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Ashes
Jul 21, 2019 19:10:54 GMT
Post by coverpoint on Jul 21, 2019 19:10:54 GMT
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Ashes
Jul 22, 2019 8:28:24 GMT
Post by gmdf on Jul 22, 2019 8:28:24 GMT
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Ashes
Jul 26, 2019 12:03:33 GMT
Post by coverpoint on Jul 26, 2019 12:03:33 GMT
Australia squad named. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49127451A few strange selections. Bancroft over Burns? Burns scored 180 in Australia's last test match. Labuschagne over Patterson? Patterson scored 114* in Australia's last test match whereas Labuschagne got 6 and 4. Wade over Carey? Wade hasn't even been keeping for Tasmania because of Paine. Holland has not been selected as second spinner. Not really sure that Australia need Neser as well as Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc, Pattinson and Siddle. Why on earth has Mitchell Marsh been selected? Can't bat or bowl but the Australian selectors bizarrely believe he is an all-rounder. |
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Ashes
Jul 27, 2019 20:46:43 GMT
Post by liquidskin on Jul 27, 2019 20:46:43 GMT
The Ashes. You should have called it, The Ashes. I like your team though - England won't pick it.
GMDV, no. Curran over Archer, no. No.
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Ashes
Jul 30, 2019 18:32:38 GMT
Post by philh on Jul 30, 2019 18:32:38 GMT
I’m really not sure whether we will be holding up a small urn in September. I do fear that our batting will prove too frail. I suppose if Roy is still batting in the afternoon sun having won the toss we can be confident. I worry though about England being 69 for 6 at lunch on Day 1. Mind you, i have got used to that worry this season.
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Ashes
Aug 1, 2019 18:25:53 GMT
Post by liquidskin on Aug 1, 2019 18:25:53 GMT
Well. Well well well. Wellsy wellsy wellsy. Hmmmmmm. Yep.
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Ashes
Aug 4, 2019 18:56:16 GMT
Post by liquidskin on Aug 4, 2019 18:56:16 GMT
How to get Smith out? Archer. Moeen's done - Leach or Rashid for the next game me thinks.
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191 
County club member: Kent
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Post by Bazpan on Aug 6, 2019 12:57:17 GMT
One consolation for England from this opening match of the World Test Championship is that they've only conceded 24 points. Had it been, say, a three-Test series they'd have given away 40 points to Australia. This system seems quite odd at first glance, but on closer inspection I think it's bordering on sensible. But it seems as though there's too much happening in a rush at the moment to fully take in the advent of the WTC. I've only just got round to looking into it. If you're the same ...
There are 120 points available for each Test series, regardless of how many Tests there are. Win points are split between each Test, so in a five-Test series you get 24 points for a win. In a two-Test series it's 60 points for a win. In a tie each team gets half the win points. In a draw they get one-third of the win points. In the Ashes it's 24 for a win, 12 for a tie and 8 for a draw.
The WTC is contested by the World Cup teams minus Afghanistan, and runs from now until February 2021. The top two teams play a Lord's final in June. If that match is tied or drawn, the World Test Champions will be the team who'd scored the most points in the league stage. (No boundary countback nonsense here).
At first I thought this scoring system wouldn't give teams sufficient credit for coming out on top at the end of a long, hard-fought series (compared to a swift trouncing of the opposition in a shorter series). And perhaps it won't, but since the only system we know is the one where each series is an entity in itself, the sense of reward for winning a tough one will continue to be what it will be. If we are to have this championship (for context, like) then having considered some sample scorelines in long and short series I think the allocation of points feels near-enough fair. But it might be an interesting topic for discussion.
New Zealand and Sri Lanka get their WTC campaigns under way a week tomorrow. It's just a two-Test series, which could be a relatively easy 120 points for NZ compared to the 96 points England would get for winning all four remaining Ashes Tests. But of course everyone will get their share of series against lesser teams. I was just idly wondering whether teams prioritising the WTC might suddenly find they have an increased appetite for series against Sri Lanka and West Indies as opposed to Australia and India, when the next Future Tours Programme is being drawn up. In reality I suspect that other factors would outweigh the WTC imperative (e.g., broadcasting and gate revenue, never mind just wanting to play against the best sides for purely cricketing reasons). And of course it might transpire that no one cares a dam about the World Test Championship.
