Do you know that!

[PY]

Without doubt, the longest page I've ever seen on CW in 30 months. I'm so glad I've got broadband.

(I have it on 40 posts per page by the way and that is one LONG argument, the last 40 posts amounted to 51 full pages of A4 paper [I'm bored ] ))

 

[C_C]

Or it could imply that you were a lesser player from a point onwards.

If you were a lesser player for the bulk of your career, you are not good enough in my books.

No, it takes good analysis, which can be done by watching maybe 4 or 5 innings or bowling spells.

Which is why players are not usually found out atleast 3-4 yeas from their debut eh ?
Jimmy Adams, Vinod Kambli, Keith Stackpole, etc. all were found out after the initial years.
Primarily because it takes a few years for a side to notice you and really work you out- or atleast, thats how it used to be. And a few innings is simply not enough to figure you out, as you need to play for a while in various different conditions.

And of course Imran and Kapil batted in exactly the same seam-friendly conditions as Botham?

Irrelevant. those 'seam friendly conditions' are where Botham grew up and as such, is home territorry to him.
Besides, West Indies fast bowlers wernt really seamers - their bread and butter was immaculate control, brutal pace, awkward bounce and moving the ball in the air. The one genuinely dabbling in swing was Holding and Marshall and both of em could swing it anywhere on this planet.
In west indies- when the conditions were just as foreign to all three, Kapil averaged 2x with the bat and Imran 1.5x with the bat compared to Botham.
He failed miseably against the best of the best - that is different from having a drop in your performance due to excellent opposition.

Or unless you've read his excellent descriptions of it.

First hand knowledge is far more insightful and develops the emotional and intellectual understanding that second or third hand knowledge doesnt.

No, it's just by a slight amount the most important aspect.

By a slight amount ?
That has gotto be the biggest understatement i've read on this board.
The fact that his back problem was acute and was the central aspect of his day-to-day life makes it the most important and defining aspect of his life by a large margin.
For a quadruplegic, his missing arms and legs are the most important defining aspects of his life by a country mile. Not by a slight amount.

No, I just don't like people trying to "prove wrong" by making silly wordplay when it's exceptionally obvious that "never" hardly ever means "never" and almost invariably means "rarely if ever" or similar.

Do open your grammar book and the dictionary and check the meaning of the word 'never'.
Never is a definite negetive- not a subjective negetive involving various degrees.
Which is why people QUALIFY it with 'mostly never' or 'hardly ever' when they mean to imply that.
When you say 'never has this been done' and someone throws up an instance it was, you were wrong. Thats categoric, since never doesnt involve degrees to it. Its definitive!

No, it's just something you'd prefer existed because you need it to further your exceedingly thin cause.

Its not for you to deciede how thin or how thick my cause is.
And it is not according to my preference- it is according to my interpretation of the facts.
Something you are free to dispute but you'll find that the majority do not.

Except that judging riding a bike or anything such as that is utterly different to judging speed of a small ball.
If someone faces someone 10 years apart misperceptions are far, far more likely than not.

That is NOT how the mind works.
Whenever you face someone who is unusual in an aspect, your mind remembers because he/she is different from the rest.
If you faced Pele even ONCE in your life, you'd remember the quality of the play like it was yesterday- because it was different. same goes with unusual men from any walk of life.
If you faced Holding 20 years ago and now face Akhtar, you'd be very well placed to compare, since both men stand out in respect to their speed of bowling.

Why not? I clearly never referred to their first 15-20 years of international cricketing existence. I'd presume it was you that tried bringing that in.

because my whole contention was that RSA/NZ/IND etc. were worthless for the first 15-20 years of their existance. You sought to dispute that by stating how good RSA was in the 30s or 40s...something that is irrelevant to the comment i've made initially.

Or it could underscore that an illicit tactic was used in that one series.

So why, then, was the leg-side field banned? Indeed, what was the point in it being set at all?
What got people crying "unfairness" was the fact that it was being used in a way never used before - and as a result it was far, far more effective than it had ever been with Root or anyone bowling it at the domestic level.

What got people crying 'unfairness' was the fact that batsmen were getting mauled.
Not where the fielder was standing.
The primary criticism of bodyline was the short pitched bowling aimed at the torso of the batsmen.
As such, it is the fundamental crux of the philosophy.
Why did they ban the field setting ? because in short, they were idiots.
the field setting was an accessory to the act, not the central defining aspect of the act.
Do read the books on bodyline and player opinions. THe grumbling was from the fact that never before were batsmen targetted by short pitched bowling on to their torso.
Not where the fielders were standing.
Fieldig position is irrelevent in bodyline-both psychologically(as the grumblings and writings prove) as well as from the end result ( batsmen getting hurt/wickets falling).

