Which ground in your country produces the best cricket ?

[Richard]

No doubt Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft were just "lucky".

No, they were just an exception.
How many other 4 (or more) man attacks have there been in the game's history who did the same thing session after session, day after day, game after game?

 

[Richard]

I really dont know how Richard would have reacted in the 70s and 80s when the Windies stream rolled the teams with short pitched stuff and forced cricket to change its rules.

Which rules did they force to be changed?

 

[Richard]

How was 04/05 farcical? Did you actually see the match? I mean honestly, claiming there was anything at all wrong with that wicket is just riduclous. There was almost no lateral movement, the bounce was consistent and even, and batsmen who played well and applied themselves could make plenty of runs. Shoaib bowled very well on the first morning and got Australia in trouble before Langer played one of the best knocks of his career, and then Pakistan fell apart twice to some good bowling. McGrath's second innings spell was as good as I have ever seen anyone bowl on a wicket which really wasn't doing that much, and Pakistan were clueless against him. Most of his wickets in fact came with outswing and not with high bounce (certainly not uneven).

Where did I say the pitch was uneven?
Pakistan's Shoaib-aside shockingly poor attack let Australia score a shedload and Pakistan's batsmen weren't remotely good enough to combat McGrath and Kasprowicz.
The extra bounce gave Pakistan next to no chance.

 

[Richard]

Brings out the best of the best batsmen doesn't it?

Far more often it brings out the worst.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Where did I say the pitch was uneven?
Pakistan's Shoaib-aside shockingly poor attack let Australia score a shedload and Pakistan's batsmen weren't remotely good enough to combat McGrath and Kasprowicz.
The extra bounce gave Pakistan next to no chance.

You claimed that the pitch led to a farcical match. The pitch was fine, McGrath bowled well and Pakistan played poorly. The difference with a pitch which is genuinely problematic like Mumbai is that Clarke didn't bowl especially well and India didn't bowl especially badly... the pitch had a huge hand in things. McGrath got almost no help from the pitch.

 

[Richard]

Short pitched bowling has always been a wicket-taking weapon, and everyone recognises it except for you.

Honestly, why do you think it is bowlers sometimes bowl short? Do you think they just do it by mistake over and over? Or are they just idiots have no idea what they are doing, unlike you?

So... why do we see so few wickets falling to short-balls?
Short balls are almost exclusively wasted deliveries, and there's two simple reasons bowlers bowl them - not because they're "idiots", but because: 1) there is more to bowling than trying to take a wicket every ball and 2) because they indeed don't know how best to take wickets and simply get carried-away.

Why were fast bowling pairs who consistently bowled short and aggressively like Lillee/Thomson and Holding/Roberts so successful? Were they all "lucky" too?

Why, then, is Lillee regarded as the 2nd-best swing-bowler of the modern era (given that short balls don't usually swing much), if he was such a short-ball merchant?
Holding and Roberts weren't, of course, mere short-ball merchants, they were much more (as were Marshall and Garner), but nonetheless, the reason they were successful wasn't because they were a pair, but because they were a quintet or more.
As for Thomson - the only time he ever had that much success was 1974\75. Thereafter he was an average-to-poor bowler.

 

[Richard]

You claimed that the pitch led to a farcical match. The pitch was fine, McGrath bowled well and Pakistan played poorly. The difference with a pitch which is genuinely problematic like Mumbai is that Clarke didn't bowl especially well and India didn't bowl especially badly... the pitch had a huge hand in things. McGrath got almost no help from the pitch.

Clarke, Kartik, Kumble and Harbhajan all bowled well - relative to the pitch.
And if you think McGrath's spell would have been quite so effective on another pitch, you're mistaken.
Simple fact is, Pakistan weren't remotely equipped to combat the sort of bowling that pitch allowed, and the match was a one-sided farce from the 1st afternoon onwards.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

And if you think McGrath's spell would have been quite so effective on another pitch, you're mistaken.
Simple fact is, Pakistan weren't remotely equipped to combat the sort of bowling that pitch allowed, and the match was a one-sided farce from the 1st afternoon onwards.

But that's exactly my point. The pitch didn't contribute to his wickets at all, like I said, he got most of them with outswing, and no more bounce than McGrath usually takes from any decently hard wicket. He could just as easily have bowled that spell at Melbourne or Brisbane.

