*Official* England in India

[hang on]

comparing marshall to mcgrath is like comparing lara to Kallis (or dravid).

no matter what kallis or dravid do in tests/odis, they won't surpass lara.
massive style difference.

now if tendulkar keeps on playing till the age of 42/43 (which is equivalent to imran playing till the age of 39) and loses 5-6 points off his avg, will you/others not try to discount that too when comparing him with others?

lets say kallis retires next year with an avg of 58+, while tendulkar ends up with 50/51 after playing for another 4 years. I'm sure most cricket fans will discount his last couple of years when comparing him with kallis.

it's got little to do with style. and everything to do with performance. for example, holding was, arguably, one of the most perfect fast bowlers in terms of style....at least more aesthetically pleasing than mcgrath (or even marshall). but most do not have him ahead of them as a fast bowler on that basis.

and so, to answer your question about lara and dravid/kallis, not at all. if dravid has a few years of absolutely phenomenal runscoring akin to his peak in the mid 2000s, i would rate him above lara. ditto kallis. even if lara was better to watch, performances matter most.

and, yes, if tendulkar batted terribly for the next 5 years and his average plummeted while kallis went from strength to strength (including doing well in the home of the dominant team -- england, at present), i would count him lower than kallis. even during his slump in the mid noughties, there was quite some diminishing of his aura. what do u think the last or 4 years of average performances have done to ponting's reputation? do u think people consider ponting now (ie ponting's career in toto upto now) to be as good as they did then?

btw, it is not that kallis is not a stylish batsman, but that he hasn't had the kind of success against the australians (the dominant team for most of his era) and has the black mark of being pretty ordinary in england over many series. but, again, that wouldn't mean that i would not prefer to watch lara or tendulkar at their best. dominating performances against the best bowlers warne, murali etc. have a lot to do with why tendulkar and lara are revered so. kallis, unfortunately, does not have that string to his bow. at least tuned correctly! yet.

 

[Furball]

GF the test side might be well drilled but spilled a ridiculous amount of catches this summer. Swann in particular has been spilling chance after chance ever since the ashes. As for the showing in the one dayers, well only really Bairstow stood out and he is a bloody keeper ffs.

My point is that the Test side is a good fielding unit because a) it has better, more athletic ground fielders than the current ODI unit and b) because Test fielding positions tend to be more specialist - for the Test side KP can do plenty of fielding drills related to being in the gully; he can't just stand at gully for 50 overs in an ODI.

The biggest issue with the fielding was simply that a lot of the guys that got picked for this series are average to crap fielders. Replace Finn and Bresnan with Anderson and Broad, replace Bopara with Morgan and replace Trott with Bell and the fielding ability of the side is immediately far better, and we wouldn't be going home with fielding as a concern.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

My point is that the Test side is a good fielding unit because a) it has better, more athletic ground fielders than the current ODI unit and b) because Test fielding positions tend to be more specialist - for the Test side KP can do plenty of fielding drills related to being in the gully; he can't just stand at gully for 50 overs in an ODI.

The biggest issue with the fielding was simply that a lot of the guys that got picked for this series are average to crap fielders. Replace Finn and Bresnan with Anderson and Broad, replace Bopara with Morgan and replace Trott with Bell and the fielding ability of the side is immediately far better, and we wouldn't be going home with fielding as a concern.

The most obvious thing was KP out grazing on the boundary which he usually does well and he was laboured and donkeylike (hope i haven't upset anyone calling him a donkey ) through this series with numerous boundaries coming from sloppy KP fielding.

 

[wpdavid]

We're a decent side - as I've said before since the start of 2008 we've beaten everyone at home in a bilateral series with the exception of New Zealand. Most of those series wins tend to be fairly tight - the South Africa series in 2008 and the recent India series are the only 2 in that time frame that have been won comfortably, and our away record isn't terrible either. When we lose, we tend to get absolutely hammered - 2008 and 2011 against India, 2009 and 2011 vs Australia.

There's been so much bollocks written about the team's mental approach, not caring etc. None of that changes a complete inability to play spin. As soon as Cook and Kieswetter were dismissed, it became a procession - virtually every single England batsman went into a shell and played the spinners as if they'd encased their feet in blocks of cement. Good luck winning games if you're going to play the opposition spinners from the crease with absolutely zero foot movement.

Can't argue with your point about spin.