It did indeed, more often than not at least.
Nonetheless the fact remains that it is not irrelevant that all the prevolant examples are superbodies - it demonstrates that this sort of match-fixing did not have any effect on the making of good players.

Unless you think that every successful cricketer in that era was a superbody, it is stupid to claim that it only involved the superbodies.
If practically 90% of good players indulged in that sort of activity, it leads to inflation of one's statistics artificially amongst the good players.

You really need to learn to read - I am perfectly well aware of everything you have stated here. You don't seem to be aware of the fact that in Britain there's not been any increase in popularity for a long time.
Fact is, even with a large dip in popularity the game still will still have a massive fan-base that will retain it's status as a nationally recognised entity.

Irrelevant.
My intial statement was that cricket had a largely amatuer following in the subcontinenet before the 70s. Do look up the meaning of the word 'amatuerish' and then realise that an amatuer following is quiete different from a serious following.

And with that he is extremely rare, and deserves credit for that.

its not that rare. And i see no credit deserved for achieving it at the start of one's career and then failing to recapture it for the rest.
it simply is a matter of happenstance - some do it early on, some do it mid career and some do it near the end.

If everyone believed you had to travel to experience there'd be no point in anyone doing anything, really.

Actually given that most self opinionated idiots have never travelled more than a few hundred miles from their homes, it does make sense why there is so much verbal diarrea in humankind and utterly idiotic perspectives widely prevalent.

The trough isn't really relevant, given that it had little to do with a waning in ability or, contrary to some beliefs, a better combatting of that ability.
That anyone could outstip a batting average of 37 and a bowling average of 20, meanwhile, is extremely doubtful.

THe trough is very relevant- because the player needs the peak and the trough to define how good they were. Else a player with 2-3 years of blazing brilliance sandwiched between years of mediocrity is as good as someone who had blazing brilliance for 2-3 years sandwiched between good performances.
And i thought your entire contention early on was that Botham's waning figures were due to his waning ability- his fitness shot to pieces and him allegedly unable to bowl certain deliveries anymore.
Do make up your mind.

Amongst quality allrounders, there are quiete a few who outstripped or match a batting average of 37 and bowling average of 20 during the same period. Most notably, Imran Khan, Sobers and Miller.
All of them had far better troughs than Botham.

And like i said before, you can have the everest as your peak but if you also incoroporate the marinas trench into your resume, a player who's peaks are no higher than Mt.Sinai and troughs are no shallower than the dead sea stack up quiete well.

Depends - if the comedown is influenced by factors while the lack of comedown in others are not present it can be perfectly fair.

Every comedown is influenced by factors.Some get old, some get injured and some lose the magic touch.
Its all 'to-MAY-toes' and 'to-MAH-toes' to me.

And Iike I said - I've no wish to travel.
I'm more than happy with the "outlets" I trust, thanks.

Which is why you will probably forever remain an idiot with very little clue as to how the world operates,runs and how humanity conducts itself inside various cultural and regional realms.
Fine by me!

Maybe with some Boards - certainly not those that I've looked into.

ULEAC, the most prevalent board in britain, subscribes to the marking scheme i am alluding to.

I do, because while they may be of a lower standard than University, they're categorically not substandard.

All standards are relative. If i define the standard to be 'university level', then all highschools are substandard.

Even when there are clearly many factors in cricket that cannot be defined by statistics?
Statistics tell a lot as long as you use them properly, but the fact is there are things that you cannot use them to interpret.

Statistics spell out the bottomline and the biggest part of the story. As such, the intangiables cannot outweigh the tangiables for me.

 

[Richard]

Except when the batsman is G Smith of course...

You can analyse Smith all you want, and see his clear limitations.
Working him out is a completely different matter.

 

[Richard]

Without doubt, the longest page I've ever seen on CW in 30 months. I'm so glad I've got broadband.

(I have it on 40 posts per page by the way and that is one LONG argument, the last 40 posts amounted to 51 full pages of A4 paper [I'm bored ] ))

Bloody hell!
When stone meets stone, eh?
I'm certainly not giving-up any time.

 

[luckyeddie]

Bloody hell!
When stone meets stone, eh?
I'm certainly not giving-up any time.

