Worst team to tour Australia

[Sir Alex]

I feel the same about Warne in India - lack of support in 98, was injured, a few bad calls. What do you think mate, or is it just making excuses? I think as a forum we need to discuss it more

No.

 

[Johnners]

Don't think the worst team to tour is necessarily the team who has performed the worst whilst on tour, if you catch my drift? I would say the Indian team of 00, WI of 00 and England 06/07 were better teams than WI 09, but their performances in the series in question were pitiful.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

Graeme Smith 2005/06.

 

[Julian87]

Hahaha MSK Prasad....the launching pad for Brett Lee's test career.

 

[Craig]

Don't think the worst team to tour is necessarily the team who has performed the worst whilst on tour, if you catch my drift? I would say the Indian team of 00, WI of 00 and England 06/07 were better teams than WI 09, but their performances in the series in question were pitiful.

After their hiding in Brisbane, I really did think the West Indies played well in the series(after Brisbane, I watched most of the Adelaide Test, and bits and pieces of the Perth Test). Certainly Adelaide they played very well.

 

[Noble One]

West Indies in 2000/2001 by far the worst visiting team.

Put up a fight during a number of periods, but were completely woeful for the vast majority of the five Test series. Ganga and Cambell provided a guaranteed early breakthrough. Lara was in shocking form (bar one innings), and was totally disinterested in the game. The middle order of Hinds, Samuals, Sarwan and Adams consisted of zero fight or run scoring ability the entire series, and Marlon Black and Nixon Mclean ended up bowling the vast majority of overs during the series. Walsh was brave, but was bowling at best low 130k's.

Prefer to never think of that series again. Good watching for a Funky Miller fan though.

 

[Richard]

Is this worst team or worst performance? As pointed-out, the India team of 1999/2000 was certainly a far from poor side - only MSK Prasad and Vijay Bharadwaj were genuine "prank" Test cricketers who clearly didn't deserve to be there. But for a team so packed with quality, their performance was diabolical.

In terms of the worst side, the WI side of 2005/06 was comfortably lesser than that of 2000/01 - the only difference is it was a five-Test series in the former and merely three in the latter. A three-nil whitewash with all three games back-to-back is over much quicker than a five-nil one and is thus more promptly forgotten. The 2000/01 side, while poor, had plenty of players who had been real quality and were still to some extent so (Campbell, Lara, Walsh), as well as some who were completely past it (Adams). The only players who simply did not belong at all in 2000/01 were Marlon Black and Daren Ganga - and even Ganga went on to have his moments and has the mitigation of being pushed out of position in that series.

Worst performance the 2000/01 WI and 1999/2000 India sides are probably contenders, but so is the 2006/07 England one. Purely because they were bettered but far from completely outclassed and should not have lost by such large margins as they ended-up doing. But worst side, has to be WI 2005/06 or Pak 2009/10 (with the Pakistani fielding playing a considerable part in that).

 

[G.I.Joe]

Hahaha MSK Prasad....the launching pad for Brett Lee's test career.

I remember watching an emerging players' tournament being played out in Los Angeles just before that series. Lee was terrifyingly quick and accurate. Knew he was going to run through the side as soon as the Indian and Australian sides were announced. I think he ended up with an average of 16 or thereabouts.

 

[Richard]

Lee averaged 16.07 in his first 7(?) Tests. Perhaps not coincidentally, 4 of those 7 came in the aforementioned India 1999/2000 and WI 2000/01 series'. I've always wished I'd watched those series', however, because it really fascinates me whether Lee honestly did bowl superlatively and then just lost it completely after his elbow injury, or whether he was just bowling every bit as woefully as he generally did 2001-2006/07 and getting bad batting flattering his figures.

 

[GIMH]

ha ha the thing i found most amusing is that 06 is almost non-existent in the media.
Its like the ashes are every 4 years, 05 and 09.

They are.

The title says 'worst team' so I don't think either our 06-07 effort, or Pakistan's this year can come into it. I also find it a little simplistic to say that 5-0 takes some beating, as we were up against arguably the best team ever and they happened to be up for it more than ever.

I don't know which team is the worst I've seen in Australia but I've seen plenty of teams worse than those two. Pretty poor performances though, particularly from England in Melbourne and Sydney. The players should have been forced to pay the fans' airfare after that shambles.

 

[Jungle Jumbo]

Surely the 2002-03 side was worse than the 2006-07 side? Miles worse in my book.

 

[silentstriker]

Haha, that Indian tour - now that brings back memories. Not pretty ones.

 

[zaremba]

Speaking as a bit of a connoisseur of crap England teams, our team in 2006/7 wasn't that bad. It was basically made up of the same players who won the other 2 of the last 3 Ashes series. It's just that at key moments on that tour they played like muppets, and the Crims played very well.

 

[stephen]

Lee averaged 16.07 in his first 7(?) Tests. Perhaps not coincidentally, 4 of those 7 came in the aforementioned India 1999/2000 and WI 2000/01 series'. I've always wished I'd watched those series', however, because it really fascinates me whether Lee honestly did bowl superlatively and then just lost it completely after his elbow injury, or whether he was just bowling every bit as woefully as he generally did 2001-2006/07 and getting bad batting flattering his figures.