 

[Richard]

He could easily have bowled the spell, of course, and he'd still have got good figures - maybe a 4 or 5-for.
But probably 4-60-odd or so - not the 2nd-cheapest 8-for in Test history.

 

[Monty]

i would say the waca
matty haydens 380

 

[badgerhair]

Which rules did they force to be changed?

As anyone with even the smallest grasp of cricket history would know, before the WI pace quartet there was no restriction on the number of bouncers which could be bowled in an over, and there was no prescription about the minimum number of overs to be bowled in a day's play, and both of the conditions surrounding those aspects in today's international cricket were introduced as a direct result of the WI tactics.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[honestbharani]

You claimed that the pitch led to a farcical match. The pitch was fine, McGrath bowled well and Pakistan played poorly. The difference with a pitch which is genuinely problematic like Mumbai is that Clarke didn't bowl especially well and India didn't bowl especially badly... the pitch had a huge hand in things. McGrath got almost no help from the pitch.

To be fair, I thought the low bounce at Mumbai could have been used effectively to bowl sharp incutters, which is what McGrath did right from day 1. He even mentioned it at an interview to Sanjay Manjrekar a day before the match. He said "it looks like an off cutter pitch". Of course, some of the other fast bowlers around the world might just look at it turn and keep low and think, here is a pitch for the spinners and we can't do much here, but McGrath is intelligent enough to get it to work to his advantage. That is what makes him so great, IMHO.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

To be fair, I thought the low bounce at Mumbai could have been used effectively to bowl sharp incutters, which is what McGrath did right from day 1. He even mentioned it at an interview to Sanjay Manjrekar a day before the match. He said "it looks like an off cutter pitch". Of course, some of the other fast bowlers around the world might just look at it turn and keep low and think, here is a pitch for the spinners and we can't do much here, but McGrath is intelligent enough to get it to work to his advantage. That is what makes him so great, IMHO.

Sorry, what I meant was, McGrath in his 8 wicket haul didn't get a great deal of help from the pitch in taking his wickets, while Clarke in Mumbai did.

 

[Mister Wright]

I reckon Lord's (England) is doing alright at the moment.

 

[Richard]

As anyone with even the smallest grasp of cricket history would know, before the WI pace quartet there was no restriction on the number of bouncers which could be bowled in an over, and there was no prescription about the minimum number of overs to be bowled in a day's play, and both of the conditions surrounding those aspects in today's international cricket were introduced as a direct result of the WI tactics.

The one about overs-per-day's-play is extremely obvious and doesn't, actually, have anything to do with the fact that they bowled short.
As for the restriction on Bouncers - thank you for updating me.
I'll say it again though - what the hell do you gain from being so expediently impudent?

 

[Richard]

I reckon Lord's (England) is doing alright at the moment.

The amazing thing is, it's completely and utterly unpredicted.
No-one had the foggiest that the pitch was going to play as terribly as it has.

 

[Arjun]

For India, these grounds often produce good cricket

• Mohali- When there's some juice in the wicket, it makes interesting viewing
• Mumbai- The odd minefield adds some entertainment.
• Kolkata- Many twists in the tale here.
• Chennai- Good pitch for batsmen and bowlers alike.
• Green Park- Good venue among Central states. Very picturesque.

But not....

• Bangalore- Horribly tilted towards the team batting first
• Delhi- Pitch wears down badly later on.
• Jamshedpur- The boundary rope is as large as the inner ring of an Australian ground
• Baroda- FLAT. No hope for the bowlers.
• Goa- Too hot to handle, with terrible facilities.

 

[Mister Wright]

The amazing thing is, it's completely and utterly unpredicted.
No-one had the foggiest that the pitch was going to play as terribly as it has.

Isn't that what makes cricket so wonderful?

 

[SirBloody Idiot]

The WACA.

 

[Richard]

Isn't that what makes cricket so wonderful?

Well, it's one of a plethora of things.
Although - who'd have preferred it if the Lord's pitch had played truly?
I can't entirely count myself out, because while we saw some wonderful performances (most notably McGrath on the first afternoon and Katich's combatting the pitch on the third day) we also saw a lot of dross.