The International Cricket Thread

[Whiney MacWhineface]

What’s with all this shuffling outside off stump?
If any commentator mentions how deep England bat I’ll invite them to dinner with Vlad The Impaler.
Mind you the ball was turning square and the pitch was a snake-pit.
Crikey this acid is good.

[Villafirst]

Too much one day mentality I'm afraid. These batsmen are simply not patient enough. They keep playing wide balls which should be left alone. Simples really....

[olaftab]

Is it just our country that is full of w@n£ers ? Just spent a (largely) pleasant day on the grass bank at Cape Town until late afternoon when the beer obviously kicked in and snakes / throwing glasses / standing / football chants took over. Any request to respect fellow supporters - or even simply move so they can watch the live action - gets met with a mouthful of obscenities and threats of violence. Don’t recall seeing these tossers in NZ or other such less accessible tours. Embarrassing and disappointing.

Totally agree Lsvilla. I witnessed some disgraceful scenes today including two England fans fighting with each other, beer being spilled on ground staff as groups of England fans dance around them goading them to sing and other incidents resembling  worst aspect of some football fans.

[PaulWinch again]

We do seem to have a disproportionate number of utter dimwits.

[Steve67]

We do seem to have a disproportionate number of utter dimwits.

Judging by the performance on the field, this goes for the batsmen too.

[tomd2103]

Is it just our country that is full of w@n£ers ? Just spent a (largely) pleasant day on the grass bank at Cape Town until late afternoon when the beer obviously kicked in and snakes / throwing glasses / standing / football chants took over. Any request to respect fellow supporters - or even simply move so they can watch the live action - gets met with a mouthful of obscenities and threats of violence. Don’t recall seeing these tossers in NZ or other such less accessible tours. Embarrassing and disappointing.

Totally agree Lsvilla. I witnessed some disgraceful scenes today including two England fans fighting with each other, beer being spilled on ground staff as groups of England fans dance around them goading them to sing and other incidents resembling  worst aspect of some football fans.

Took the plunge to come to Cape Town and went to the Test today as well.  Was in the Railway Stand opposite the grass bank and have to say that apart from a small group of South Africans who shouted obscenities at various times during the day (had their kids with them as well!!) I didn't see the kind of scenes mentioned above.

As for on the field, just have to conclude that gif somd reason, we just aren't a good test side and haven't been for some time.  The kind of performance we saw today has just happened too many times over the last few years for anything else to be the case really.

[tomd2103]

Early days, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of improvement under Silverwood. We are making exactly the same mistakes.

Also how the hell is Foakes not in this side? I just don’t get it.

Silverwood was part of the previous set up which had taken us backwards in test cricket.  Seemed a bit of a 'matey' appointment at the time and it has been much of the same since.

[Villan For Life]

We are in a transitional phase in test cricket and so as a result we really needed to appoint a coach with patience, vision and skills. Instead we signalled that we were carrying on regardless with the appointment of Silverwood. A county trundler to international coach is an underwhelming appointment. The players are too comfortable and a culture of mediocrity seems to be the norm.

We have to accept that the next couple of years will be barren where we win the odd test at home but are a long way from where we want to be.

Undoubtedly the global focus on white ball cricket over the last ten years or so has lead to a reduction in Test quality across all international sides but we seem to be hindered more than most. I was thrilled to win the CWC last year but like most on here I think red ball cricket is the purest form of the game and I’d much rather see an England team dominating red ball cricket than white ball cricket. Unfortunately money talks and white ball cricket is where the money is.

So Mr Giles, you lack guts and vision. Appointing Silverwood is akin to Villa appointing Graham Turner and we know where that ended up.

[PaulWinch again]

They’re going to get a big score here.

[tomd2103]

We are in a transitional phase in test cricket and so as a result we really needed to appoint a coach with patience, vision and skills. Instead we signalled that we were carrying on regardless with the appointment of Silverwood. A county trundler to international coach is an underwhelming appointment. The players are too comfortable and a culture of mediocrity seems to be the norm.

We have to accept that the next couple of years will be barren where we win the odd test at home but are a long way from where we want to be.

Undoubtedly the global focus on white ball cricket over the last ten years or so has lead to a reduction in Test quality across all international sides but we seem to be hindered more than most. I was thrilled to win the CWC last year but like most on here I think red ball cricket is the purest form of the game and I’d much rather see an England team dominating red ball cricket than white ball cricket. Unfortunately money talks and white ball cricket is where the money is.

So Mr Giles, you lack guts and vision. Appointing Silverwood is akin to Villa appointing Graham Turner and we know where that ended up.

Agree with that mate.

[PaulWinch again]

Maybe not, this is a good start.

[simboy]

I’m not sure I necessarily agree that the criticism of Silverwood is made out just yet.

I agree he was a “jobbing” county cricketer but he took Essex out of the second division and won the championship the following year. He made wholesale changes to the squad and I’m not sure that they had the same money as other more “prestigious” counties at the time.

The jury is still out in my opinion.  However, his encouragement of youth is good to see, I hope he sticks to this. It would have been really simple to move Denly up to open and drop in Bairstow at 3 at Newlands. We didn’t. We decided to stick with Denly and trust Crawley. That I thought was good to see and I hope is something we continue to see.

To hear that they were thinking of dropping Broad or Anderson in favour of Archer is also interesting and a sign of the times. The fact that it is not being left to Broad or Anderson to “call time” on their own career is also encouraging.

As to being like appointing Turner, I’d hope it’s a little more like appointing another lower league player in Graham Taylor.

We will see. I am not “sold” on Silverwood but I am prepared to give him a chance over a period of transition. If one or more of Sibley, Pope, Bess, Curran, Archer or Crawley become Ashes heroes in Australia then job done.

[PaulWinch again]

Broad has been excellent, but he’s just got Van Der Dussen out on a massive no ball.

[Steve67]

We are in a transitional phase in test cricket and so as a result we really needed to appoint a coach with patience, vision and skills. Instead we signalled that we were carrying on regardless with the appointment of Silverwood. A county trundler to international coach is an underwhelming appointment. The players are too comfortable and a culture of mediocrity seems to be the norm.

We have to accept that the next couple of years will be barren where we win the odd test at home but are a long way from where we want to be.

Undoubtedly the global focus on white ball cricket over the last ten years or so has lead to a reduction in Test quality across all international sides but we seem to be hindered more than most. I was thrilled to win the CWC last year but like most on here I think red ball cricket is the purest form of the game and I’d much rather see an England team dominating red ball cricket than white ball cricket. Unfortunately money talks and white ball cricket is where the money is.

So Mr Giles, you lack guts and vision. Appointing Silverwood is akin to Villa appointing Graham Turner and we know where that ended up.

Agree with that mate.

I could not agree more.  Every other test nation seems to go for a world class coach, yet we seem to shop at Aldi and Lidl for ours.  We have some great players who, like Ollie Pope, could turn out to be worldies. 

I was listening intently the to commentary this morning from Pollock, saying that, if Anderson and Broad want the dictate the terms of the fielding placements, they really need to stop worrying about giving runs away, and their average, and focus on taking wickets by putting the ball in the right place.   

[PaulWinch again]

It’s no balls all the time.