(Opens popcorn)

 

[Jamee999]

CC's last post took up 4 pages of A4

 

[Richard]

If you were a lesser player for the bulk of your career, you are not good enough in my books.

Oh, indeed, in mine too.
Just that Botham wasn't a lesser player for most of his career - he was a good batsman for pretty much 2\3 of it.

Which is why players are not usually found out atleast 3-4 yeas from their debut eh ?
Jimmy Adams, Vinod Kambli, Keith Stackpole, etc. all were found out after the initial years.

Kambli was found-out after a handful of Tests - Adams wasn't found-out either, he just had faced 2 exceptional bowling-attacks in his last 2 Test-series. Stackpole I haven't a clue because I haven't taken a decent look.

Primarily because it takes a few years for a side to notice you and really work you out- or atleast, thats how it used to be. And a few innings is simply not enough to figure you out, as you need to play for a while in various different conditions.

And sometimes people do play a few innings in various conditions.
If it was certain conditions that Botham was worked-out in, meanwhile, I wonder why no-one ever mentioned how they'd done it.
You'd think 66 Tests of success, however, might be enough to demonstrate that someone can't be worked-out, though.

Irrelevant. those 'seam friendly conditions' are where Botham grew up and as such, is home territorry to him.

So? Being home territory doesn't make difficult conditions easily playable.

Besides, West Indies fast bowlers wernt really seamers - their bread and butter was immaculate control, brutal pace, awkward bounce and moving the ball in the air. The one genuinely dabbling in swing was Holding and Marshall and both of em could swing it anywhere on this planet.

As any good exponent of swing can.
Fact is, there are conditions that make mere high pace and bounce awkward, too, if there are enough bowlers bowling it.
If you think all of them were no harder to play on a green seamer than a featherbed, meanwhile, think again.

In west indies- when the conditions were just as foreign to all three, Kapil averaged 2x with the bat and Imran 1.5x with the bat compared to Botham.
He failed miseably against the best of the best - that is different from having a drop in your performance due to excellent opposition.

And Botham only played in West Indies during the time when he was a good batsman once, in which he was shockingly poor.
Doesn't prove a tremendous amount.
That he failed in 1985\86 didn't say anything we don't know already.

First hand knowledge is far more insightful and develops the emotional and intellectual understanding that second or third hand knowledge doesnt.

Except you haven't got any first-hand knowledge of most of what Atherton experienced - you don't even seem to have any grasp of precisely what it was.

By a slight amount ?
That has gotto be the biggest understatement i've read on this board.
The fact that his back problem was acute and was the central aspect of his day-to-day life makes it the most important and defining aspect of his life by a large margin.

But there were many other contributing factors, none of which you grasp.

Do open your grammar book and the dictionary and check the meaning of the word 'never'.
Never is a definite negetive- not a subjective negetive involving various degrees.
Which is why people QUALIFY it with 'mostly never' or 'hardly ever' when they mean to imply that.
When you say 'never has this been done' and someone throws up an instance it was, you were wrong. Thats categoric, since never doesnt involve degrees to it. Its definitive!

Yes, and I was wrong to not place everything in a totally bulletproof case.
Something that, with most people, won't matter.
With someone who's desperately flailing around for any mistake they can clutch at, it does matter.

Its not for you to deciede how thin or how thick my cause is.
And it is not according to my preference- it is according to my interpretation of the facts.
Something you are free to dispute but you'll find that the majority do not.

You'll find that the majority got bored long ago.
If they did check, though, they'd find, as I do, that there are no faults where you've said there are.

That is NOT how the mind works.
Whenever you face someone who is unusual in an aspect, your mind remembers because he/she is different from the rest.
If you faced Pele even ONCE in your life, you'd remember the quality of the play like it was yesterday- because it was different. same goes with unusual men from any walk of life.
If you faced Holding 20 years ago and now face Akhtar, you'd be very well placed to compare, since both men stand out in respect to their speed of bowling.

And footballing quality is totally different to speed of a cricket ball, there are so many wider, more ambiguous things that come in.
Both Holding and Shoaib stand-out, indeed, but as to who was faster - Shoaib might have been a bit quicker, they might have been a slight difference.
Fact is, no-one will ever know.

because my whole contention was that RSA/NZ/IND etc. were worthless for the first 15-20 years of their existance. You sought to dispute that by stating how good RSA was in the 30s or 40s...something that is irrelevant to the comment i've made initially.

It all started with me mentioning how South Africa mostly competed with England and Australia, referring to the period from the 1910s onwards.

