The Cricket Thread 2014

[cheltenhamlion]

Just finished reading the book and I think Athers summary is about right.

[PaulWinch again]

This West Indies situation is really bad for cricket, and really they picked the worst possible people to annoy in the BCCI.

[simon ward 50]

This West Indies situation is really bad for cricket, and really they picked the worst possible people to annoy in the BCCI.

Agreed

[PaulWinch again]

This West Indies issue is a real worry, the senior players have been really stupid in the stance they've taken. They've jepordised their international futures and also the international future of the West Indies cricket team. I really hope the BCCI don't proceed with legal action as it would be terrible for the game if the West Indies disappear.

[PaulWinch again]

Nice to see Pakistan giving Australia a battering in the Test series in the UAE. Hopefully that'll start to undermine the Aussies new found confidence.

[Villan For Life]

Nice to see Pakistan giving Australia a battering in the Test series in the UAE. Hopefully that'll start to undermine the Aussies new found confidence.

Well and truly battered. One down at the close too.

[olaftab]

Such a shame that Pakistan didn't enforce the follow on this morning with Aussies all out at 261  309 runs behind. An innings defeat would have been truly humiliating for them. I know the follow on has been almost forced out of the game since Australia lost that test match in Indis but there is a time and place for it and today definitely was.

[Villan For Life]

Misbah has scored the fastest test 50 of all time off 21 balls and the joint fastest test century off 56 balls. He now shares the record with Sir Viv.

And they dropped him second ball!

[peter w]

I'm no fan of Pakistan but this is great stuff.

[OzVilla]

Aussies have been smashed out of sight by Pakistan - losing by 356!

Pakistan's biggest ever win and statistically Australia's worst ever series defeat. They've averaged taking a wicket every 80 runs.  Just shows, nullify Johnson's pace and without the balance of Harris and suddenly they come right back to the pack.

Just imagine if Ajmal had of played.

[Villan For Life]

Losing their 5 wickets for 8 runs is quite a collapse. They were 200-4 and then 246 all out.

Pakistan are quite a team when they play in the UAE.

[olaftab]

Aussies have been smashed out of sight by Pakistan - losing by 356!

Pakistan's biggest ever win and statistically Australia's worst ever series defeat. They've averaged taking a wicket every 80 runs.  Just shows, nullify Johnson's pace and without the balance of Harris and suddenly they come right back to the pack.

Just imagine if Ajmal had of played.

Always lovely to see Aussies humiliated. Does not happen often enough.
They had a very good plan to play Johnson and for once batters were disciplined enough to stick to it after that there is not much Aussies offered on a pitch prepared to resemble Karachi stadium track at it's local best.

[PaulWinch again]

Hopefully that'll dent the Aussies confidence a bit, I don't care if they're the number 1 test side they're not that good. Johnson can blow teams away as we've seen, but they have a lot of players who will go over the hill at the same time. Hopefully we'll have developed more by the time they arrive next summer.

[peter w]

To be fair our top line batsmen played in well enough in the last Ashes series. It was the lower order batsmen that were blown away.

[paul_e]

To be fair our top line batsmen played in well enough in the last Ashes series. It was the lower order batsmen that were blown away.

That's not true, the only batsman who averaged over 30 was Stokes and his figures were heavily influenced by his century (the only 1 we scored on the tour).  You can look at the stats below, there really is no silver lining for the batting displays, as a team we let Johnson and Harris totally dominate us to the point where it was embarrassingly 1sided.  The bowling as poor as well and clearly our lower order batting was abysmal but averages like we saw from the top order can't happen if you want to win things.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013-14/engine/records/averages/batting_bowling_by_team.html?id=7899;team=1;type=series