Aussie Cricket
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@shark said in Aussie Cricket:
@Duluth said in Aussie Cricket:
@shark said in Aussie Cricket:
I wonder if the BBL is having an adverse affect on the Aussie ODI team. Over the last few seasons they seem to have picked quite a few blokes predominantly on the back of BBL form, typically for short stints. This has to have an affect on the stability of the side.
Yes, the schedule is the problem.
The domestic 50 over comp runs for 4 weeks and finishes in mid October. This forces them to pick on BBL form.
Isn't our domestic structure the same? The one day domestic final was something like December 2nd. Yet we don't re-select a squad every season based heavily on domestic T20 form like Australia seem to do of late. We have a core which plays year on year, a bunch of fringe squad members and then maybe one or two new guys each season. Australia pick guys on BBL form for a series and then cast them aside, never able to form a stab core. And when I say core I mean 8-10 guys.
Problem is that the BBL has now encroached onto February. The BBL is good but it should be a quick competition and it should wrap up before the kids are back in school. New Zealand isn't immune - there have been talks to reduce the Plunkett Shield down to 8 games per season per team.
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As an example to this: the ODI squad was picked without a single domestic 50 over game being played, because of the scheduling. BBL is a massive cash cow for CA and so they will continue to milk it.
On the longer forms: why would our domestic players with a bit of talent worry about making the Test side via Sheffield Shield, when they can make a very handy living playing T20 the world over? It is similar to rugby in that regard: bloke has to make a living, and the window for glory at national / international level is very small and crowded with undeserving dickheads, run by a pack of bean counters.
Fuck that. I'd go play in the Bangladesh Bash n Crash for 2 months and get paid what I might get if they haven't already given it all to Warner.
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Kurtis Patterson got added to the Aussie Test squad after two unbeaten centuries vs Sri Lanka
The contenders in Australia's unsettled batting line-up
As they prepare to take on Sri Lanka, only three Australia batsmen - Marcus Harris, Usman Khawaja, and Travis Head - have their places locked in. Kurtis Patterson's late call-up puts him above those in the run for the other places
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@Siam said in Aussie Cricket:
Too busy counting the money while nobody watered the tree
It's not that they didn't water the tree, it's that they chose to do it with Coke instead of actual water. They bet the house on a risky high performance model (led by Greg Chappell and Pat Howard) and on current evidence it has failed badly.
They decided to emphasise junior pathway models, and give preference to youth and potential over experience. That strategy, in theory, should pay dividends in the mid-long term. Well we're now firmly in the mid term and the cupboard is bare, apart from a few decent quicks.
I think the ODI issue also relates to the confused place of ODI cricket in Australia right now - we have the Matador Cup which runs for a month in September-October, and then we go into long form cricket, then BBL. Our 50-over team is now a mix of test specialists and T20 guys - a bits-and-pieces unit who can win on their day but in reality aren't that suited to ODI cricket.
The other factor is that despite the form slump you mention Siam, nobody here really gives a fuck. ODI is now the thing you play after a test series, but before the 20/20s.
It also doesn't help that India are absolute guns at it, too.
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@barbarian said in Aussie Cricket:
@Siam said in Aussie Cricket:
Too busy counting the money while nobody watered the tree
It's not that they didn't water the tree, it's that they chose to do it with Coke instead of actual water. They bet the house on a risky high performance model (led by Greg Chappell and Pat Howard) and on current evidence it has failed badly.
Not Coke,
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@barbarian said in Aussie Cricket:
They decided to emphasise junior pathway models, and give preference to youth and potential over experience. That strategy, in theory, should pay dividends in the mid-long term. Well we're now firmly in the mid term and the cupboard is bare, apart from a few decent quicks.
And, once you break a model, it's bloody hard to get old hands re-interested in the game. Aus Cricket used to have a conveyor belt of talent that was just ridiculous. Now, it's the odd gem, rather than a sustained cohort. It's a bloody crime against cricket I reckon
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@barbarian nice one Barb. Really good points
They have done an admirable job with kids. From Milo cricket to Weet-Bix now Woolworths BBL (the curmudgeon in me spots a retail/branding hijack on kids but such is the way) so the seedlings are there.Still surprised Hohns and vegan Greg have a job, I notice their latest shiney new cure all has been added, largely on the back of a non official warm up with contrived declarations (as an aside England warmed up in the Windies with an innings that featured 18 wickets!)
How come we made a Latham, a watling and a Nicholls while Aus went through a Renshaw, burns, Ferguson, head, marsh, agar, etc etc?
There's a serious bottleneck in the production line
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Interesting observation (based on the comment about the 2nd XI changes in Sheffield Shield). There are six states in the shield, and we have six plunkett shield teams. That means that us and Australia each have 66 (plus squads) top tier spots.
Perhaps that's the bottle neck for them? Especially if you have guys who are good enough domestically but not for tests who keep out others and the 2nd xi no longer offers a pathway to force your way in.
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@Cyclops I think it is. Small mercy having a smaller talent pool in that respect.
