***Official*** South Africa in Australia 2012

[Jono]

Originally Posted by vic_orthdox

Should have played him, 100%. Said it when he missed. He's at least going to be a threat to the left handers with his wrong'un, probably more than to right handers.

And if Kallis can get through even 8 overs a day, they should be right with taking Tahir in.

The fact Tahir is better than fat **** Kleinveldt doesn't mean he's done what SA have asked for him though. I assume you weren't directly disagreeing with my point though.

Agree that Tahir should have played. But I think most will agree that we expected more of Tahir, particularly since he bowled pretty well in the World Cup.

[Ruckus]

The only problem I had with the rate we were going at was when Wade came in. The early declaration obviously didn't help his cause, but the fact is he ended up with a SR of 54 which just isn't good enough in that situation. Should really have been trying to go t20 style with a SR of 100 or more. I don't know why in those situations a competent tail-ender like Pattinson isn't promoted and told literally to hit out to quickly try and get 20 or so runs.

[Jono]

Why would a tailender be better suited to scoring quicker runs than Wade though?

[Spark]

Pattinson isn't a quick scorer at all...

EDIT: And given that he spent the last three overs of the innings literally trying to hit every ball for four, I think it was pretty obvious what the thinking was - "take a few overs to get the measure of a pitch, then go for it" rather than try a wild slog with the field up and slips in place

[Ruckus]

Originally Posted by Jono

Why would a tailender be better suited to scoring quicker runs than Wade though?

They wouldn't, but it seemed as though someone had told Wade to not go all out, because he started ridiculously slowly with an obvious intention of getting his eye in. I just assumed that there was still some desire to get a fair few more runs, and they wanted to make sure they had enough proper batsman to do that. But if that's the case, I don't know why they couldn't just promote a tailender - at worst they'll get out for a quick 5 runs, leaving Wade to 'stabilize' if need be.

[vic_orthdox]

Was smart cricket from South Africa too, they barely bowled a ball at Wade's stumps, kept it wide on a decent length. Eventually he had enough and went at it, but you could see his early intention was to try and drop and run anything near him to get Clarke on strike.

[Scaly piscine]

Originally Posted by uvelocity

we did accelerate, we did declare. we didn't have as many runs as you dreamt we'd have, but how many would we have needed after



clarke and lyon for, lol wait for it, 50-60 overs. close of play: sa 2/200

Australia took a wicket with the new ball and Lyon took two with the old ball in 13 overs. So yea add in more overs from Lyon and Clarke and that makes 2 wickets in total does it? Did Hilf, Siddle and Quiney do particularly well? Pattinson was an obvious option for short bursts.

Scoring at 3-4 an over when you in a declaration chase (Aus managed this before a late 3 over flurry pushed the run-rate up, which begs the question why didn't they do that earlier or at least try to) is something you'd expect 20-30 years ago. The game has moved on. Teams go to incredibly lengths to analyse everything and find every extra 0.01% they can find. Then they piss about when they're 30-35 runs from a declaration with Wade on 2* off 20 balls or whatever it was. It's not massively important in itself but it all matters.

[Ruckus]

Originally Posted by Spark

Pattinson isn't a quick scorer at all...

EDIT: And given that he spent the last three overs of the innings literally trying to hit every ball for four, I think it was pretty obvious what the thinking was - "take a few overs to get the measure of a pitch, then go for it" rather than try a wild slog with the field up and slips in place

How do you know that? He hasn't ever been in a situation where he is asked to hit out.

And yeh, that's what happened with the Wade situation, but there was obviously some miscommunication and/or stupidity on Wade's behalf because Clarke declared just as he was about to get going. The end result - a SR of 54.

[TNT]

Originally Posted by Ruckus

The only problem I had with the rate we were going at was when Wade came in. The early declaration obviously didn't help his cause, but the fact is he ended up with a SR of 54 which just isn't good enough in that situation. Should really have been trying to go t20 style with a SR of 100 or more. I don't know why in those situations a competent tail-ender like Pattinson isn't promoted and told literally to hit out to quickly try and get 20 or so runs.

I imagine the fast bowlers would have been getting teady to bowl, not ideal to ask Patto to go out and scamper up and down the wickets chasing runs before going out to bowl.

[uvelocity]

I wonder if they'd have busted out the segway to get him there and had duminy drop anchor if required

[Ruckus]

They'd be out there for like 10 minutes, it wouldn't effect them at all. Were talking about a potential quick 20-30 here anyway, so ideally most of those would come in boundaries. Obviously it would just be better if Wade was told to hit out from ball 1, because he is more likely to get quick runs anyway, but for some reason he didn't do that so...

[Garson007]

Scaly is still butthurt England lost to South Africa.

[AlanJLegend]

I'm a bit surprised about all this criticism of Wade. I have to admit I was yelling at my TV when he blocked out an entire over, but I think he had the right idea. Perhaps he didn't realise Clarke was going to declare so soon (seems unlikely), but if somebody is going to come out to hit out I have no problem with them taking a couple of overs to get their eye in before going all guns blazing. Seems a lot better than coming out and getting out for 5 off 5, especially when Clarke was scoring quickly anyway.

[Ruckus]

Yeah it would have been fine, but only if the declaration was after he started to get his SR higher. Otherwise it was pretty pointless.

As Scaly said anyway, in the bigger picture it isn't that important, but the little things, even if just 3 or 4 overs saved, do add up.

[GotSpin]

What the hell is SP on about?