From my recollection he generally bowled in very good areas during those series. Really made the batsmen play. He really used his speed to his advantage to actually take wickets. He descended into bouncer/yorker mode for the next five years until he learned that putting the ball on a good length tends to take more wickets in the last Aussie ashes series.

 

[stephen]

Speaking as a bit of a connoisseur of crap England teams, our team in 2006/7 wasn't that bad. It was basically made up of the same players who won the other 2 of the last 3 Ashes series. It's just that at key moments on that tour they played like muppets, and the Crims played very well.

Yes, that's the thing - the English side was not a bad one by any stretch of the imagination. They even put up a very good fight for the first test and four days. Losing Adelaide seemed to cripple their morale though and they promptly lost the plot to a very strong side with a number of all time greats who were playing their final Ashes series. Australia's bowling attack was fantastic in that series and all of the batsmen made runs.

 

[AaronK]

This current pakistani team isn't the worst team that has toured pakistan..the team has some potential but they are lost due to weak leadership and captiancy..if younis was the captain... i bet things were different..

apart from the first test match.. the rest of the test matches were handed to Aus by the pakistani players.. They are losing the ODI because they are so crashed by the lose of the second test match.. they are playing with the mind set that they can't beat Aus no mater how hard they can try.. in situation like this what a team need is their senior players to regroup and perform. unfortuntly for pakistan, Younis is out of form, malik is crap, Yousuf is under the pressure of captaincy and afridi is the only one that is performing..I won't be surprise if they lose this 5-0..

 

[MrIncredible]

Worst team to tour Oz (apart from Bangladesh and Zim Im assuming) would be the WI in 2000 hands down.

 

[Richard]

Surely the 2002-03 side was worse than the 2006-07 side? Miles worse in my book.

Dunno about miles worse - it's a pretty close-run thing. What's easily lost sight of given that one series ended four-one and the other five-nil is that the 2006/07 side actually put in far better performances than the 2002/03 one - in 2002/03 we were essentially hammered in four Tests before turning the tables in the last one; in 2006/07 we were hammered once then competed well for a time before losing ground in four.

The 2002/03 side was of course not "one" thing because as in so many Ashes there was such severe disruption from injury. The first-choice side drawn from those who were fit for most of the series was probably something like Trescothick, Vaughan, Butcher, Hussain, Stewart, Crawley, White, Dawson, Caddick, Hoggard, Harmison. Of that lot only Dawson, Harmison and (at that point in his career) Hoggard stand-out as obviously miles below requirements; in 2006/07 it was Strauss, Cook, Bell, Pietersen, Collingwood, Flintoff, G. Jones (with Read coming in), Hoggard, Harmison, Anderson (with Mahmood coming in), Panesar. Of that lot there's Geraint, Anderson (and both of their replacements) and Harmison who were miles below requirements. I guess you could say that the presence of Pietersen, one truly top-notch player, in 2006/07 tips it fairly comfortably in the latter side's favour but equally the rest of the batting favours 2002/03, with Stewart's superiority to Jones and Read outstripping Pietersen's to anyone. In terms of the bowling the Hoggard of 2006/07 was probably better than anyone of 2002/03, but again in the rest 2002/03 pretty much comes-out on top.

As I say - don't anyone get the idea that either were superlative sides because they weren't, but equally neither were full of hacks either. Mostly they were decent middle-of-the-road sides who were confronted with an outstanding one and had no aid from weather or circumstances as some predecessors had done (though in 2002/03 we had some amount of aid when our injury epidemic spread to the Australian side).

 

[MrIncredible]

i feel the same about warne in india - lack of support in 98, was injured, a few bad calls. What do you think mate, or is it just making excuses? I think as a forum we need to discuss it more

lol

 

[Richard]

Speaking as a bit of a connoisseur of crap England teams, our team in 2006/7 wasn't that bad. It was basically made up of the same players who won the other 2 of the last 3 Ashes series.

Had never given thought to that before so I decided to have a look:

2005		2006/07			2009
Trescothick	Strauss			Strauss
Strauss		Cook			Cook
Vaughan		Bell			Bopara (Trott)
Bell		Pietersen		Pietersen
Pietersen	Collingwood		Collingwood
Flintoff	Flintoff		Flintoff
G Jones		G Jones \ Read		Prior
Giles		Hoggard			Swann
Hoggard		Harmison		Broad
Harmison	Anderson \ Mahmood	Anderson
S Jones		Panesar			Onions

Interestingly, only Strauss, Pietersen and Flintoff played in all three; however, there were marked similarities in each side compared to the one before.

What also of course needs noting is the stages various players were going through in their careers - Strauss for instance was worked-out in calendar-years 2006 and 2007 before reviving his career starting from the home summer of 2008. Flintoff while he was not the hack he's sometimes portrayed as was clearly better in 2004, 2005 and early-2006 than at any point thereafter. Really the only constant through the three series was Pietersen and even he missed the last three Tests of 2009 with injury.