However, I think your point about our home record is a bit misleading. I can't remember whether our 2009 hammering by Aus was in a bilateral series, but it doesn't really matter - they absolutely thrashed us. The 2010 home wins were against Bang (big deal) and Pak (stripped of Asif & Amir). The 2011 wins, if memory serves, mostly depended on Anderson cashing in on helpful conditions in an unusually wet summer. And, of course, India were missing shed-loads of players. Now I know that it's possible to get to the point where they get no credit for anything, and I hope I'm not doing that - but I do think it's fair to say that we need to look beyond the scorelines when assessing the side.

I think we're regressing. Go back to what now looks like a golden age from 2007 to 2009 and we see wins in SL & SA and home wins against India and SA. OK, I know there were also crap performances in India and at home to Aus, but even so. I genuinely don't think the wins in 2010 and 2011 at home to SC sides in varying degrees of not being at their best are as impressive as those victories. The one piece of good news is that we have a coach who won't buck the hard decisions when it comes to dealing with these guys. Quite what those decisions should be is anybody's guess. The English CWers could probably come up with a dozen ideas - everything from who should be captain to almost every position in the side.

 

[wpdavid]

The biggest issue with the fielding was simply that a lot of the guys that got picked for this series are average to crap fielders. Replace Finn and Bresnan with Anderson and Broad, replace Bopara with Morgan and replace Trott with Bell and the fielding ability of the side is immediately far better, and we wouldn't be going home with fielding as a concern.

This, I completely agree with. Apart from replacing Finn, anyway.

 

[Furball]

This, I completely agree with. Apart from replacing Finn, anyway.

My point was solely in regard to fielding; Broad and Anderson are much better fielders than Finn who still at times resembles a baby giraffe taking its first steps when he runs.

 

[sreeku7]

There's a simple pride in performance that is missing with what went on throughout this tour, though.

You look at India, and one of the reasons that they got to number 1 in Test cricket was because they were used to winning, and a lot of that was developed in shorter forms. Winning becomes a habit, and you want to bring young players into that environment - they can avoid some scrutiny when they fail a few times early in their career while the team is winning. Instead, you have people raising eyebrows at things like Bairstow's shot last night.

You can talk all you want about "not caring", "indifference", but teams that are trying to set themselves to be the best in the world and a dominant force don't put in limp performances and have their tummy tickled over five games, such as what happened here, no matter the format.

One of the most sensible posts in this thread.A team aiming for the No.1 position should try to win and get a decent ranking in all formats

 

[Furball]

Can't argue with your point about spin.

However, I think your point about our home record is a bit misleading. I can't remember whether our 2009 hammering by Aus was in a bilateral series, but it doesn't really matter - they absolutely thrashed us. The 2010 home wins were against Bang (big deal) and Pak (stripped of Asif & Amir). The 2011 wins, if memory serves, mostly depended on Anderson cashing in on helpful conditions in an unusually wet summer. And, of course, India were missing shed-loads of players. Now I know that it's possible to get to the point where they get no credit for anything, and I hope I'm not doing that - but I do think it's fair to say that we need to look beyond the scorelines when assessing the side.

I think we're regressing. Go back to what now looks like a golden age from 2007 to 2009 and we see wins in SL & SA and home wins against India and SA. OK, I know there were also crap performances in India and at home to Aus, but even so. I genuinely don't think the wins in 2010 and 2011 at home to SC sides in varying degrees of not being at their best are as impressive as those victories. The one piece of good news is that we have a coach who won't buck the hard decisions when it comes to dealing with these guys. Quite what those decisions should be is anybody's guess. The English CWers could probably come up with a dozen ideas - everything from who should be captain to almost every position in the side.

The 2009 defeat was a bilateral series - England haven't had a home tri-series since 2005.

You're forgetting that we beat Australia 3-2 in 2010 as well. Take out the post 2009 hammering and you have to go back to 2008 and the home series vs New Zealand to find an ODI series defeat in England. Since then, we've beaten everybody at home - except New Zealand because we haven't played them since. But I agree, simply looking at series victories is misleading because almost all of those series wins were close.

From memory, we've played 43 ODIs since the start of 2008 at home - winning 23, losing 16 and with 4 ties or no results. That's not an outstanding record, although it does translate into winning 7 out of 9 series.

 

[Turbinator]

There's a simple pride in performance that is missing with what went on throughout this tour, though.

