Fletcher expected to quit as England coach by BBC

[prakesh]

No, I'm just telling a **** to **** off.

I OWN you, possum pecker.

 

[grecian]

Shame most don't agree with you, really.

Gosh, sorry richard, I apologize profusely, I shall don sack-cloth and ashes, (after all it's more fashionable then my city shirt), and cry into my pillows, I always knew having moobs would be an advantage some day.

 

[Richard]

Whether you like it or not my presence on these forums is generally appreciated.

And suggesting that BLE > me is not something that'll gain much if any support. Therefore there wasn't really a lot of point suggesting it.

 

[prakesh]

E-Cred means everything to that kid.

 

[Richard]

I OWN you, possum pecker.

You own nothing about these forums, at all. You are not welcome here and every member who is aware of your antics shares sentiments along those lines.

 

[grecian]

Whether you like it or not my presence on these forums is generally appreciated.

And suggesting that BLE > me is not something that'll gain much if any support. Therefore there wasn't really a lot of point suggesting it.

Just giving my POV, sorry if you and "most people" disagree.

Didn't realise only one opinion was allowed on the board, tbh.

 

[Richard]

E-Cred means everything to that kid.

And nothing to you kid, otherwise you wouldn't go around embarrasing yourself as you have done since your first day.

 

[Richard]

Just giving my POV, sorry if you and "most people" disagree.

Didn't realise only one was allowed on the board, tbh.

The thing is, everyone knows your POV already, you've said it more than a few times. Saying it again now is pointless.

 

[grecian]

The thing is, everyone knows your POV already, you've said it more than a few times. Saying it again now is pointless.

Honestly, from you that is priceless

 

[Richard]

I'm well aware it's a common criticism of me, Dasa for one said exactly that.

If my relentless bashing of EXD is getting tired, yours of me is too.

 

[grecian]

about 7 comments against you from me, abuot 700 comments by you against scaly, yes very comparable

 

[Richard]

Not remotely close to that number.

 

[grecian]

Not remotely close to that number.

what only 587, because of first-chance average

 

[Richard]

No, just not remotely close by the only available yardstick.

 

[tooextracool]

Harmison simply isn't good enough - he's sprayed the ball all over the park just about every time he's bowled in Test cricket bar those first 7 Tests of 2004, and even then he still didn't bowl many wicket-taking deliveries. He bowled absolute rubbish in summer 2005 too, even at Lord's most of his wickets came at the end of the innings, and to suggest he bowled remotely well in the Second to Fifth Tests would take a lunatic.

Harmison was at least accurate for the majority of that series, as hes been for most of the summers of 04 and 05. He might not have been earth shatteringly brilliant, but any novice could see that Harmison was 1/100th the bowler in the 1st and 2nd Ashes test than he was at any point after in that series.
Equally i described Harmisons spell of bowling in the first test, as the worst i've ever seen at any point in my 15 years of watching.

As for the most recent Ashes - if 43-164-5, 28-69-2 and 28-93-2 (his performances in the last 3 Tests) is really all we should expect from him it says it all IMO.

His performances were far superior to both Hoggard and Flintoffs in the same test matches, both of whom came out of that series with praises. With a bit more luck and some chances taken he might actually have bettered those figures.

 

[tooextracool]

No, as far as I'm concerned, players get found-out and sometimes a coach can't do anything about that. No coach can stop opposition pitching the ball up to Andrew Strauss, catching chances off Marcus Trescothick, bowling accurately at Andrew Flintoff and Geraint Jones, or not preparing turning pitches for Ashley Giles.

I don't blame Duncan Fletcher for any of those.

Do you know anything about coaches? They are not just supposed to prevent players from getting worse but also ensure that they get better. Strauss' technical deficiencies have been there to see for anybody for the last 2 years(Buchanan even mentioned it in in the triangular series before the last ashes in 05), yet no one has bothered to change it.
Geraint Jones' has been sweeping like a maniac and you can almost singlehandedly put that down to fletcher who hasnt even bother to fix his sweeping technique despite that. Not to mention that someone with as much potential as Geraint Jones and Andrew Flintoff have both been allowed to bat like complete idiots over the last couple of years.
And with the recent revelation that Vaughan was afraid to talk to Boycott about his own batting because Fletcher didnt like him, that says it all IMO. That is not the sort of culture that a coach needs to set, the captain himself is afraid to talk to someone else about his batting.

