Favourite Ashes Memory

[Son Of Coco]

Gilchrist coming out and smashing them everywhere at Edgbaston in 2001 was a personal favourite. I remember sitting up and watching it happen. Also Perth 2006 when he almost broke the record for fastest century.

 

[ripper868]

Gonna put Harmy's first ball of the series to Flintoff up there. Laughed quite hard.

 

[Top_Cat]

I'm not usually a 'told ya so' person but, in Richard's case I'll make an exception. Remembering how I said there wasn't a lot wrong with the Lords pitch in 2005, Richard said he couldn't conceive how anyone could rate it as anything other than a flyer. Well, don't just take my word for it, take it from someone who actually played on it;

The Ashes: Ricky Ponting looks back at the 2005 Ashes - Telegraph

Note the following paragraph;

First Test (Lord's, Australia won by 239 runs)

Seventeen wickets fell on the first day. On what was essentially a pretty good pitch, that was quite a start to the Ashes. Three guys were hit on the head in the first hour. It was all on: Test cricket the way you want to play it.

Told ya so.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Gonna put Harmy's first ball of the series to Flintoff up there. Laughed quite hard.

I was at the ground for that one, it was awesome. It didn't register at first how the ball had made it to Flintoff, was too hard to comprehend.

 

[Richard]

I'm not usually a 'told ya so' person but, in Richard's case I'll make an exception. Remembering how I said there wasn't a lot wrong with the Lords pitch in 2005, Richard said he couldn't conceive how anyone could rate it as anything other than a flyer. Well, don't just take my word for it, take it from someone who actually played on it;

The Ashes: Ricky Ponting looks back at the 2005 Ashes - Telegraph

Note the following paragraph;



Told ya so.

Seem to remember reading that somewhere before TBH. Either way, Ponting is wrong. Someday, I'll find HawkEyes for that match and show how many balls bounced either too high or too low, how many held up or shot through, and how many did not go straight on but moved left or right.

I maintain that if you had Donald and Pollock vs Ambrose and Walsh or McGrath and Fleming vs a fully fit Gough and Fraser that match would not have gone very long into the third day and might have seen a top-score of 220-230 or so if some batsman played really well.

 

[Top_Cat]

No offence, but I'll take the word of the bloke who was out in the middle first, mate.

 

[Richard]

Ponting, being a better batsman than me, might find the pitch a bit easier than he should.

I'd prefer take the word of what I saw rather than some vague reference to how good something patently wasn't.

 

[grecian]

This for me, listening late at night to a crappy radio, that whenever anything like runs or an edge happened it just cut to static, because of the crowd noise. So every time a run was scored I thought it may be a wicket.

The final ball went something like "oh he's edged it, dropped...........Static.............". I almost turned off the radio in frustration, thought we'd lost. So the joy of the win was particularly sweet

 

[Top_Cat]

Ponting, being a better batsman than me, might find the pitch a bit easier than he should.

I'd prefer take the word of what I saw rather than some vague reference to how good something patently wasn't.

You, sir, are impossible. Read this;

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

For one to recognise what a good pitch is, one would have to be competent/an expert like, say, Ponting is. If you're not, as you say you're not, your ability to recognise what is/isn't a decent pitch is impaired. And, true to the theory above as with what you're showing here, you're also more confident in said judgement than is justified.

Ergo, Ponting's opinion wins.

 

[Richard]

Being good at batting means you might well underestimate how difficult a pitch was. Ponting in my view has undoubtedly done so here. How good\bad it was depends on how uneven\seaming it was, not how easy one of the best batsmen around found it. Anyway, Ponting is notorious for hyperbole about pitches - he called the one at Mumbai "not close to Test standard" or whatever. I don't take it as read when he describes a pitch as anything. He can very easily over or underestimate it.

 

[Top_Cat]

Being good at batting means you might well underestimate how difficult a pitch was. Ponting in my view has undoubtedly done so here. How good\bad it was depends on how uneven\seaming it was, not how easy someone found it.

Read the study; being good means you're in a better position to evaluate things, not because you find it easy, you can't understand how others don't.

 

[wpdavid]

Like others, day 1 of Edgbaston 1997 was extraordinary.

A little known fact about 1997 is that it's the only home Ashes series since WW1 when England have been ahead going into the third test.

 

[Daryl Harper]

Warne bowling a rabbit in headlights Adam Hollioke. He was so petrified that he obviously had a premeditated idea to leave the first ball, so he shouldered arms and left a straight one

 

[andruid]

You blind or something?

No, but if I was I'd be offended

 

[Richard]

You'd also be unable to read his comment, so thus would not have to worry about taking offence.

 

[Richard]

Read the study; being good means you're in a better position to evaluate things, not because you find it easy, you can't understand how others don't.

Anyway I don't really see how Ponting is any more competent than I am in assessing how a pitch plays. More competent in repelling whatever the pitch causes the ball to do, certainly; but more competent in seeing what it does, no.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Well he has doubtlessly played on more pitches than you have, so he has a better idea what differences in appearance a pitch will make when it's played on.

 

[Richard]

Differences in appearance a pitch will make when it's played on?

 

[PhoenixFire]

Yeah I worded that rather poorly. Basically, what the pitch looks like and how this will affect how it plays.

 

[Richard]

But I'm not talking about what it looks like. I'm talking about how it plays.

I'm no rank expert on deciphering how a pitch will play by looking at it (whether Ponting is or isn't I don't know) but that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about using hindsight, having already seen how the pitch has played, to assess how it's played.

In short, doing something as simple as watching the game. Which both Ponting and I did with great attention-to-detail that match. Ergo, his thoughts on how the pitch played cannot automatically be more likely to be correct than mine.