Ordinary away? Go for the DRAW

[NUFAN]

By picking more batsman in there XI and having the team tactic of occupying the crease, not worrying about batting run rates and bowling negatively.

SL could play.

1. Parana
2. Kara
3. Sanga
4. Mahela
5. Black Magic
6. Dilshan
7. Thirimanne
8. Mathews
9. Chandimal
10. Herath
11. Kulasekera

Overs to be bowled predominately by Kulasekera, Herath, Dilshan and Mathews. Bowl negatively and to a ring field.

I think batting down to 9 means that the opponent trying to force the pace will not want to declare too early with the extra batting strength.

Obviously this is such a negative tactic and I would hate a team doing this at home, but I honestly think that its a plausible option for a few countries who have weak attacks when playing away from home, preventing 3-0 loses.

If Cricket ever ends up ever having a Test Championship, just say with points awarded like in football with 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, this would be the equivalent of a poor team parking the bus in front of the goals.


Crazy, Stupid? no, no.

[benchmark00]

Well this is interesting.

[NUFAN]

Well this is interesting.

Your comment makes the whole thread idea worthwhile.

[Daemon]

Wouldn't put this above India as well tbh.

Sehwag
Gambhir
Pujara
Tendulkar
Kohli
R Sharma
Rahane/Tiwary
MS Dhoni/U Kaul
Ashwin
Ojha
Yadav

Ojha to bowl till his arms drop off

[NUFAN]

Yeah Ashwin at 9 is very handy cause he can bat.

I know its a bit of an insult for India as they have hopes of being number one, but given the series against Australia and England away from India, you would think that it wouldn't be the absolute most terrible option to start a series in this method.

It annoys me when you see a team have say 2 spinners who bowl 40 overs each and the quick bowls 8 overs 0/46 and comes in at 10 or 11.

Bangladesh could potentially try this tactic at home or away really, just have a single specialist quick at 11, Gazi at 10 (or just Gazi at 11) and the rest batsman and keeper considering Shakib, Nasir, Mahmudullah, Naeem all bowl.

[Daemon]

Yeah Ashwin at 9 is very handy cause he can bat.

I know its a bit of an insult for India as they have hopes of being number one, but given the series against Australia and England away from India, you would think that it wouldn't be the absolute most terrible option to start a series in this method.

It annoys me when you see a team have say 2 spinners who bowl 40 overs each and the quick bowls 8 overs 0/46 and comes in at 10 or 11.

Bangladesh could potentially try this tactic at home or away really, just have a single specialist quick at 11, Gazi at 10 (or just Gazi at 11) and the rest batsman and keeper considering Shakib, Nasir, Mahmudullah, Naeem all bowl.

[uvelocity]

Yeah Ashwin at 9 is very handy cause he can bat.

I know its a bit of an insult for India as they have hopes of being number one, but given the series against Australia and England away from India, you would think that it wouldn't be the absolute most terrible option to start a series in this method.

It annoys me when you see a team have say 2 spinners who bowl 40 overs each and the quick bowls 8 overs 0/46 and comes in at 10 or 11.

Bangladesh could potentially try this tactic at home or away really, just have a single specialist quick at 11, Gazi at 10 (or just Gazi at 11) and the rest batsman and keeper considering Shakib, Nasir, Mahmudullah, Naeem all bowl.

yeah they're mad doing that stuff

[LongHopCassidy]

Does Sehwag still bowl? Surprisingly canny IMO, even when the deck offers nothing.

[NasserFan207]

Yeah Ashwin at 9 is very handy cause he can bat.

I know its a bit of an insult for India as they have hopes of being number one, but given the series against Australia and England away from India, you would think that it wouldn't be the absolute most terrible option to start a series in this method.

It annoys me when you see a team have say 2 spinners who bowl 40 overs each and the quick bowls 8 overs 0/46 and comes in at 10 or 11.

Bangladesh could potentially try this tactic at home or away really, just have a single specialist quick at 11, Gazi at 10 (or just Gazi at 11) and the rest batsman and keeper considering Shakib, Nasir, Mahmudullah, Naeem all bowl.

They don't do this because it works, they do it because they know that to progress in terms of quality of cricket they eventually need good opening bowlers

Your method is like giving up on ever improving.

[NUFAN]

They don't do this because it works, they do it because they know that to progress in terms of quality of cricket they eventually need good opening bowlers

Your method is like giving up on ever improving.

Not losing matches is an improvement on losing.

I know its a BS thing to do but I would love to watch a series if a lower ranked team tried this tactic.

[Jono]

Yeah good thread. Risk of losing the toss and bowling first is huge though. Could be a painful 3 days.

I used to load up my International Cricket Captain team with 11 batsmen, play a one-dayer and just **** teams up hardcore with the bat.

Once or twice I got chased down though. Was crushing seeing Marcus Trescothick go for 12 rpo in his 5 over spell.

[Prince EWS]

I think it would take the piss a bit, from a personal perspective anyway. I can enjoy even the most one-sided contests for the ongoing personal battles and the contest between bat and ball. I can sit there enthralled regardless of the match situation. I think some (see: most) of that would be lost if I had to watch Dilshan bowl 40 overs. It'd make half the game entirely irrelevant from the outset; the away side wouldn't even be trying to bowl the opposition out at all so when they were bowling we'd just be essentially waiting for that part to be over, so we could see whether they actually could bat out the rest of the match. We wouldn't even have the intriguing personal development to watch as I'm sure Dilshan wouldn't really care that match if he went for 0/150. Nuwan Pradeep might not even actually be a better bowler than Dilshan but watching him try to prove he his for his livelihood in the game is interesting all the same.

It might not actually be a bad tactic as such so I'm not going to argue against that point, but I think it could really hurt Test cricket and unlike NUFAN I would not "love to watch a series if a lower ranked team tried this tactic." It may make the match situation more interesting on Day 5 but half the game would become entirely pointless and the standard of cricket would take a hit.

Bangladesh are the obvious exception because of the balance of their actual resources though.

[benchmark00]

How many test teams, especially of the calibre of Bangladesh etc, have batsmen who are 8th, 9th and 10th in line that are actually going to worry the opposition? The answer is very very few. In fact the only teams this tactic could work for is the strong test nations, because only they'd have the depth in batting, and it would only work against lesser opponents, which is the opposite of what is being argued.

And if you're a stronger team, you'd go for the win.

[NUFAN]

Yeah its taking the piss completely but as I said earlier it can work for strong batting teams who have ordinary bowlers apart from a durable spinner or two. Sri Lanka is the best example and India aren't bad too.

There are some potential positives though. It makes the top 6 bats focus more as they know there are 2 or 3 other bats in the setup who could take there spots when they revert back to the traditional top 6 bats, 3 quicks, spinner method.

It makes the other team declare later as they might think they'll need more runs to play around with against a team full of batsman.

Of course the negative is the team light on bowling gets smashed at 5 an over so the batting team has to bat a crazy amount of overs to save the game AND the good batsman at 8 or 9 end up making 20* and it barely helps the team at all.

[NasserFan207]

I wouldn't mind SL/Bangladesh doing it if they were in a position in a series where tactically not losing mattered a great deal, in general though I hate the idea.

If you aren't selecting bowlers you shouldn't be playing tests.