 

[tooextracool]

And many selectorial decisions beggar belief. The decision to pick Tim Bresnan ahead of multiple better-qualified candidates was infinately worse than picking Giles and Jones for The 'Gabba. And yet because one is perceived (ridiculously) to have influenced an important series the lesser evil gets more attention.

If you expect selection to be perfect, you expect something you're never, ever going to come close to getting.

FFS, I'm not saying he was flawless, just that he has the right to some context. That decision made negligable impact on the series, but even if Mahmood, Read and Panesar had been picked (then we'd probably have done even worse) he'd still have been criticised, because people had simply decided it was time for change for change's sake.

I think to compare Graveney to Fletcher would be like comparing mahmood to plunkett. They are both rubbish when it comes to selections and neither ever deserved to be given any sort of power when it came to selections. The fact that Fletcher outperformed Graveney is rather irrelevant.
Fletcher has largely been given a lot of credit for making the odd fluke finds such as Trescothick and Vaughan(and arguably Trescothick would not have played test cricket had it not been for his first odi series performance) and forgotten for the far many rubbish selections hes made such as Usmaan Afzaal etc playing test cricket.

 

[Richard]

So name the selectors The World over - and those who would have replaced Fletcher and Graveney had they not been appointed - who know better and who've made few mistakes in judging players?

These attitudes which have caused the plethora of errors are not unique to these 2 men, they're just the prevailing attitude of those high up in the cricket hierachy, and nor are they unique to the English game.

Really, selectors are nothing but pawns. They occasionally make the odd against-the-majority decision like picking Giles ahead of Panesar, but for the most part they simply pick the team almost everyone else would have.

 

[Richard]

Do you know anything about coaches? They are not just supposed to prevent players from getting worse but also ensure that they get better. Strauss' technical deficiencies have been there to see for anybody for the last 2 years(Buchanan even mentioned it in in the triangular series before the last ashes in 05), yet no one has bothered to change it.
Geraint Jones' has been sweeping like a maniac and you can almost singlehandedly put that down to fletcher who hasnt even bother to fix his sweeping technique despite that. Not to mention that someone with as much potential as Geraint Jones and Andrew Flintoff have both been allowed to bat like complete idiots over the last couple of years.

I don't see that anyone could have changed Strauss, in any way, nor Flintoff. Their problems have not been matters of small flaws in the technique but simply lack of strokes in one case and lack of good shot-selection in another. And it takes more than a bit of coaching to completely change either.

As for Jones, for all we know if he wasn't playing those stupid shots he might quite possibly just be playing other stupid shots - it's hardly unique to sweeping spinners, and if he wasn't doing that, who knows, he might just be charging them all the time and getting stumped.

And with the recent revelation that Vaughan was afraid to talk to Boycott about his own batting because Fletcher didnt like him, that says it all IMO. That is not the sort of culture that a coach needs to set, the captain himself is afraid to talk to someone else about his batting.

And Fletcher is the first to dislike Boycott?

Such individual rifts and vendettas are simply part and parcel of cricket, you can put anyone you want in charge of any set-up you want and there will be relationships such as the Fletcher-Boycott one which cause such instances.

 

[Richard]

Harmison was at least accurate for the majority of that series, as hes been for most of the summers of 04 and 05. He might not have been earth shatteringly brilliant, but any novice could see that Harmison was 1/100th the bowler in the 1st and 2nd Ashes test than he was at any point after in that series.

Not really - he was no worse in those first 2 Tests than he was in all bar the Second Test in South Africa 2 winters ago. Equally, nonsense was he accurate in the West Indies series in 2004 or the last 4 Tests in 2005, he was all over the place as usual. Not, perhaps, as wayward as he was in the First and Second Tests or for most of South Africa, but nowhere near accurate enough for a Test bowler.

And that's before we even go back to his pre-summer-2003 career, when he routinely put 2 balls an over down leg-side. How he ever got anywhere near the Test side before then is beyond me.

His performances were far superior to both Hoggard and Flintoffs in the same test matches, both of whom came out of that series with praises. With a bit more luck and some chances taken he might actually have bettered those figures.

Come on then, how many catches were dropped off him?

And Hoggard and Flintoff were both very poor in the last 3 Tests - being better than them was no big deal. They were both praised because of their performances in the Second and First Test respectively, and because both suffered injury.