To enforce the follow on or not

[Slow Love™]

With the jetsetting and higher intensity International cricket, one can argue for mental fatigue but certainly not physical fatigue, which is the premise of this 'to declare or not to declare' thread.

And if it is, it leads to the conclusion that modern day players who dont enforce follow-on because of physical fatigue are cissies compared to the old timers.

Or they're smarter about preserving bowlers' (fast bowlers in particular) careers.

I'm reasonably happy to concede your point about amount of cricket all up (as opposed to international cricket only). I don't have the time to research it to produce a counter-argument, anyway.

But I think that trainers and physiotherapists are working very hard to prolong the amount of time fast bowlers can play at top level. It still seems to me to be a reasonable enough aim for the Australians to not overwork what is a reasonably ageing attack.

I guess we can call them cissies, but another word might be "more sensible".

 

[Slow Love™]

Or two words, hahaha

 

[C_C]

dunno about that either slow-man.
I think physiotherapists help you recover from injuries faster and tweak your technique...
But dunno about prolonging a bowler's career....
for you can find high career spans and low career spans both in this era and 70s/80s.
For eg., while Holding played 12 years or so of FC cricket and Roberts played approx 13-14, Marshall,Kapil,Hadlee,Walsh etc. played almost 20.
And i cant see McGrath, Pollock etc. lasting till 2012 or 2014....or lasting till 37/38 years of age like Marshall/Kapil/Hadlee/Walsh etc. did.
i think when data is seen, its inconclusive whether today's advanced sports science techniques have prolonged a player's career or not.

 

[Swervy]

the problem with all your number crunching CC is that it doesnt take into account the intensity of play of tests against that of county cricket. There was absolutly no way that an international fast bowler sustained his pace for anywhere near as long during a county game than he would have done during a test match...overseas players did what they had to do to help wingames for the county but not much more, they were professional without putting their bodies through hell. There were plenty of players of internation standard, whose ability didnt translate at county level simply because of internation duty....a good example is Bob Willis, who was often slagged off by the Warks faithful for not jumping through hoops for his county...but it probably stretched out his career for England

 

[C_C]

swervy- i too saw county cricket of the 80s and i disagree that they were the same level as of the 90s....they had way too many world class/great players in the league back then and like i said, the county level was probably higher than any FC cricket we play today.

As per maintaining speed- i disagree again. I can personally recollect many county matches where the likes of Marshall, Garner,Imran etc. bowled full throttle for 8-10 over spells, like they do in tests.
I agree with you on the mental intensity part but definately not the physical intensity part,unless you are gonna talk about once-in-a-lifetime effort like Marshall's blitzkreig of England with his left thumb broken or Deano's near-death experience.
those 'extra extra mile' instances were far too rare to count in.

 

[Slow Love™]

dunno about that either slow-man.
I think physiotherapists help you recover from injuries faster and tweak your technique...
But dunno about prolonging a bowler's career....
for you can find high career spans and low career spans both in this era and 70s/80s.
For eg., while Holding played 12 years or so of FC cricket and Roberts played approx 13-14, Marshall,Kapil,Hadlee,Walsh etc. played almost 20.
And i cant see McGrath, Pollock etc. lasting till 2012 or 2014....or lasting till 37/38 years of age like Marshall/Kapil/Hadlee/Walsh etc. did.
i think when data is seen, its inconclusive whether today's advanced sports science techniques have prolonged a player's career or not.

That's actually a really good point. In many fields, including sports, we can sometimes be subject to fads that we later discover have had no effect, or even worse, have been damaging to what we're trying to achieve. Empirical data can sometimes contradict or even disprove what we consider to be obviously logical.

In terms of efforts like rotational policy and resting bowlers - deciding whether to enforce a follow-on included - it's fairly early days, and I guess the data would be fairly inconclusive at this stage. We'd know much better in 10-15 years (providing the strategy is continued).

However, even if it turns out that these efforts (or more specifically, the types of strategies we're currently using) are fruitless, and don't make much of a difference, the fact that there's a belief that they will, doesn't make contemporary players cissies compared to players from the past. They're just following a school of thought that's fairly ubiquitous in sports medicine at the time they're playing.

