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  1. D

    Should cricket strive to 'grow' as a sport...

    Hiya - I ask this as i have mates who are rugby league fans. Rugby League made a conscious attempt to grow the sport through franchises - there can be little doubt that the expansion into France has been a success but they had history in the game. They tried Wales but that has always been a...
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    Best 'bad fielders' XI

    Evening - loved reading the post about Jonty Rhodes earlier, one of the few cricketers who struck fear into the opposition with his fielding. There was a sort of reputation around it that made you not dare take what would be a comfortable single to practically anyone else - must have been worth...
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    The long tail conundrum...

    Morning - hope we're good. I was just looking at an interesting post about the SA ATG XI for limited overs cricket and picked up on a detail which would pose a selection headache, namely that the OP had Allan Donald batting at #9 in his team. Great bowler as AD certainly was there is no way in...
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    Should cricket aspire to be a 'global game' or not?

    Hiya - this one occurred to me as I'd seen a bit of the world cup qualifiers and it'll be sad to see some 'established' nations not there. But the drama between Scotland and Netherlands in particular was an eye-opener. i guess the question is similar to that faced by rugby league back in the...
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    Thoughts on Geoffrey Boycott?

    Hiya - I've seen a few documentaries, read a couple of books about Geoffrey and perhaps the polite term would be to state that he polarised opinion. He's associated with a particular style of 'old school batting' that was hardly fun to watch and not always the most popular with former team...
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    How is Allan Border remembered as a captain?

    Evening. Bit of exploration here - our Australian readers will have a better understanding and I welcome their input, but the common narrative about AB appears to be a cross between the Hussain-Vaughan dynamic (that he 'laid the groundwork' for his successors) and that he enabled the development...
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    England - second half of the 80s vs now...

    Morning - was born in 1982 so what I'm talking about in the second half of the 80s is from stuff I've read and heard elsewhere. There seems to be a consensus amongst a majority of English fans that the Test team is in a state of mini-crisis and that the domestic structure, no longer fit for...
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    The English First Class Competition - a blank canvas...

    Evening. There's been a lot of talk about the County Championship's 'fitness for purpose' in the light of declining English performance in the long form of the game (particularly but not exclusively with the bat). This prompted a random thought on my way home from work. A year or two ago I...
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    Former England Players Who You'd Transplant into the Current Side

    Evening - the current non-competitive debacle calling itself an Ashes 'contest' has got me pondering this one. My take is that you can't be knocking people for the simple 'offence' of not being good enough to stand up to the rigours of Test cricket. England have been picking some very ordinary...
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    When did the 'great' West Indies team(s) stop being great?

    Evening - and a fantastic Christmas to all of you. I was watching highlights of the 'Gooch 154' test the other day and this question occurred to me as one worth exploring. The fact is that the West Indies went unbeaten in overall Test series between 1980 (I should look it up but was that the...
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    Was a County vs Minor County match ever televised?

    Evening - bit of a quirky/off the wall thread here, hope that's ok. Back in 'the glory days' of the NatWest and B & H competitions being on terrestrial TV I remember the televised stages starting at the last 32 stage. Now the draw was seeded in such a way as the first class counties would play...
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    Ole Mortensen

    I was reading up on this guy not so long ago and it struck me he might well have been one of the best bowlers on the planet for a brief period at the end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s. Given how weak England were at the time and that he was qualified through residency, can any of you shed...
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    Would Graeme Hick have been better off playing for Zimbabwe?

    Have been reading a couple of old Hick threads recently and thought this was a decent question. Hick's international career has of course been the subject of much head-scratching, both at the time and in the years that have followed. His ODI record, it should not be forgotten, was pretty good...
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    Is the Era of the Genuine Rabbit Dead?

    Probably an appropriate thread given that Chris Martin recently retired. The comedy no11 (sometimes as much as nos 9-11 in a poor test team) is an increasingly rare sight these days. With the pressure at the top level on sides to squeeze runs out of the tail, the basic skill of tailend batsmen...
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    Could promotion-relegation work between Division 2 and the Minor Counties Champions?

    Given that the introduction of two divisions, promotion and relegation, has largely been a good thing in the county game, could the principle be extended to the bottom side in Division Two and whoever wins the Minor Counties Championship? Appreciate the gap between the two leagues is pretty...
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    Gavin Larsen - Quality, Average or Period Player?

    Watching cricket in the 1990s, I thought what this guy did was incredibly difficult, and took far more skill than many appreciate. The margin for error at the speed at which Larsen bowled is basically in the realm of milimetres. To put the ball consistently into a tiny area that renders you...
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    Extreme Skill Bowlers who Weren't Very Good...

    Thought of this thread after looking at the career of Andre Van Troost and, to a lesser extent, Duncan Spencer. There's something to be said for the 'extreme skills' way of looking at competitive sport. Bowlers who can swing, cut or spin the ball a serious distance are generally highly valued...
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    Fast/Seam Bowlers of the 1990s - anyone for a Top Ten?

    Just continuing from the earlier thread, it's difficult to remember another era where there was so much depth of quality pace and seam bowling. There were clearly some sides possessed of greater strength in depth than others, but there was at least some sense of it being a worldwide thing, with...
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    Was West Indies' Dominance a Triumph for Intimidation?

    I'm not necessarily saying it was, but I remember when I first started watching cricket around the end of their dominant period, being a bit soft and thinking "it's good, it's successful, but somehow it isn't cricket". If you look at the next great team that followed them, the...
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    Angus Fraser

    Being English, and growing up watching cricket when we were pretty dire, he always struck me as someone who stood out from the English crowd. Never gave anything away, hated being hit to the boundary, hated losing generally. Could bowl sides out in anything resembling helpful conditions and...

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