What got people crying 'unfairness' was the fact that batsmen were getting mauled.
Not where the fielder was standing.
The primary criticism of bodyline was the short pitched bowling aimed at the torso of the batsmen.
As such, it is the fundamental crux of the philosophy.
Why did they ban the field setting ? because in short, they were idiots.
the field setting was an accessory to the act, not the central defining aspect of the act.
Do read the books on bodyline and player opinions. THe grumbling was from the fact that never before were batsmen targetted by short pitched bowling on to their torso.
Not where the fielders were standing.
Fieldig position is irrelevent in bodyline-both psychologically(as the grumblings and writings prove) as well as from the end result ( batsmen getting hurt/wickets falling).

Never before, eh?
You think no-one had ever bowled sustained spells of short-pitched bowling?

Unless you think that every successful cricketer in that era was a superbody, it is stupid to claim that it only involved the superbodies.

Well I've yet to hear how it involved 90% of players.

If practically 90% of good players indulged in that sort of activity, it leads to inflation of one's statistics artificially amongst the good players.

Yet they'd already established themselves and gained impressive stats - the fact that they managed to continue to do so doesn't actually matter.

Irrelevant.
My intial statement was that cricket had a largely amatuer following in the subcontinenet before the 70s. Do look up the meaning of the word 'amatuerish' and then realise that an amatuer following is quiete different from a serious following.

Does everything turn to amateur for you?
I've never heard something as ridiculous as an amateur "following" - fact is a following is either keen or it's not.
And while the following of cricket in India in the pre-1970s (or Britain today) might not be of the level it is today it was still exceedingly substantial.

its not that rare. And i see no credit deserved for achieving it at the start of one's career and then failing to recapture it for the rest.
it simply is a matter of happenstance - some do it early on, some do it mid career and some do it near the end.

No, very few do it from the start, a few do it at the end and most do it in the middle.
It's pretty unusual - and very credible - for anyone to achieve in Test-cricket from their first forays.

Actually given that most self opinionated idiots have never travelled more than a few hundred miles from their homes, it does make sense why there is so much verbal diarrea in humankind and utterly idiotic perspectives widely prevalent.

You'd think all society was on the brink of collapse, wouldn't you?

THe trough is very relevant- because the player needs the peak and the trough to define how good they were. Else a player with 2-3 years of blazing brilliance sandwiched between years of mediocrity is as good as someone who had blazing brilliance for 2-3 years sandwiched between good performances.

Neither of them affect the brilliance of the peak - the peak is equally brilliant whatever surrounds it.
The overall career is what is concerned with the examples you have given - and frankly I couldn't give a flying fu<k about the 1984-1991 Botham because I don't think it said anything other than that he was being affected by injury.

And i thought your entire contention early on was that Botham's waning figures were due to his waning ability- his fitness shot to pieces and him allegedly unable to bowl certain deliveries anymore.
Do make up your mind.

Botham's waning figures were due to his waning performance - not to people getting a better idea of how to combat ability which remained the same.

Amongst quality allrounders, there are quiete a few who outstripped or match a batting average of 37 and bowling average of 20 during the same period. Most notably, Imran Khan, Sobers and Miller.
All of them had far better troughs than Botham.

And as such Sobers and Miller were clearly better batsmen because, in general, they were playing sufficiently often in comparably difficult conditions.
Imran, on the other hand, more often had far easier conditions.

Every comedown is influenced by factors.Some get old, some get injured and some lose the magic touch.
Its all 'to-MAY-toes' and 'to-MAH-toes' to me.

And "losing the magic touch" and basic being-worked-out (which are fairly similar) are something which affects a player's standing in my eyes.
Being injured and getting old is something which has no effect in my eyes.

Which is why you will probably forever remain an idiot with very little clue as to how the world operates,runs and how humanity conducts itself inside various cultural and regional realms.
Fine by me!

If it's so fine why do you even bother suggesting I "change".
You can keep you banal and downright pathetic views of my "clue as to how the world operates,runs and how humanity conducts itself inside various cultural and regional realms" if you want, I don't really care.

ULEAC, the most prevalent board in britain, subscribes to the marking scheme i am alluding to.

University Of London Examinations And Assessment Council is actually not a remarkably commonly-used Board, OCR, EdExcel and AQA to name three are much better-known.

All standards are relative. If i define the standard to be 'university level', then all highschools are substandard.

No, they're just of a lower standard.
Substandard is only applicable if something is involved in a certain level when not good enough to be there - eg Bangladesh in ODIs.

