Worst team to tour Australia

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Jungle Jumbo

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]

Originally Posted by burgey

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[Faisal1985]

Certainly can't see any other team being as poor as Pakistan....

[Richard]

Only in the field has this Pakistan side been poor beyond the bounds or normality and acceptability. With bat and, especially, ball the 2009/10 tourists have been far from poor.

Poor fielding - and especially exceptionally poor fielding - of course can turn a decent side into a running joke however.

[Sir Alex]

Originally Posted by Richard

Only in the field has this Pakistan side been poor beyond the bounds or normality and acceptability. With bat and, especially, ball the 2009/10 tourists have been far from poor.

Poor fielding - and especially exceptionally poor fielding - of course can turn a decent side into a running joke however.

I don't agree with the statement that their batting was "far from poor".

Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | Cricinfo.com

Only 1 player crossed 200 in the whole series, Salman Butt, who averaged 46 (which was the highest average). The only guys to average above 30 were Shoiab Malik, Khurram Manzoor and Umar Akmal apart from Butt and the former two just played one test and even among them the highest was 38.50.

[Richard]

Certainly the batting was far from outstanding, but compared to the fielding it looked masterful.

[Sir Alex]

Originally Posted by Richard

Certainly the batting was far from outstanding, but compared to the fielding it looked masterful.

I am intrigued and flummoxxed by your ability to make comparisons across disciplines. However I gather what you meant. Their fielding was bottom of the barrell stuff, absolutely dire. Their batting was poor while bowling was pretty good.