matches for bribes from bookmakers that a no-win is a guaranteed result in many cases, but let's not go there for now...
Someone explain to me please, how the England men's team automatically qualified for their current 50 over competition, instead of having to go through the play-off stages alongside teams like the UAE? They've just been bowled out by New Zealand (edit: New Zealand are a good side, but their bowling attack doesn't exactly have a Dale Steyn or Mitchell Johnson, who should be able to blow a nominally international level batting lineup away like that) for 123 in 33.2 overs, and seen New Zealand thrash their way to victory in 12.2 overs for the loss of only two wickets. Any explanation for how England automatically qualified which does not involve 'The EWCB has money' seems nonsensical to me in the present circumstances.
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A cricket thread? That's just wrong! You adorable foreigners and your silly competitions you call sports. Don't you know that a ball is meant to be launched into a stadium when hit with a bat, and a rug be a thing that's on the floor? For that matter, a football is an oblong brown thing that people throw with their hands, and soccer is for middle aged moms to dump their hyperactive kids off for practice while they get ten minutes of blessed peace, not world championships.
Also, beans on toast is terrible breakfast, peanut butter is delicious, royalty without political power is a waste of tabloid paper that could be reporting on real celebrities, and there's no "u" in armor or color, no matter how hard you try.
Biscuits are served with gravy, not chocolate chips - those are called cookies, chips come in a bag and aren't called crisps, fries are for freedom and will never be chips, and wearing all red and lining up like it's target practice is a terrible way to quell a rebellion!
Coffee is how you properly caffeinate, and the metric system WILL NEVER OVERCOME!!!!
'MURICA!!
Charles- my commiserations for the current humble state of the English Men's team... ;-)
FPM... The rest of the world lets Murica exist for the entertainment value ;-)
Most importantly my hope that West Indian Cricket wasn't going to fade away has been restored by Chris Gayle's batting.
I have been surprised by India's form and attitude turn around as well as the skilled play by Ireland, Zimbabwe and Afganistan.
This is an excellent World Cup.
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Hey, hey, hey...I got an algebra problem that says otherwise. It may be mathematically inaccurate, but it sure is historically accurate:
1776 + 1812 = USA > UK.
Solve for Owned!
I'm gonna be real with you, I can't even keep that joke up in the guise of an alias without feeling like I should choke myself. I have British family, I love me some Terry Pratchett novels, socialized medicine is a wonderful concept, and proper tea tastes like heaven.
I saw a cricket forum and couldn't help making fun of our own stereotypes as arrogant doofuses. Please enjoy your sports thread, apologies for interrupting as FPA, and thanks for inventing damnnear perfect fish and chips.
Seriously, it was all jest. We're not all like that.
Sadly, a lot of us are.
Mate no offence taken. I saw that you we're laughing at yourself and laughed along. I am an Australian and I started this thread when the English were having a too good season and needed some teasing.
I'm currently in a situation where I can't move about much so it's either the history channel or World Cup cricket.
I posted a few pages back an explanation of cricket for baseball fans if you are interested. It's 3 different games played billions of people (What was the British Empire) plus some new countries.
I should restart my Australian Rules Football if you want something obscure and insane.
The match between the Kiwis and the Aussies on Saturday is shaping up to be a cracker. Hopefully the rain keeps away.
Dementrius wrote: The match between the Kiwis and the Aussies on Saturday is shaping up to be a cracker. Hopefully the rain keeps away. I would love to see some of trans Tasman fireworks... Maybe they can waffle on about the underarm incident.....
The 8th Dwarf wrote: Dementrius wrote: The match between the Kiwis and the Aussies on Saturday is shaping up to be a cracker. Hopefully the rain keeps away. I would love to see some of trans Tasman fireworks... Maybe they can waffle on about the underarm incident..... They're playing at Eden Park, which is the size of a coffee table, so we can expect about 500 from each team.
Perhaps they could get Trevor Chappell as one of the umpires. Is 34 years too soon?
100 runs and 8 wickets would be the type of win I want... The Kiwis must be crushed so that they know thier place.
;-)
The 8th Dwarf wrote: 100 runs and 8 wickets would be the type of win I want... The Kiwis must be crushed so that they know thier place.
;-)
I would guess it will depend on how quickly we can get McCullum out.
Arrrgh the West Indies folded like defective deck chairs... The South Africans are starting to look dangerous. AB played a blinder...
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