Statistics spell out the bottomline and the biggest part of the story. As such, the intangiables cannot outweigh the tangiables for me.

And because there are so many intangibles that affect the tangibles that's why you fall down sometimes.

 

[Richard]

(Opens popcorn)

You seriously view this as theatre?

 

[C_C]

Oh, indeed, in mine too.Just that Botham wasn't a lesser player for most of his career - he was a good batsman for pretty much 2\3 of it.

He was a lesser player for most of his career. 5 years of sunshine...9-10 years of doghouse.
Thats most of his career to me.
You'll also find that careers are evaluated in terms of YEARS OF SERVICE and not just instances of service.

Kambli was found-out after a handful of Tests - Adams wasn't found-out either, he just had faced 2 exceptional bowling-attacks in his last 2 Test-series. Stackpole I haven't a clue because I haven't taken a decent look.

Kambli was found out after 2-3 years and Adams was found out categorically so. He didnt just run into two great attacks and bombed out against them- those two attacks exposed his weakness that almost every other team consistently exploited from then on.

And sometimes people do play a few innings in various conditions.
If it was certain conditions that Botham was worked-out in, meanwhile, I wonder why no-one ever mentioned how they'd done it.
You'd think 66 Tests of success, however, might be enough to demonstrate that someone can't be worked-out, though.

Umm. Read a few more cricket books. Botham was figured out primarily by batting outside the crease to negate his swing. He lacked a decent yorker or a shorter one to make them step back in.
Regardless, time is of the essence here, not just mindless experience. You need time to work someone out or figure out a flaw in a puzzle. Merely attempting the puzzle 100 times isnt good enough.

So? Being home territory doesn't make difficult conditions easily playable.

yes it does it make it easier relatively, because you have more experience in dealing with the conditions.

As any good exponent of swing can.
Fact is, there are conditions that make mere high pace and bounce awkward, too, if there are enough bowlers bowling it.
If you think all of them were no harder to play on a green seamer than a featherbed, meanwhile, think again.

Irrelevant.
Fact is, English bowling conditions wernt the ideal template for the WI bowlers- they thrived on wickets like Sabina Park, Barbados, WACA etc- where bounce and pace is the factor,not swing.
They did excellently in swinging conditions ebcause they were so good.....but it wasnt home conditions to them, which is the essence of that point.

And Botham only played in West Indies during the time when he was a good batsman once, in which he was shockingly poor.
Doesn't prove a tremendous amount.
That he failed in 1985\86 didn't say anything we don't know already.

Incorrect. He played WI twice during his 'purple patch' of pre early 80s days and sucked ********.
Infact, his two best series against WI came when he was 'past it'.
Botham at his best sucked ******** against WI bowling and overall he was hopeless against the topflight bowling attack.
Which is why, i dont consider him to be as good a batsman as Imran or Kapil.

Except you haven't got any first-hand knowledge of most of what Atherton experienced - you don't even seem to have any grasp of precisely what it was.

I have a far bigger grasp of what atherton went through compared to you because i was in similar condition personally.
An amputee knows the conditions and trials of a fellow amputee far better than you or i know.

But there were many other contributing factors, none of which you grasp.

Irrelevant. The central defining aspect was his back problem, something i can intimately identify with, unlike you.
So i suggest you shut up and learn from people who have similar experiences instead of presuming to know it all.

Yes, and I was wrong to not place everything in a totally bulletproof case.
Something that, with most people, won't matter.
With someone who's desperately flailing around for any mistake they can clutch at, it does matter.

When people want to make a statement that has a degree associated with it, they make it plain. And if they dont and are corrected, they are humble and quick enough to accept their mistake, instead of being an **** and trying to fight about it.
So like i said, its water under the bridge and your insecurity of being wrong is getting to your head.

If they did check, though, they'd find, as I do, that there are no faults where you've said there are.

here you go again with your narcissistic delusions of grandeur. What the majority thinks or for the matter, any other individual thinks, is not for you to claim but for them to voice.

Both Holding and Shoaib stand-out, indeed, but as to who was faster - Shoaib might have been a bit quicker, they might have been a slight difference.

They may not be able to tell you who bowled the fastest delivery amongst the two, but anyone who's faced them both would be able to tell you who was faster on average.

It all started with me mentioning how South Africa mostly competed with England and Australia, referring to the period from the 1910s onwards.

Read again- i made a claim how south africa were the bangladesh of their times and you disputed it.

Never before, eh?
You think no-one had ever bowled sustained spells of short-pitched bowling?

