World Test Championship
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@majorrage said in World Test Championship:
Pitch was designed for an Indian victory in less than 3 days.
only because they play spin better. Conditions were similar for both sides - arguably England had the better of it as they won the toss.
To me, this is only a matter of degree. Preparing something that plays to your strenghts is fine - but you have to play on it too! This one probably turned a bit too much, but England also misread the conditions, picked a single spinner. IF they had played two half decent spinners, that game may have turned out with a different winner.
one thing's for sure, it ain't going to be a boring draw! I was gutted it was a 10pm NZT start; couldn't wait to watch some
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India has better spinners and their batsmen are better players of spin - and they are desperate to be the first World Test Champions.
They're not going to cut the English an even break.
Watch for the anomaly where India's players will be in England playing warm-up matches, while half our team is sitting in India watching the IPL!
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@catogrande said in World Test Championship:
@majorrage India are without doubt the better team and beforehand I would have just hoped for some degree of competitiveness. maybe England spanking India in the first test has had a knock on effect? Dunno but if this game had been played in the County Championship, the pitch would have been reported to the E&WCB.
I think if you have the will power to trawl through this thread, it was even suggested after India had levelled the series that this was a likelihood.
First test victory definitely had knock-on effect. The first test pitch is closer to what I would have thought India would want before series start, as these last 2 pitches reduce the skills gap and makes part-timers like Root lethal. But after they lost on that first test pitch, they were behind 8-ball and couldn't afford a few draws in the series due to WTC.
On your point about pitches being reported in county championship, if like this. yYes, but that is half, or 3/4s of England's problem. From what I gather from reading and podcats. Somerset have had pitches reported which were x times better than this pitch, but because they spun too much on day 1. Somerset have both Leach and Bess in their team. ECB are dumb to make all 18 counties have bland indistinguishable pitches. Dumb, retarded, stupid. Wrong people in charge, probably ex-batsmen.
Imagine having 18 FC domestic sides to choose from yet going into a dustbowl test with 4 seamers, 1 spinner and 1 part-timer.
In 20 years time, this test will be recalled for the crazy team selection more than the pitch. Like England's first test of 1993 tour to India where they picked 4 medium paced right-armers (plus 1 spinner) and India picked 3 spinners each of different type. (https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/england-tour-of-india-1992-93-61796/india-vs-england-1st-test-63598/full-scorecard )
Even though point about pitch in this case is probably valid, I don't know, it was over too soon for me to watch much!
I like good dustbowl or green seamer occasionally. Wouldn't want them every test, though. Varying conditions is what makes long-form cricket interesting. -
@bovidae I looked up that 1932 Test. Quite remarkable. SA won the toss and batted first and were all out in 90 minutes for 36!
Australia fared better but were still dismissed for 153. Both teams totals were their lowest ever against their opponents.So SA resumed 117 runs behind and lost one for 5 before play ended.
Saturday was totally washed out, Sunday was a rest day (sabbath) and play didn't resume until 2:15 on the Monday. This time round SA couldn't even last 90 minutes, being skittled for the addition of only 40 more. Bert Ironmonger was unplayable once the sun came out. He had match figures of 11-24. SA's total aggregate of 81 is the lowest in tests for two completed innings. So despite having only scored 153, Oz won by an innings and 72 in only 109.2 overs and due to interruptions less than six hours actual playing time
SA only had one batsman reach double figures in each innings. Apart from these two only their #11 totaled 10 in two innings.
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That pitch was a strange one or maybe it was the pink ball which probably hasn't had an outing on a turner before. The danger of batting seemed to be that identical balls could either grip and turn or could skid and go straight on. From what I could see the revolutions on the ball were the same, they weren't arm balls as such. If you didn't get out to an unplayable ball then you tended to get yourself out by over thinking it.
Losing 2 in the first 3 balls (and the other ball was given out but TMO review saved Bairstow) meant England couldn't really try attacking tactics which looked the best policy against the spinners. Bairstow looked like a man who had never used a cricket bat before.
