Shoaib Akhtar = awesome

[marc71178]

I've looked at the players and decided that, yes.

So ignore how well they play as a team and the good results they obtain, they're just poor.

 

[Richard]

Lol i am not really interested in what you have to tell me

So why bother saying anything at all then?

 

[Richard]

If you're going to spout off about something, surely you have to actually have some knowledge of what actually happened?

Certainly do - and you don't have to have watched to have some knowledge.

 

[Richard]

So ignore how well they play as a team and the good results they obtain, they're just poor.

Poor players = poor team.
No matter how "well they play together as a team" a team with better players playing better will beat them.
As England demonstrated last summer, Australia later, and as many other teams would have demonstrated but for various combinations of factors.

 

[tooextracool]

I don't know, but I can make a fairly safe guess.

and given that your guesses are nowhere near as close to being right compared to someone who actually watched the game, you are in no position to make any such claim.

 

[tooextracool]

They came pretty darn close to drawing in Pakistan - about as close as they came to winning in England.

yes by getting hammered in the first game and managing to stay on par in the 2nd, they clearly proved to be an equal to pakistan. not to mention of course the 2nd test which they managed to draw happened to be against a pakistan side without akhtar who took 6/98 in the first test.

 

[Richard Rash]

Poor players = poor team.
No matter how "well they play together as a team" a team with better players playing better will beat them.
As England demonstrated last summer, Australia later, and as many other teams would have demonstrated but for various combinations of factors.

A Champion team will always beat a team of champions

 

[tooextracool]

And if you take it in the periods I've mentioned, his away average is 21.16 and his home first-chance average 28.something.
He only played at home 4 times in that period and the way he batted I'm confident he'd need luck for his only good innings as he did.
In his good period his home average is 41.15 and away it's 38.65.
Yes, you can look at it in other ways but IMO this is the most revealing..

rubbish his entire career is most revealing, and it reveals him to be extremely poor. not the poor excuse of the period that you chose to pick.

So they were outdone by a rare good performance.
In other words, an anomaly.

they were outdone by a better side period.

 

[tooextracool]

The same way England suddenly becaume a rubbish side 6 months earlier?
No, both sides went to pieces, with a bit of bad luck, and were hammered.

any side that has anderson as its lead bowler is a rubbish side. SA were simply not good enough to beat NZ.

 

[tooextracool]

He had one good spell that resulted in a win all series.
But for that spell, the win would almost certainly have been a draw.

are you blind? he had figures of 5/104 and 6/76 in that game. certainly more than one good spell

He's capable of hammering unpenetrative, inaccurate bowlers - if you look at the SA bowlers for the rest of that series (or the rest of his career in Terbrugge's case), they were all economical otherwise.
If the bowlers had been inaccurate yes, Cairns and Oram might have smashed them all over the park but Styris almost certainly wouldn't have.

a)kumble and harbhajan werent inaccurate in the series in india, when styris scored 119.care to explain how he did that?
b) did you by any chance realise that pollocks figures were fine until cairns and oram came into bat and hammered him all over the park?

 

[tooextracool]

It means the win is totally meaningless - just like it is when anyone beats Bangladesh.

so no team deserves to beat bangladesh then?
complete and utter b/s. if you beat a poor side, its quite clear that its only because you are the better side,regardless of how poor the opposition is.

 

[tooextracool]

Being beaten in the subcontinent and by Australia is something most do - only losing in Pakistan (and to a lesser extent not winning in England) is the only meaningful thing.

yes which makes them a poor side. because they were ordinary they lost to india and australia, but because they were poor, they lost to pakistan, drew in NZ and rew in england. more than conclusive.

 

[tooextracool]

Poor players = poor team.
No matter how "well they play together as a team" a team with better players playing better will beat them.
As England demonstrated last summer, Australia later, and as many other teams would have demonstrated but for various combinations of factors.

yes also demonstrated by SL losing to england at home in 01, then by NZ drawing with them at home, australia losing to SL in 99 and australia losing to india in 01.

 

[Kent]

For how long is that then?
I can assure you that in 2001\02 they were using Dukes in the Tests.

How can you assure me? If the change was that recent, it doesn't seem to fit in with these two articles -

Copyright Independent Newspapers, Ltd. Apr 27, 2004

The Black Caps pace bowlers want to become the Dukes of Hazard of their forthcoming England tour.

They are intending to create hazardous batting conditions with their control of the Duke ball used in England -- and generally accepted as providing more on-going seam movement than the Kookaburra ball used in Australia and New Zealand.

The Black Caps bowlers have been working at becoming familiar with Duke balls after having a box of them sent here to practice with before the tour starts next week.

Copyright Independent Newspapers, Ltd. Jun 1, 1999

Rejecting the Duke ball for the past international cricket season in New Zealand and missing a chance to help the Black Caps at the World Cup in England has been defended by operations manager John Reid.