You look at India, and one of the reasons that they got to number 1 in Test cricket was because they were used to winning, and a lot of that was developed in shorter forms. Winning becomes a habit, and you want to bring young players into that environment - they can avoid some scrutiny when they fail a few times early in their career while the team is winning. Instead, you have people raising eyebrows at things like Bairstow's shot last night.

You can talk all you want about "not caring", "indifference", but teams that are trying to set themselves to be the best in the world and a dominant force don't put in limp performances and have their tummy tickled over five games, such as what happened here, no matter the format.

Absolutely, well said.

 

[Jacknife]

Can't argue with your point about spin.

However, I think your point about our home record is a bit misleading. I can't remember whether our 2009 hammering by Aus was in a bilateral series, but it doesn't really matter - they absolutely thrashed us. The 2010 home wins were against Bang (big deal) and Pak (stripped of Asif & Amir). The 2011 wins, if memory serves, mostly depended on Anderson cashing in on helpful conditions in an unusually wet summer. And, of course, India were missing shed-loads of players. Now I know that it's possible to get to the point where they get no credit for anything, and I hope I'm not doing that - but I do think it's fair to say that we need to look beyond the scorelines when assessing the side.

I think we're regressing. Go back to what now looks like a golden age from 2007 to 2009 and we see wins in SL & SA and home wins against India and SA. OK, I know there were also crap performances in India and at home to Aus, but even so. I genuinely don't think the wins in 2010 and 2011 at home to SC sides in varying degrees of not being at their best are as impressive as those victories. The one piece of good news is that we have a coach who won't buck the hard decisions when it comes to dealing with these guys. Quite what those decisions should be is anybody's guess. The English CWers could probably come up with a dozen ideas - everything from who should be captain to almost every position in the side.

So when we win a series it was down to opposition not being at their best these last couple of years or Anderson cashing in helpful conditions, sorry don't buy it all teams have injuries and issues that can stop them being at their absolute best.
Really if you start that game you can pull to bits every win or loss. Just like the SA series win away, we only played 3 out of the 5 games, 2 were rained off, should we discount that series as well.
You could go further and say that the winner of big test series quite often take beatings in the one day series one day series. See SA home 2008, Ashes the last 2 and to some extent the 2006/7 one as well.
I don't understand when people say that we're absolute ****e at one day cricket because it's blatantly wrong. We are good home side and are poor in the subcontinent and everywhere else we can compete and play good stuff. All that means we are a average side when all told, good in some places poor in others.

 

[wpdavid]

So when we win a series it was down to opposition not being at their best these last couple of years or Anderson cashing in helpful conditions, sorry don't buy it all teams have injuries and issues that can stop them being at their absolute best.
Really if you start that game you can pull to bits every win or loss. Just like the SA series win away, we only played 3 out of the 5 games, 2 were rained off, should we discount that series as well.
You could go further and say that the winner of big test series quite often take beatings in the one day series one day series. See SA home 2008, Ashes the last 2 and to some extent the 2006/7 one as well.
I don't understand when people say that we're absolute ****e at one day cricket because it's blatantly wrong. We are good home side and are poor in the subcontinent and everywhere else we can compete and play good stuff. All that means we are a average side when all told, good in some places poor in others.

To some extent this comes down to interpretation - we'll just have to live with me taking a different conclusion from our results to the one you've drawn. That being said, clearly we don't play good stuff anywhere apart from the SC - ask the good folks of Aus & NZ after our most recent oneday series there - but it really doesn't matter very much. If you rate our 50-over side higher than I do, then so be it. Perhaps I've seen too many false dawns and too much sheer awfulness over the last 16 years or so. Night all.

 

[honestbharani]

EDIT: My bad.. confused two threads to be the same

 

[Cabinet96]

We're a decent side - as I've said before since the start of 2008 we've beaten everyone at home in a bilateral series with the exception of New Zealand. Most of those series wins tend to be fairly tight - the South Africa series in 2008 and the recent India series are the only 2 in that time frame that have been won comfortably, and our away record isn't terrible either. When we lose, we tend to get absolutely hammered - 2008 and 2011 against India, 2009 and 2011 vs Australia.

There's been so much bollocks written about the team's mental approach, not caring etc. None of that changes a complete inability to play spin. As soon as Cook and Kieswetter were dismissed, it became a procession - virtually every single England batsman went into a shell and played the spinners as if they'd encased their feet in blocks of cement. Good luck winning games if you're going to play the opposition spinners from the crease with absolutely zero foot movement.