And in hindsight, England probably lost the game on the first day when they bowled their seamers for too long when Root was going to be so much more effective.
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Might be fruitful to examine the batting with the same vigour as examining the pitch. Kohli offered that 21 of the 30 wickets went to straight balls. Dunno but if elite batsmen can't bat for an hour on a professionally prepared pitch I'd say we look at techniques and application before making judgements that will inevitably lead to vanilla pitch legislation.
I'd take this game over 10 flat Aussie or UAE wickets that feature "500 for the loss of 6" games any day of the week.
A poor tradesman blames his tools. Neither Root or Kohli opined that the pitch was more substandard than the batting.
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@kiwipie I reckon the sg ball has a much more pronounced seam than kookaburras.
On another note, spoke to a kookaburra employee in Adelaide. The white kookas keep the business afloat. Basically every white ball in all men's and women's professional comps are kookaburra. Each ball wholesales for 100 AUD. Now think about every game around the world, every t20 and limited overs comp and every practice session and every box of replacement balls and then wonder what sorts of negotiations take place when an association contemplates changing the ball supplier.
Apparently the dukes factory and the kookaburra factory are 200 metres apart from each other...🙂
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Well India scored fuck all ( with Joe Root taking 5 for 8. ?!?! ) luckily for them England got even less and got hammered. They say a fast game is a good game but holy shit, this was over in two days !
What does this latest result mean for the championship?
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@rapido Yeah, I think you’re right about England’s selection and if I’m honest with myself, I did worry a little about the bowling line up from the get go.
Not sure you’re so spot on about pitch reporting though. If enough wickets fall in a day a pitch is automatically reported though that in itself doesn’t mean much. The investigation and result of the report is the thing.
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The pitch looked poor from the very start. But, England were so blinded by "pink ball, day-night test" that they got their bowling selections and bowling changes badly wrong. The likes of Crawley and Bairstow were playing so far down the wrong line that it didn't matter whether it was a dustbowl or concrete...
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@donsteppa Interesting also that two out of the top three are part timers.
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@catogrande said in World Test Championship:
@donsteppa Interesting also that two out of the top three are part timers.
......and the other one was certainly no world beater.
Allan Border took a 10fer in a test back in the day vs the Windies.
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@mn5 said in Other Cricket:
Well India scored fuck all ( with Joe Root taking 5 for 8. ?!?! ) luckily for them England got even less and got hammered. They say a fast game is a good game but holy shit, this was over in two days !
What does this latest result mean for the championship?
Bye bye England .... India or Oz now. England wins - oz. Anything else, India.
One of the worlds besting sporting pundits wholly agrees with me that the last match was nothing short of a complete farce.
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@majorrage said in Other Cricket:
@mn5 said in Other Cricket:
Well India scored fuck all ( with Joe Root taking 5 for 8. ?!?! ) luckily for them England got even less and got hammered. They say a fast game is a good game but holy shit, this was over in two days !
What does this latest result mean for the championship?
Bye bye England .... India or Oz now. England wins - oz. Anything else, India.
One of the worlds besting sporting pundits wholly agrees with me that the last match was nothing short of a complete farce.
I’m all for a good old low scoring game to counterbalance all the 600 plus scores......but that one sounds completely ridiculous.
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@majorrage said in Other Cricket:
@mn5 said in Other Cricket:
Well India scored fuck all ( with Joe Root taking 5 for 8. ?!?! ) luckily for them England got even less and got hammered. They say a fast game is a good game but holy shit, this was over in two days !
What does this latest result mean for the championship?
Bye bye England .... India or Oz now. England wins - oz. Anything else, India.
One of the worlds besting sporting pundits wholly agrees with me that the last match was nothing short of a complete farce.
I'm not going to pretend that was a role model pitch or that we want a lot of 2 or 3 day tests but the pitch is being bandied about, as is typical nowdays, as the defining reason for a contest which has left one side disappointed and having to cop an ugly loss which extuinguishes the opportunity to play for the pinnacle at Lords. And, like everyone nowdays, whenever encountering a disppointment ya gotta blame someone or something else!
