***Official** West Indies in England***

Laurrz said:

im dissappointed that Collymore is dropped for the ODIs

i know he is a much better test bowler but still..

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And WTF Austin Richards? What the heck has he done to be selected. Played two games and averaged 29.50. Oh wait must be his FC average of 60+. But that was only of two games with a high score of 183 I think against the worst team in the competition by the stats. Ah now I see....He's from Anitgua. That's the only plausible reason for his inclusion. My )*^&%&*$&*$ word! At least Joseph has decent figures. I hope he dopesn't get a game. Seriously....WOW!!!!!

Rant over.

Perm said:

Gayle handed captaincy

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Congrats on your first, nice stuff.

You spelt Daren wrong but not bad.

roseboy64 said:

You spelt Daren wrong but not bad.

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What are you talking about?

Mr Mxyzptlk said:

You don't give people Test caps for the sake of it. If a player isn't ready for Test cricket, you don't let him play Test cricket, regardless of the state of the series. Test cricket means more than that. Sylvester Joseph is a far better batsman than Ravi Rampaul is a bowler. Look at his domestic record and 'A' team record over recent seasons. Certainly far more worthy of his Test caps than Rampaul is at this stage.

And I think it'd do much more for West Indies cricket to win the final Test than to lose 3-0 and give Ravi Rampaul some match practice.

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Im sorry but Sylvester Joseph has to be one of the worst batsman around in International Cricket and he has been so since he made his debut 8 years ago. For mine someone like Narsingh Deonarine is far more worthy of a test cap than both Samuels and Joseph.

What do people make of Darren Sammy? I will reserve my judgment until after the next test, but from what i've seen so far i thought his seam position was nothing special whatsoever and his pace needs to be a lot better than it is at the moment. He still produced some excellent deliveries in the last test and showed the benefit of putting ball after ball on the right spot.

tooextracool said:

What do people make of Darren Sammy? I will reserve my judgment until after the next test, but from what i've seen so far i thought his seam position was nothing special whatsoever and his pace needs to be a lot better than it is at the moment. He still produced some excellent deliveries in the last test and showed the benefit of putting ball after ball on the right spot.

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I think everyone pretty much agrees with you there. He's tall and he's accurate - it works for him. If he can get the seam position a little more consistent, he'll be quite a difficult prospect. His pace was low, but I don't think much more was expected of it really - it's just acceptable. Obviously not going to hurry anyone up, but fast enough to bowl at an international level.

If you go through history, won't you always find sides that have been weak? I don't want to offend anyone here, but examples may well be:

NZ in their early days (pre-War, and for a time pre-Hadlee)
SA in the really early days.
SL in their early days.

Also, most if not all of the top sides have had really bad patches through the years (Aus in the 80s, WI now). Do we subjectively exclude certain records & milestones because certain innings were made vs weak teams? An example would be Hammond's 336 vs NZ in 1932-33 which was, with respect to the opposition, scored vs a fairly moderate attack, and he also scored a double in the 1st test of that series.

Does this mean that his record should be adjusted because the attack may not have been "test" class by the standards of the day? The truth is, you can't do that - test runs are test runs in the record books, as are wickets. Once a match has been given test status, the records must be acepted by everyone. You can comment on the worth of the runs/ wickets in subjectively analysing a player's record, but you cannot remove them from the records per se. Principally because people will disagree as to which scores should be disregarded, and which ones shouldn't.

tooextracool said:

Im sorry but Sylvester Joseph has to be one of the worst batsman around in International Cricket and he has been so since he made his debut 8 years ago. For mine someone like Narsingh Deonarine is far more worthy of a test cap than both Samuels and Joseph.

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Agreed about Joseph but not Samuels.

tooextracool said:

What do people make of Darren Sammy? I will reserve my judgment until after the next test, but from what i've seen so far i thought his seam position was nothing special whatsoever and his pace needs to be a lot better than it is at the moment. He still produced some excellent deliveries in the last test and showed the benefit of putting ball after ball on the right spot.