One more thing - tossing up examples of players that outlasted players from this era and so on from a sample of six or so doesn't say much of anything. We'd need to identify a more general tendency across the board to actually make a case one way or the other.

 

[marc71178]

intensity and travelling add up to the mental strain...not physical.

So you're trying to say travelling doesn't put a strain on the body?

 

[C_C]

very little strain-definately not as much strain as running around a cricket field all day.
You feel tired after a 10 hour flight because of mental strain..not physical. You are sittin on your rear end all the time man!

 

[Jono]

When weather is a danger, I'd always enforce the follow on.

 

[Swervy]

very little strain-definately not as much strain as running around a cricket field all day.
You feel tired after a 10 hour flight because of mental strain..not physical. You are sittin on your rear end all the time man!

but doing that in a pressurised environment, with air conditioning, with jet lag and dehydration....all pretty physcially draining to the body

 

[C_C]

well even sitting your hiney is dehydrating.
Just that its nowhere close to as strenous as running around a field for the better part of a day.

 

[Mr Casson]

Dehydration can be a very serious condition with long lasting effects on the body.

 

[Swervy]

well even sitting your hiney is dehydrating.
Just that its nowhere close to as strenous as running around a field for the better part of a day.

but it is a major problem when flying long distances

 

[Crazy Sam]

So Australia completed one of biggest wins in history today, before lunch on Day 4, which is a lot earlier than many. It seems to me that to not follow on was a great decision just as i thought at the time. As I reasoned, they ground the Pakistanis into the ground with the bat and gave Pakistan no avenue at all to save the match. This was as comprehensive as you could get, in the process allowing a few players to get a bit of batting practice.

 

[C_C]

but it is a major problem when flying long distances

LOL.
I travelled a lot since i was a kid- have gone through 4 passports simply because i ran outta pages to stamp the entry/exit permits.
Suffice to say, i know about the strains of air travel.
But let me get this straight- you are telling me that it is more strenous to sit on your hiney for 10 hours than running around under the sun for the better part of the whole day.
That is faceteous at best and a bold faced lie at worst.
Sitting on your ****, getting 3 meals within the space of 10 hours( as in a flight) and usually sipping on OJ or coke is more dehydrating than running around the field under the sun.......riiiiiiiiiiiight.
And pigs fly. welcome to the Oink Airways.
where should i book your flight ?

 

[Jono]

Lol! Oink Airways. I'll give ya that one.

 

[Swervy]

LOL.
I travelled a lot since i was a kid- have gone through 4 passports simply because i ran outta pages to stamp the entry/exit permits.
Suffice to say, i know about the strains of air travel.
But let me get this straight- you are telling me that it is more strenous to sit on your hiney for 10 hours than running around under the sun for the better part of the whole day.
That is faceteous at best and a bold faced lie at worst.
Sitting on your ****, getting 3 meals within the space of 10 hours( as in a flight) and usually sipping on OJ or coke is more dehydrating than running around the field under the sun.......riiiiiiiiiiiight.
And pigs fly. welcome to the Oink Airways.
where should i book your flight ?

you obviously know best...although I too have travelled a fair bit (ie many many 24 hour flights to and from UK/Australia) and I am fully aware of the physical strain long haul flights can have on the body.

I beleive we have a pilot amongst us in Langveldt..maybe he could shed some light on the possible effects on the body flying can have.

We seem to have got off the point here...where you are saying that international crickets appear to have it easy compared to those players say 20 or 30 years ago.My opinion is that several tours playing in allsorts of conditions all year round,where you are expected (for the sake of your country and place in the team) to perform at the highest level with back to back tests here there and everywhere,and few warmup games, ensuring that you need to be at top capabilty on all games played..no easy games, well not compared to the lond drawn out tours of years ago (just realised this is a long sentence).....are bound to have a huge effect on the body (phew).

As far as I am concerned, the effect on the body of a county game of 3 days in length like they were back then(remember they needed to get 4 innings in in three days, teams tended not to be out there bowling for too long), would probably be the same as one day out in the middle of a test match, just because the level of intensity and pressure is so much higher