Agnew, indeed one of the better pundits, does this, in the voice of General Melchett, in this one piece, but his analysis is paper thin and cherry picked. What DRS and pre match team selection has to do with how the pitch played is beyond me.
So for my own amusement (and not a serious rebuttal mate
), let me offer why Agnew is being a whiney biatch.Agnew in itallics - (edit: some itallics not working
)Not every Test must reach the last hour of the fifth day, but it is scheduled to be a five-day match and therefore you are supposed to prepare conditions in which that is possible.
No, Jonathan, and the only way the game goes for any length of time is because of batsmen. That's the one special ingredient test cricket has. It takes hours to build a score and minutes to knock it down. The best batting performance takes hours and the best bowling is done in minutes. You want 5 day tests (an anomly these days btw), then the batters better bat for 5 days, otherwise the bowlers will, by necessity wrap it up in minutes.
As I said last week, there is now an opportunity for people in England to watch Test cricket on free-to-air television and I, like many others, need to stick up for the game.
Oh so England has to win for the "game" to flourish? Did you have to "stick up" for cricket after the first test?
I must admit that this pitch was not quite as bad as the Chennai one, where there were great lumps coming out almost from the start.
That's ahh...umm... the same ground that hosted the first test when England made 578 isn't it? Only 2 grounds will be used for this 4 test series - covid don't you know, so let's begin a cruddy pitch crusade with a sample size of 2 in a global pandemic then?
It is not in Test cricket's interest to have games end so quickly and played in a way where survival and scoring runs are extremely difficult.
I also mentioned last week that the International Cricket Council (ICC) should act and take points off teams in the World Test Championship if pitches are prepared that are not going to last.
Adelaide's fucked then! That shitty wicket rolled a team for 36 in about an hour and a half. Aussie no longer a threat to us in Lords as the points stripped from them will plummet their standings.
But the ICC seems to be sitting on its hands and not doing anything.
Let's be fucken clear here Aggers. That test was ALL about the England 2nd innings of 81. There's no way in the world you were pissing and moaning at 4:30pm India time on Thursday. At the halfway stage the teams were nigh on equal. A paltry 33 run lead is even stevens for any test match. The bottom lip dragging sulky moaning at the foreigners was all about only managing 81 runs at the business end of a test.
And what about the shots played during that 80 fucking 1? How's Crawley going back to a forward defense for a king duck? What did the pitch do to Bairstow to compel that god awful swipe first ball while his team was 1 for none (in literal minutes)? Hit in front and surviving through the, later, vaunted DRS? OK Jonny, you get a second chance to show your batting prowess... the fluffybunny couldn't even play a rudimentary forward defensive shot! A theme that permeated the innings.
So, now, None for 2 after only minutes of play, (fuck we've got to go 5 days to finish our "rostered shift") and it's time for the most over used cliche in all sport - "it's called a test because it's a test of your physical and mental character".
Ok English batsmen, it's step up time.
So Root and Sibley showed a glimpse and it was good. The order of the day was different. Quick singles, subdued wristy angles of the bat, playing straight and scampering. Looked good, looked tough too but there's a baying crowd and it's "test" time. Sibley impatiently trys to hoik a full ball outside off over midwicket and is caught behind and burns a review and one wonders how the dusty pitch has planted a pathogen in Sibley's decision making processes. Cue further swipes across the line and "How not to" videos of playing a forward defensive shot - bat behind pad? bat in front of pad? Gap between bat and pad? All the way forward? Little bit forward? Go back to a full one and read it off the pitch?
In the oppressive and dour past the forward defensive shot was the first one learned. Everything came after mastering that one. No "see ball hit ball" when we were nurturing players to bat 5 days. Now, its the opposite. Bash the ball and we'll sort out defence later. The result, we've got Brendon McCullum swash-buckling mixed with his self confessed substandard defence. Why does Pujara stand out in the world as a peculiar style of batsman? How come Steve Smith and Marnus wasted NZ in Australia? What was different about the number of balls faced? Why are Kane's long innings special? How many forward defensive shots in those?