The trick is to never get complacent with a large pool.
The All blacks do this well I think, costs money and some sacrifices though!By the way I think I heard CA is taking steps to redress the 2nd Xl issue now
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@Siam
I don't know what the financial setup is like in Sheffield Shield but if they're fully pro that probably makes it worse because a guy could comfortably play first class cricket for a decade and not mind (perhaps hoping that things break for him).Whereas our semi pro setup means that guys who aren't good enough to step up to test level move on to jobs with better stability, which means that they don't clog up the system (of course not being fully pro reduces the quality of the competition which has negative effects but that's another debate, I'm just focusing on the potential reasons why the Aussie batting lineup is pretty universally acknowledged as weaker than ours, and even with Smith and Warner back would be a good argument)
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@Cyclops said in Aussie Cricket:
I don't know what the financial setup is like in Sheffield Shield but if they're fully pro that probably makes it worse because a guy could comfortably play first class cricket for a decade and not mind (perhaps hoping that things break for him).
Greg Chappell came to this view, and saw older veteran Shield/2nd XI players as 'clogging the system' and slowing the rise of young stars. Old Shield vets like Michael Klinger, Greg Mail, Bob Quiney, Chris Hartley etc.
So the system was changed to promote that young talent as much as possible. The 2nd XI comp was turned into an under 23 comp (with two overage players allowed), and pressure was put on states to move on from the 'old guard' of players.
But I think what this did was downgrade the quality of the competition, which had a real knock-on effect. The older guys were the ones who made the Shield what is was - a world-class incubator of talent where 'steel sharpens steel' and young blokes were forced to fight to survive. It was a true meritocracy.
Now the stock of wily veterans is diminishing, and surprise surprise the players we have coming through are too green, too young, and not tested enough against quality opposition. They've been in squad after squad, camp after camp, net after net, but haven't actually faced a fired-up Doug Bollinger on a Bellerive green-top, or bowled to Ed Cowan when he's 60-odd and seeing them like watermelons.
There are real parallels with rugby here too, where young squaddies who are great at running through cones are promoted above club veterans in the name of 'talent pathways'. The consequences often don't reveal themselves until 5-10 years later.
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@barbarian said in Aussie Cricket:
So the system was changed to promote that young talent as much as possible. The 2nd XI comp was turned into an under 23 comp (with two overage players allowed), and pressure was put on states to move on from the 'old guard' of players.
This change had the biggest effect IMO. The focus went away from producing the best domestic competition with the deepest reservoir of test ready talent in the world, to trying to create the next Warne, Ponting, McGrath, Clarke, Smith...
They've tried to reverse engineer the next generation of phenoms which obviously doesn't work.
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@rotated said in Aussie Cricket:
They've tried to reverse engineer the next generation of phenoms which obviously doesn't work.
It's like NZ rugby - not all the stars shine early and go to academies. 'School of hard knocks' still lives on; Ben Smith was never an age grade star
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@nzzp said in Aussie Cricket:
@rotated said in Aussie Cricket:
They've tried to reverse engineer the next generation of phenoms which obviously doesn't work.
It's like NZ rugby - not all the stars shine early and go to academies. 'School of hard knocks' still lives on; Ben Smith was never an age grade star
Is Ben Smith the best example? He was in the NZ U21s and so presumably pretty well known in the system - it just took the rest of us a while to click.
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@barbarian brilliantly put. That's the oil I had
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@Nepia said in Aussie Cricket:
@nzzp said in Aussie Cricket:
@rotated said in Aussie Cricket:
They've tried to reverse engineer the next generation of phenoms which obviously doesn't work.
It's like NZ rugby - not all the stars shine early and go to academies. 'School of hard knocks' still lives on; Ben Smith was never an age grade star
Is Ben Smith the best example? He was in the NZ U21s and so presumably pretty well known in the system - it just took the rest of us a while to click.
Conrad Smith is the best example probably in terms of no age grade teams.
Guys like Nonu, Weepu and Kaino becoming world beaters at the right time after taking 4-5 years baking in the oven is the finest example of the system working.
The discontinued Isaac Ross Rugby Academy would probably be a good analogy for what is going on in Aus currently.
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@nzzp said in Aussie Cricket:
@barbarian said in Aussie Cricket:
They decided to emphasise junior pathway models, and give preference to youth and potential over experience. That strategy, in theory, should pay dividends in the mid-long term. Well we're now firmly in the mid term and the cupboard is bare, apart from a few decent quicks.
And, once you break a model, it's bloody hard to get old hands re-interested in the game. Aus Cricket used to have a conveyor belt of talent that was just ridiculous. Now, it's the odd gem, rather than a sustained cohort. It's a bloody crime against cricket I reckon
Even the ones who weren't truly great ( Langer, Hussey, Gillespie, Martyn, Lehman, Symonds, M Waugh to name a few ) were still a damn sight better than what other teams could put out. The talent nowadays is an embarrassment compared to those guys.