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191
County club member: Kent
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Post by Bazpan on Aug 6, 2019 20:14:15 GMT
It's generally acknowledged that the England seamers owed much of their effectiveness at Edgbaston to the ECB having the foresight to specify last year's model of Duke ball. But I was surprised to read Ashley Giles saying how many of them are required for the whole series: 600 ... or 120 balls per match ... 30 balls per innings. Even allowing for practice balls and match replacements in various states of wear, what do they do with them all?! At sixty quid a go, if this is typical of the general level of wastefulness it's no wonder Test match tickets are so expensive. Over the course of the series it'll take around 500 spectators just to pay for the balls.
Apologies to anyone relying on me for all their World Test Championship information. A closer look at my poorly-chosen source material reveals that the writer acknowledged the possibility of some last-minute fine-tuning to the rules. More recent articles on Cricinfo and elsewhere state that in the event of a tied or drawn final the two finalists will be declared joint champions - like it should have been in the World Cup, in my view.
For the Test championship I preferred the original rule where a tied or drawn final would result in the title being awarded to the team that finished top in the league stage. I was looking forward to the two finalists having very different imperatives, with the team that finished 2nd going all-out for the win while the top team did everything it could to kill the match stone dead. Aside from being an amusing spectacle, this would have engendered a lot of ill-feeling between the finalists, providing welcome additional context the next time they met. Presumably the ICC saw this coming as well.
Less interestingly still, there's been a minuscule adjustment to the points system. Obviously that 120-point budget per series was chosen for its divisibility, but it doesn't quite work with a drawn match in a three-Test series: 40 points for a win, divided by 3 equals 13.33 points for a draw. And 13.33 was what you'd get in the original scheme, but that's now been simplified to just 13 points. It probably won't make a difference, but you'd feel a bit hard done by if you tied for 2nd place having drawn a match in a three-Test series, and your rival won the tie-break (most series won). Had you not had a third of a point sawn off for the sake of tabular neatness, there'd have been no need for a tie-break and it would have been you in the final. I don't know why they didn't allocate 360 points per series as that figure would survive all the dividing required of it by the WTC. Perhaps the ICC felt the championship would then be too awash with points; like it was starting to resemble pinball.
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191
County club member: Kent
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Ashes
Aug 13, 2019 11:56:59 GMT
Post by Bazpan on Aug 13, 2019 11:56:59 GMT
With Match 3 of the World Test Championship less than 24 hours away, Cricinfo are reporting "James Pattinson rested, Josh Hazlewood likely to play". Since the start of the Sussex v. Australia A game on 7th July, Pattinson has bowled an average of two overs a day in matches. Unless Australia have been working him into the ground in the nets, it probably wouldn't be too harsh to say he's been dropped rather than the grating euphemism 'rested'. Mind you, his brother was rested after just one Test as well, by England.
(Of course the rest was terminal on that occasion).
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Bazpan
2nd XI player
Posts: 191
County club member: Kent
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Ashes
Aug 22, 2019 14:09:24 GMT
joe likes this
Post by Bazpan on Aug 22, 2019 14:09:24 GMT
With this rain break, Root will feel he can reset the clock on Archer's 'short bursts' and give him at least another seven overs when play resumes. If the interruptions come frequently enough, Archer can probably bowl unchanged for the entire match.
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Ashes
Aug 23, 2019 10:49:26 GMT
Post by coverpoint on Aug 23, 2019 10:49:26 GMT
James Anderson to play for Derbyshire.
I can piss for longer than we can bat!
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Ashes
Aug 24, 2019 11:44:40 GMT
Post by liquidskin on Aug 24, 2019 11:44:40 GMT
Well, seems we've thrown the whole series away in 27 odd overs. Predictably big problems with the batting in Tests. Focus on one form, bang goes the other.
Comms are clinging to Butcher's dead rubber 170 in 2001. We are definitely not gonna chase this down. Hashtag goatmouth. I'm not down on the kids but I think that's how you say that. As long as the point is illustrated in a clear and concise fashion and I don't waste any time droning on about it, I think I'm good on the point I'm trying to make. The hashtag point. The goatmouth thing. Nice and clear.
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Ashes
Aug 25, 2019 12:09:27 GMT
Post by liquidskin on Aug 25, 2019 12:09:27 GMT
Interesting start but we're definitely still not gonna win. Warne has just said live on air that the clouds are beginning to crap so there might be some bad weather on the way. Seriously. What may he have been trying to say?
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Post by flashblade on Aug 25, 2019 16:16:48 GMT
What a truly sensational performance from Ben Stokes. What a hero.  |
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