No one had bowled a sustained spell of short pitched bowling with the legstump line targetting the body of the batsmen before bodyline.

Well I've yet to hear how it involved 90% of players.

it involved nearly 90% of the good/great players. Read up on your own time- the evidence is pretty categoric.

Yet they'd already established themselves and gained impressive stats - the fact that they managed to continue to do so doesn't actually matter.

ofcourse it does matter. If this was the same setting, Andrew Strauss would be involved in matchfixing and performance fixing...which would affect most of his career in the future.
Back in those days, reputition and 'talent' counted for lot and most 'talented/next big thing' indulged in stuff like these. which makes their statistics pretty dubious due to the artificiality of it.

Does everything turn to amateur for you?
I've never heard something as ridiculous as an amateur "following" - fact is a following is either keen or it's not.

The loss is yours if you havnt heard of 'amatuer following'.
Amatuer following is essentially when something is followed purely from an entertainment angle and very few people taking up the sport in a serious matter.

No, very few do it from the start, a few do it at the end and most do it in the middle.
It's pretty unusual - and very credible - for anyone to achieve in Test-cricket from their first forays.

Pure happenstance. It doesnt matter where your peak is. What matters is how your peak compares to the rest and how your trough compares with the rest.

ou'd think all society was on the brink of collapse, wouldn't you?

Collapse or not is irrelevant. It is quiete f*cked because a lot of people with very little clue(like yourself for example) think that their viewpoint is the correct one that describes this world accurately.

Neither of them affect the brilliance of the peak - the peak is equally brilliant whatever surrounds it.
The overall career is what is concerned with the examples you have given - and frankly I couldn't give a flying fu<k about the 1984-1991 Botham because I don't think it said anything other than that he was being affected by injury.

Without the balanced perspective of overall career and the troughs to define the peaks, nobody has any claims to greatness, for a lot of people have performed for that one brilliant moment and if taken a calculus perspective- where only the peak matters, one can arguably say that everybody who's cracked a century is pretty much as good a batsman as another, for during one's peak ( the solitary century spanning a solitary test), he was as good as any.
Which is bulldust.
Botham overall is NOT as good as Imran/Kapil and Botham's peak is NOT as impressive as Imran's.
That is the bottomline fact.

Botham's waning figures were due to his waning performance - not to people getting a better idea of how to combat ability which remained the same.

it was because of both. Batsmen took to batting outside the crease to Botham and Botham lost it from then forth.

Imran, on the other hand, more often had far easier conditions.

BS.
I guess thats why Imran did credibly in WI while botham sucked goat balls.

And "losing the magic touch" and basic being-worked-out (which are fairly similar) are something which affects a player's standing in my eyes.
Being injured and getting old is something which has no effect in my eyes.

I agree with the last part of the statement but i maintain that Botham was worked out to a large degree with batsmen batting outside the crease to him.

If it's so fine why do you even bother suggesting I "change".
You can keep you banal and downright pathetic views of my "clue as to how the world operates,runs and how humanity conducts itself inside various cultural and regional realms" if you want, I don't really care.

I was trying to be of some nominal help- obviously that wont happen.
Ofcourse, if you DO travel extensively, then you shall know why your view of this world is trivial and utterly idiotic.
Like i said, experience travelling extensively and then talk- or talk to extensively travelled people and backpackers and see how their viewpoint totally contrasts to your idiocy.

University Of London Examinations And Assessment Council is actually not a remarkably commonly-used Board, OCR, EdExcel and AQA to name three are much better-known.

It is the second most common board after EdExcel and oh by the way- EdExcel uses similar marking schemes.

No, they're just of a lower standard.
Substandard is only applicable if something is involved in a certain level when not good enough to be there - eg Bangladesh in ODIs.

Substandard is something that is eclipsed by a higher standard.
Undergrad is substandard from masters, masters is substandard from doctorate,highschool is substandard from undergrad, etc etc.
Standards are relative, not empirical.

And because there are so many intangibles that affect the tangibles that's why you fall down sometimes.

Judging by the tangiables always gives a more accurate picture than judging by the intangiables.

 

[marc71178]

You can analyse Smith all you want, and see h

Yes, and it's something that has happened.

 

[Richard]

No, it's not, Smith has not been worked-out, Bicknell just exploited his weakness twice at the end of a series, and Hoggard 3 times in the middle of the next.
Just because someone has not scored runs doesn't mean they've been worked-out, and it's not escaped my notice that the only method to meet any success against him has been the precise opposite to the one you've advocated time after time.