Summed it all up brilliantly there. We've beaten India, South Africa and India at home as well as South Africa away recently so were obviously not a terrible side. We've only been thrashed by Australia and India who are clearly the best 2 sides in the world.

 

[vic_orthdox]

True - but there's still an element of chicken & egg here. tbh I've switched off ODIs because we've been useless at them for most of the last 16 years, and I suspect I'm not alone. However, I do struggle to believe that our uselessness in this format is because the players don't care enough about them. It's simply that the standard of domestic one-day cricket is so piss-poor that we have no chance against anyone who's any good at the game.

The good teams are awesome at scoring at four/five an over during the middle overs, especially against spin. A lot of this is taken out of the game in the 40 over version that the English play, you can afford to "attack" the spinners earlier because wickets in hand aren't as big an issue, whereas you don't have to spend as much time manipulating them like you'll see an India or SL do.

 

[Contra]

I'd also like to add that winning a series isn't as valuable as it would be in tests, and so while England have won quite a few series, winning by margins like 3-2, 4-3, 2-1 isn't going to help there rankings too much. All it takes is one drubbing which un-does your last few series wins. So while a series win is a series win, they still need to starting winning by bigger margins if they want to climb up the ladder.

 

[Woodster]

The good teams are awesome at scoring at four/five an over during the middle overs, especially against spin. A lot of this is taken out of the game in the 40 over version that the English play, you can afford to "attack" the spinners earlier because wickets in hand aren't as big an issue, whereas you don't have to spend as much time manipulating them like you'll see an India or SL do.

Yes that's very true, when the international game is over 50-overs why on earth would you not want to replicate that and help the more inexperienced players get used to playing that format. It does require a different approach, as you say, probably more of a need to keep things ticking for longer in those middle periods and look after the wickets column more.It's my understanding that this format was brought in purely for financial reasons for the counties, 40-over was supposedly better supported than the slightly longer version, but I think that is due to different factors rather than the actual format itself.

Having said that, our inability to play those middle overs in sub-continental conditions goes deeper than the last couple of seasons where we've only employed a 40-over competition. But for the future we do need the likes of Buttler, Bairstow, Borthwick, Meaker, etc, playing 50-over domestic cricket.

 

[Furball]

The good teams are awesome at scoring at four/five an over during the middle overs, especially against spin. A lot of this is taken out of the game in the 40 over version that the English play, you can afford to "attack" the spinners earlier because wickets in hand aren't as big an issue, whereas you don't have to spend as much time manipulating them like you'll see an India or SL do.

Good shout, I was thinking the other day that playing 40 over domsstic cricket probably doesn't help without really coming up with a reason why that might be the case.

 

[sreeku7]

England was a very good side in the earlier version of one day cricket which was more or less a shortened form of Test cricket with fewer field restrictions than as of now.In those days the first 10 or 15 overs were used for building and consolidating an innings and the last 10 overs(called slog overs then) were used for accelerating the scoring rate.Further,there were 60 overs to play with
Martin Crowe used Mark Greatbach to change all that and revolutionized one day cricket in the 1992 World cup and Jayasurya and Co.followed suit to make one day cricket what it is now.England is still finding it difficult to adjust to this change especially outside England.At one time they even experimented with a separate One day team which didn't come off

(In the seventies there were no one day specialists and all the one day teams were made up of Test players, which suited England.)

 

[Jacknife]

Good shout, I was thinking the other day that playing 40 over domsstic cricket probably doesn't help without really coming up with a reason why that might be the case.

It's ridiculous that we play 40 over cricket and I was hoping they may switch back but it doesn't look like it for next year anyway. I know the original idea was obviously to shorten the time it takes to complete a game thus making it more attractive to families and people working etc but I wonder what it has achieved, has it increased crowds like they expected.
Like Woodster says our 50 over problems abroad run a little deeper than the last couple of seasons of 40 over cricket but it sure doesn't help matters.

 

[Kohli_fan]

It's ridiculous that we play 40 over cricket and I was hoping they may switch back but it doesn't look like it for next year anyway. I know the original idea was obviously to shorten the time it takes to complete a game thus making it more attractive to families and people working etc but I wonder what it has achieved, has it increased crowds like they expected.
Like Woodster says our 50 over problems abroad run a little deeper than the last couple of seasons of 40 over cricket but it sure doesn't help matters.

To be fair 40 over Cricket is decent preparation I mean, lets face it the majority of this series only ended up being 40 overs a side!