Nah, mentally, technically and strategically England bottled it in their 2nd innings. They drew level and then bottled it big time. Another 70 runs and they would've been in a fine position to exert pressure on India and win. The pitch forced the game to have low scores but it didn't force England to get half of par in the second dig.
Jofra Archer reviewing his amateur hoik was one example of how England talked themselves out of this one - probably at the 10 minute mark when they watched Bairstow throw the whole thing away. "The pitch has got in their minds" was a rare decent call from Gavaskar in the commentary.
I'm enjoying this rush of pomposity
Is Joe Root, a part-time off-spinner who averaged 47 with the ball before this match, really a bowler who should be taking 5-8?
Did you see the 5 balls that got wickets? Pretty good ones - landed in the right area. Is there a judgement on a bowler's worth to bowl 5 particular, successful balls in a spell? Joe Root is incapable of getting a bag of wickets? Pesky pitch and conspiracy Indian tailenders.
"England showed a lot of spirit to get back into the game by bowling India out for 145 and limiting the first-innings deficit to 33, but it was also clear to see the tourists had brought with them the scars from the second Test.
On a number of fronts, it was clear they had not recovered from the experience of a 317-run hammering last week - and that contributed to their demise."
Damn pitch has cut them now too!!
England's batsmen kept getting bowled by the straighter ball off the India spinners, with left-armer Axar finishing with match figures of 11-70 and off-spinner Ashwin 7-72.
Is "forward defensive shot" hate speech in England now? Probably...
"England, for the second consecutive game, also showed their frustrations with some of the third umpire's decisions.
There were two instances on day one: a slip catch by Ben Stokes which was deemed to have been grounded and a Rohit Sharma stumping appeal in which the TV umpire did not seem to check all the available angles"
Goddam pitch worshippers in the officials box, brainwashed into poor tv screen manipulation by the bloody pitch - won't someone please stick up for the game"?!
But England were complaining about the third umpire to the people in the middle, who have nothing to do with what the third umpire does. It was quite bizarre behaviour.
Well it's the pitch Jonathan. Like white noise, LSD and dog whistles, it gets into your mind and the damage is palpable. Something must be done!
"I do not blame them for picking the side they did, with only one frontline spinner in Jack Leach. In England's strongest XI you would have pace bowlers James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Jofra Archer.
In the planning of this Test they would have just assumed it would swing a lot more and not spin as much."
You don't blame them for not understanding Indian conditions? No groundsmen or local advice given? Just pretend we're playing in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hamilton or Headingly?
You know what happens when one "assumes" Aggers? Bloody pitch, shattering assumptions.
But the lack of depth in batting was also a big issue, especially when you have Archer coming in at number eight. Once you are six down, you are pretty much all out.
YYaaayyy you mentioned the batting - but not the performance, just an abstract notion.
So fuck off Agnew. Tea time on Thursday you would have been cock a hoop, then your team batted worse than amateurs (in trying, challenging conditions for sure) and you lost and now it's "something must be done!!" time.
Piss off with your blame game and I suggest a few more hours for the players to practice, perfect and think about the game - we don't need you to "stick up for the game" every time you play like weaklings and lose. It's not called a test for nothing, you knowBahh BLACKADDER !!
That was somewhat cathartic
Another angle - imagine a rugby game where it's 81 nil at halftime. Do we change the rules or take a close look at the fucking tackling?
That pitch ain't great but the issues of this expedited game aren't simply one dimensional like "pitch bad". As we refuse to believe these days, there's more complexity to things than our bipartisan brains are willing to entertain.
On a unifying and inclusive note, we now have a 2 dog race for our opponent in June. We can cheer for India or Australia (an England win) next Thursday, so choose wisely and don't be overcome by internal bias and prejudice
cheers rage, rant over
