***Official*** India in England

[adharcric]

Stupid decision by Dravid IMO. The outfield will still be very wet, and the ball will get soaking, and soft. Basically this will take Kumble out of the equation and there will be minimal swing at the most.

Greigy.

Vaughan would have chosen to bat first had he won the toss, anyway early wickets here and then it could all be awesome.

Pretty much.

Seems quite ludicrous to me. Not only do India rely on their spinners for the majority of their victories, but the outfield is wet. Obviously bowling on a theoretically drier outfield later is going to be of an advantage, and overcast skies are predicted throughout anyway. I just don't get it.

Do you get it now?

Is it a defnsive gesture to protect his own batsmen, one wonders? If so he shouldn't - remember 2002 when India (bravely but correctly) chose to bat at cloudy Headingley?

No comment.

That's right folks.

 

[Raghav]

That's right folks.

I was watching each and every ball of the match and also the toss. Commentators and Vaughan himself told he preferred bowling in those conditions

 

[adharcric]

I was watching each and every ball of the match and also the toss. Commentators and Vaughan himself told he preferred bowling in those conditions

That's fine. Just responding to some comments that I read on here.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Haha my post was awful, a cert for the Greigy tbh.

 

[Raghav]

That's fine. Just responding to some comments that I read on here.

Alright mate. Good work with those multi quotes

 

[silentstriker]

yep! Are you ready?

Yes....though don't you have it with Fiery?

 

[Raghav]

Yes....though don't you have it with Fiery?

Yes, I have it. Cant we have avatar challenge with more than one member at a time?

EDIT: I was so confident that i am gonna win and I forgot that if I lose then I cant have two avatars....

 

[Raghav]

Yes....though don't you have it with Fiery?

If I lose, I will put your avatar for the next coming week.

 

[wpdavid]

Was it really the minefield that some of the commentators are making out? Sure it wasn't an absolute road, and India bowled well, but that shouldn't be a shock at this level. Looking at some of the dismissals, you just want to weep at the lack of application and wonder why we can't produce a Thorpe or Hussain to dig in and produce some sort of score.

tbh when did we last see this lot dig in and produce a score when not on the flattest track imaginable and/or against a seriously weak attack? There's a fine line between continuity in selection and the sheer complacency that comes from knowing your place in the side is safe because you average over 40 in what passes for test cricket nowadays, and I reckon we've well & truly hit the wrong side of it. India will win this by a mile - quite possibly by an innings - and probably go on to sew up the series at the Oval without too much trouble. The only good that might come out of it is that England might, just possibly, forget about the 2009 ashes, forget about wondering whether they're the 2nd best side in the world (an absolute irrelevance, if ever there was one) and start to do something about the limitations of this bunch of showboaters. A pox on all of their houses.

 

[silentstriker]

It is obvious, though, that cricket must do whatever it can to avoid days such as today. A good-natured crowd at Nottingham bore the delay with patience and understanding. But the game mustn't stretch the indulgence of its primary patrons. Expensive drainage systems must be seen as a necessity, not a luxury.

I remember travelling by taxi to the Brisbane cricket ground on the first morning of the first Test between India and Australia in 2003 and the rain was so heavy that it was impossible to see the car in front. It had been raining all night and since I was jetlagged I even considered turning back. But it stopped raining and, incredibly, play started on time. It was a stop-start day because it rained throughout but never was play held up because of ground conditions.

It was a similar story from Jamaica last year, where the rain was so heavy the night before India and West Indies were due to play their first one-day match that the teams didn't even bother to come to the ground in the morning. An agency correspondent famously filed a report announcing not only the abandonment of that match but predicting a similar fate for the next match, scheduled at the same ground a couple of days later. He perhaps went by precedent: on India's last tour in 2002, the first two one-dayers, also scheduled at Jamaica, had been washed out.

A few minutes later a harried Rahul Dravid was spotted at the team hotel trying to get his team together. He had just been told that the game would start in half an hour. And it did. A significant change had taken place in Jamaica since 2002: as part of the preparation for the World Cup, the drainage system had been overhauled and it included sand-based top soil. An improved drainage facility would be, for the West Indies, an enduring legacy of the otherwise wretched World Cup.

It should become part of the minimum requirements for every Test ground.

Couldn't agree more if I tried.

 

[silentstriker]

Was it really the minefield that some of the commentators are making out?

Who is claiming it to be a minefield?

 

[PhoenixFire]

Haha, imagine that, a team turning up 20 mins before the start of an ODI.

 

[wpdavid]

Who is claiming it to be a minefield?

Some of the guys on TMS are of the view that England's performance was primarily due to conditions. Now OK, they're talking mainly about swing, so technically speaking the term"minefield" isn't spot on, but I'm just trashing the whole idea that England's batsmen weren't largely the authors of their own demise. Primarily, it was down due to spectacularly dumb shot selection and general lack of spine. And, of course, we've seen it all too often.

 

[Fiery]

A couple of very dubious lb's didn't help much either

 

[wpdavid]

A couple of very dubious lb's didn't help much either

Granted. But Strauss seems incapable of learning from what he's been doing for a couple of years now. And Colly & Bell should have made damned sure they stayed put after getting a start against the older ball. Ditto Prior.

 

[open365]

England played badly with the bat, India bowled well with the ball, that's the story imo.

The pitch and conditions obviously weren't a batting paradise, but India bowled quite well and England never got going with the bat.

Don't see what complaints you have with complacency though, yes we could have batted a lot better than we did but i don't see how that is an reason to advocate changing the batting line up when there aren't really any replacements that are making a more than good case to be in the team.

Cook was never really in but imo he tried the hardest of the English batsmen to tough it out and score some ugly runs. He was unluckly to be given out LBW but it was a carbon copy of the way he got out to Ganguly last time. I hope he sits down after this game and really tries to cut the across the line shots out of his game. However, he is only 22 and has a great head on his shoulders, i really think he will make a big score in his next 3 innings.

I agree with you on Strauss, he seems either gets plumb LB playing across the line of plays an airy-fairy drive and edges to slips or slices to gully, he really needs to have a major re-think and look at his batting.

Vaughan got a very decent ball but tbh at no point in the dismissal did he look like he was in a position to play a decent shot. Not really suprised tbh, Vaughan is a bit of a fair weather player imo and is prone to get out when he really shouldn't(IE, getting bowled through the gate).

I'm a bit disapointed with KP, never in his innings did i think he was more interested in the team than he was in keeping a high strike rate. Twice he played across the line the RP Singh, once he got the faintest of inside edges, the second time he completely missed it and was gone.

Collingwood's going through a bad patch atm, he played a poor shot but i don't think that was more a sympton of him being in poor form than lack of application.

Didn't see Bell or Prior's dismissal but Bell i would agree that he doesn't like making ugly runs as well.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Agree on most of that really.

Tbf on KP, he recieved a pretty poor desicion imo.

 

[open365]

Was height a factor? I only saw it twice from front on where is looked straight as a dye.

 

[R_D]

Agree on most of that really.

Tbf on KP, he recieved a pretty poor desicion imo.

tbh he was pretty lucky to be there in the first place anyway. Should've been given out to Sreesanth in previous over.

All in all pretty good days play for india.. lets hope they mop up the tail tomorrow and put up a decent innings score.
Anyone else thought it was bit strange that Dravid kept on bowling Ganguly after he got Cook out and than brought on Tendulkar rather than try Zaheer or even RP Singh. That was pretty bad decisions which allowed Collingwood and Bell to settle.Lucky they managed to get few wickets at the end or could've been trouble.

 

[open365]

Yeh i couldn't fathom why Tendulkar was on either