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You summed it up pretty well I thought. Sammy's pace is barely acceptable at Test level and I wouldn't mind him putting in a bit of extra work and practice to get a bit more of a nip in his bowling, but I liked his accuracy and work ethic. According to all sources he likes to bowl and wants to put in the hard yards for his team which is something rarely heard of amongst West Indians players at the moment. His batting in the second innings was pretty good as well, showed glimpses of some promise but I think the all-rounder tag might be a little generous in this case.

tooextracool said:

Im sorry but Sylvester Joseph has to be one of the worst batsman around in International Cricket and he has been so since he made his debut 8 years ago. For mine someone like Narsingh Deonarine is far more worthy of a test cap than both Samuels and Joseph.

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Marlon Samuels has a big attitude problem and often doesn't apply himself to a situation like he could, but he definately has the potential to be a better batsman than both Joseph and Deonarine who have fairly modest First Class records.

Perm said:

Marlon Samuels has a big attitude problem and often doesn't apply himself to a situation like he could, but he definately has the potential to be a better batsman than both Joseph and Deonarine who have fairly modest First Class records.

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Actually Deonarines overall record in FC cricket is about as good as Marlon Samuels, and his recent record is even better:

2004-05 (West Indies) 12 638 45.57
2005-06 (West Indies) 7 381 38.10
2006-07 (West Indies) 6 401 57.28

That is far superior than almost anyone else in the WI side. I've only seen Deonarine bat in his debut and only series at the international level, and i have absolutely no understanding of why he was dropped because he showed superior technique in difficult conditions. Hes certainly deserved far more opportunities than Samuels has got who IMO simply does not have the technique(his footwork is ordinary) or the attitude to succeed in international cricket.

roseboy64 said:

Agreed about Joseph but not Samuels.

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just browsing through some records, what do you make of richard kelly and andrew richardson? They both seem to have impressive FC records(although they've both struggled on A tours) but do you think they should have what it takes to succeed at the international level? I know richardson for one plays for Jamaica so you might know a bit more about him?

tooextracool said:

Actually Deonarines overall record in FC cricket is about as good as Marlon Samuels, and his recent record is even better:

2004-05 (West Indies) 12 638 45.57
2005-06 (West Indies) 7 381 38.10
2006-07 (West Indies) 6 401 57.28

That is far superior than almost anyone else in the WI side. I've only seen Deonarine bat in his debut and only series at the international level, and i have absolutely no understanding of why he was dropped because he showed superior technique in difficult conditions. Hes certainly deserved far more opportunities than Samuels has got who IMO simply does not have the technique(his footwork is ordinary) or the attitude to succeed in international cricket.

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Marlon Samuels hasn't really had the opportunity to impress in First Class cricket recently due to his ODI commitments with the West Indies, but Deonarine has had a few good seasons now. I noticed he wasn't selected in the West Indies A side to tour England not that long ago, although I'm not sure if he was carrying an injury or anything at the time.

Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivarine Chanderpaul, Devon Smith, Runako Morton and Daren Ganga all have better FC records than Narsingh Deonarine so I'm not sure why you said his record was superior than almost anyone else in the West Indies side because quite clearly it isn't. Also I'm not sure where you got your figures from because according to cricinfo Deonarine averaged 50.20 in 2006/2007 and 22.42 in 2005/2006 which is not as good as those figures you gave me. Add to that Marlon Samuels has out batted him in both the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 domestic season, as well as having a very healthy average of 41 in the 2006/2007 season.

Perm said:

Marlon Samuels hasn't really had the opportunity to impress in First Class cricket recently due to his ODI commitments with the West Indies, but Deonarine has had a few good seasons now. I noticed he wasn't selected in the West Indies A side to tour England not that long ago, although I'm not sure if he was carrying an injury or anything at the time.

Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivarine Chanderpaul, Devon Smith, Runako Morton and Daren Ganga all have better FC records than Narsingh Deonarine so I'm not sure why you said his record was superior than almost anyone else in the West Indies side because quite clearly it isn't. Also I'm not sure where you got your figures from because according to cricinfo Deonarine averaged 50.20 in 2006/2007 and 22.42 in 2005/2006 which is not as good as those figures you gave me. Add to that Marlon Samuels has out batted him in both the 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 domestic season, as well as having a very healthy average of 41 in the 2006/2007 season.

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http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/10/10106/f_Batting_by_Season.html

That is my source which seems to be more complete. I rather cheekily removed his performances in SL, thinking that they were merely his international performances in SL(on sticky wickets) which dont constitute his domestic performances, but then realized that he had played 2 games on the A tour to SL. Regardless, i think those figures appear to be quite impressive over the last 3 years. As far as the comparison with the rest of the WI side is concerned, i was referring to his last 3 years which is 40.41 when you include his international committments, which is far better than gayle, sarwan and smith have managed although it might be an unfair comparison since they have all played at the international level.

As far as Samuels is concerned, i cant see how he can be anything other than an ordinary test match player(he might be a very good ODI player) but his test record is representative of both his technique, temperament and attitude and i dont see it improving at any time in the near future.

tooextracool said:

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/10/10106/f_Batting_by_Season.html

That is my source which seems to be more complete. I rather cheekily removed his performances in SL, thinking that they were merely his international performances in SL(on sticky wickets) which dont constitute his domestic performances, but then realized that he had played 2 games on the A tour to SL. Regardless, i think those figures appear to be quite impressive over the last 3 years. As far as the comparison with the rest of the WI side is concerned, i was referring to his last 3 years which is 40.41 when you include his international committments, which is far better than gayle, sarwan and smith have managed although it might be an unfair comparison since they have all played at the international level.

As far as Samuels is concerned, i cant see how he can be anything other than an ordinary test match player(he might be a very good ODI player) but his test record is representative of both his technique, temperament and attitude and i dont see it improving at any time in the near future.

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I see, I was using cricinfo as a source because usually it is more reliable. He does have some fairly impressive figures and without knowing him too much about either him or Sylvester Joseph then I would have to say that Deonarine is a better batsman, and his record over the last few years seems to back that up. I think it is very unfair to compare his performances to Gayle, Sarwan and Samuels to Deonarine because they have all been playing ODI cricket and have had little opportunity to play domestic cricket.

His attitude and temperament can be quite disappointing at times, although you could've said something similar about Runako Morton and look how responsibly he batted in the 3rd Test against England, even though he only made 50. However Samuels has the ability to turn into a very good Test and ODI batsman, especially if he gets a coach or mentor who can help him turn his attitude problems around. I've always thought he has a pretty good technique, and being a fairly tall batsman will help him with the short pitched bowling as well.

Perm said:

I see, I was using cricinfo as a source because usually it is more reliable.

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CricketArchive > CricInfo for stats tbh.

pasag said:

LOL at the past few pages.

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After the "they're not a test team" "yes they are" & repeat that followed your post I'd rather get back to The Specials, frankly.

Laurrz said:

im dissappointed that Collymore is dropped for the ODIs

i know he is a much better test bowler but still..

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Admirable attempt to drag the thread round!

It's wrong-headed for mine, but you can see how he's easy to peg as a specialist: rank no.11 as a bat, poor fielder & bowls at the sort of pace that might allow attacking batsmen to get on the front foot and hit through the line on flat decks.

The fact that we only have one attacking batsmen seems to have been lost on the selectors tho.

Dasa said:

CricketArchive > CricInfo for stats tbh.

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Generally use www.howstat.com.au for international stats, but unfortunately they don't do First Class or List A stuff. I think I'll look into this CricketArchive actually, seems pretty good.