The Duke ball being used at the World Cup in England swings more than its Kookaburra counterpart, which is standard in New Zealand, and along with pitch conditions has troubled not only New Zealand's top order but most other teams.

New Zealand Cricket declined the chance for some early experimentation with the Duke ball against South Africa which was interested in using it, when it toured here last February and March.

Former New Zealand player John Bracewell, now coaching in Gloucestershire, had recommended the players get used to the different ball before coming to England.

Reid said NZC saw no advantage in using the Duke ball during the season in New Zealand.

"We know the Duke ball has a more pronounced seam but felt in our conditions it could do a bit much which would not help the games as a spectacle."

In response to the rest of this thread, yes, Martin can bowl well at international level, but a bit like the excuse/reason for rating your friend Chaminda, he's long been known as a streaky bowler in NZ circles.

Martin goes through periods where his lengths are good, he gets a bit of left-to-right swing or hits the seam from a high action at 135-140kph, but variety and consistency is what he's always struggled with. That's why he's often an expensive OD bowler, his FC ave is 32.6 (based in Christchurch, but still!), and why good batsmen (particularly good pullers of the ball) are able to take him apart when he's not on-song.

And he wasn't the only Kiwi to struggle with the Duke, although I know you think the following author struggles to swing the red ball at the best of times...

Copyright Independent Newspapers, Ltd. Jun 4, 2004
Author(s): BOND, Shane

Ball maintenance will be a top priority for the Black Caps in the second test against England at Headingley this weekend.

Not any of the illegal kind I hasten to add, just designated ball workers in the field who will get the ball in their hands quickly and keep the shine up.

The boys have been struggling with the Duke ball used over here instead of the Kookaburra we use at home.

In an effort to get to grips with it we had a session with a former English county seamer this week before the test.

We have struggled to get the ball to swing much at all after we thought conditions were going to be conducive to that.

But the wickets have been largely dry and abrasive and the balls have cut up pretty quickly. Against Leicestershire the other day the boys said the ball just ripped apart. Kyle Mills, who is one of the swing bowlers, was really frustrated. So John Bracewell got Kevin Cowper, who was a good county tradesman with Notts, to Headingley to give us a session on ball maintenance.

Copyright Independent Newspapers, Ltd. Jun 24, 2004

After a long wait and several false starts, New Zealand's bowling spearhead, Daryl Tuffey, feels ready to finally make it count on his nightmare England cricket tour. Tuffey will lead the New Zealand attack into tomorrow's NatWest Series opener against England at Old Trafford. Throwing him the white Kookaburra ball instead of the red Duke is a sound start. "I never really got to grips with being able to swing the ball here, the seam didn't really come out right, but with the white ball it's coming out nicely," Tuffey said yesterday.

 

[tooextracool]

interesting that article about tuffey. it was something that i brought up during the NZ tour of england, his seam position was all over the place, something that was definetly strange for someone who is primarily a swing bowler. i was extremely surprised that no one in the commentary box even mentioned it. too bad he only got to bowl 5 overs in that natwest series, looked pretty good too.

 

[Richard]

and given that your guesses are nowhere near as close to being right compared to someone who actually watched the game, you are in no position to make any such claim.

And funnily enough no-one whose reports or posts I've read has actually claimed SA bowled well.

 

[Richard]

yes by getting hammered in the first game and managing to stay on par in the 2nd, they clearly proved to be an equal to pakistan. not to mention of course the 2nd test which they managed to draw happened to be against a pakistan side without akhtar who took 6/98 in the first test.

Pakistan were a bit better - as they tend to be than anyone when Akhtar hits top gear.
It was a bit surprising, really, that Pakistan-minus-Akhtar even managed to draw a game.

 

[Richard]

A Champion team will always beat a team of champions

An ascertation which many have said they disagree with - it's mostly just a romanticism.

 

[Richard Rash]

And funnily enough no-one whose reports or posts I've read has actually claimed SA bowled well.

I think Kent proved something about your posting above. You are so ill informed that you dig yourself in to holes that you can't get out of yet for some reason you keep digging..maybe you can learn something from this?

 

[Richard]

rubbish his entire career is most revealing, and it reveals him to be extremely poor. not the poor excuse of the period that you chose to pick.

His entire career produces an average of nearly 36 (when batting in the middle), not extremely poor at all. Especially given that he was averaging over 40 after that 90 at Trent Bridge.
He's simply had a downward spiral of late - something I'm more than confident he has the ability to come back from, given his prior performances. It's just a question of if he gets the chance.
Like I say, it depends on your perception - it's not like "he's rubbish" is a totally illogical conclusion, but IMO it'd be the wrong one.

they were outdone by a better side period.

Once.
And on the next occasion they outdid the same side.