When they were saying we were ahead on winviz, I absolutely would have put ££££ on us losing if I had been arsed to remember my online gambling login credentials.
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When they were saying we were ahead on winviz, I absolutely would have put ££££ on us losing if I had been arsed to remember my online gambling login credentials.
Does Winviz take into account specific teams or is it a pure 'from x position an average test team should win y% of the time"?
And there goes the game.
Theyre so thick.
Love that Pope moved into a such a position that the ball ended up deflecting behind him and still hit his middle stump.
The fucking state of some of these batsmen we fall in love with.
England have like 3 good enough batsmen. Scary scenes.
The lack of care in maintaining their wicket is staggering. What an absolute shambles of a team.
Once Root was gone, I don't think anyone could be genuinely bothered. Rather be all out tonight and get on the plane home than drag it out another day.
Wow. Can't buy a win or a draw, even when handed on silver platter.
I'm ambivalent about getting rid of Root as captain (he's crap, but there isn't anyone obviously better) but they definitely need fresh thinking in the management and probably a big strong figure (which Root isn't).
Short of my Ravi Shastri dreams being fulfilled, Gary Kirsten or Micky Arthur would be good choices.
That’s great
Stokes is a good batsman. He doesn't convert into big scores often enough to be considered top level purely on his batting but really he's there because he's the only batsman other than Root who you'd turn to if you needed some unlikely heroics.
No idea who the third is though.
I thought Crawley looked ok in both innings. Maybe that's it?
Crawley looked ok. But, when he's played well he hasn't converted and that is an issue he seems another who will make a nice 20 or 30 and then find a way of getting out.
I love Stokes but he looked very under-cooked in the series.
I'm now watching the under 19 World Cup and we've just bowled Bangladesh out for 97. I'm going to pretend this is the real Ashes.
We're now behind the required run rate more than 13 overs in to the chase. :D
Telegraph long read on the Ashes shambles. Some quality/lol/fucking hell details in there. Any time the mysterious 'Mo Bobat' gets a mention the alarm bells starting ringing.
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He's not even tall. :nono:Quote:
Selection was made mainly by the coach and captain but also chief scout, James Taylor, back home in England, with Bobat contributing. Players were frustrated that Taylor, who was not even in Australia, could have so much influence from thousands of miles away.
I've said this before about England but the way the same plays make the same mistakes over and over again doesn't suggest anybody is made to feel accountable for individual errors and doing their job right and that sort of culture is the death of any team with aspirations of being the best.Quote:
Yet there were also issues around players not taking enough individual responsibility.
Could be a good documentary in this tour one day.
Doubt it, unless they could get a Thick of It style thing going. I would imagine it would just be deathly dull. Like hours on end of accidental Partridge / Brent without any of the humour.
Mo Bobat is surely a made up person. What do we call him? I dunno, what's the name of that award for urban music? That'll sound inclusive. Stick a bat on the end to make it relevant to cricket.
I enjoyed the Rory Burns quote (the most Rory Burns quote of all time), the complete lack of effort to mask which player was complaining about 'fat shaming', Chris Silverwood using the 'marathon, not a sprint' line while 2-0 down in a best of 5, the Adelaide groundsman advising them on selection only to be ignored, and - shock fucking horror - the revelation that Ollie Robinson bowls shitloads of no balls in training.
Mo Bobat:
The ideal choice for the role. Level 4 coaching courses are really hard to get on (a bit like the UEFA A Licence or whatever in football) so god knows how he's managed to con his way into this.Quote:
A 36-year-old former PE teacher from Leicester, Bobat studied sports science and management and is also in the process of completing a Masters in sporting directorship. Prior to joining the ECB in 2011, he worked as a lecturer and teacher in Leicester, augmenting his experience as a Level 4 certified cricket coach.
Yeah the "marathon, not a sprint" stuff when the series was as good as gone was good shit.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...st-ashes-party
Why do people so love filming the thing that's going to get them sacked?
I love the police telling them "Time for bed" though. :D
I mean, if Thorpey's aim is to get the sack, he's obviously tried everything batting-wise and this is now a desperate cry for help.
I’m presuming he’s done for when the news got out there and to stop it being taking out of context or something. Love how he doesn’t know travis Head’s name :D
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...county-cricket
:DQuote:
Plus of course Darren Stevens, and Darren Stevens again. It is a quirk of English cricket’s angst-ridden conversation with itself that Stevens’ name was mentioned so often over the first three Tests that he issued a statement asking people to stop bringing him into it.
With good reason too. Here’s a funny thing: Australian Test players in county cricket have a WhatsApp group where they talk about the difficulties of playing here. It’s called “Stevosgoingtogetyou”. And he is. Last summer Stevens bowled to Marnus Labuschagne twice and once to Travis Head. He got them out all three times, for 11, 11, and 20.
Some good stuff in there.
:DQuote:
More jarring was Joe Root’s comment that “anyone coming into this Test team at the minute is doing it in spite of county cricket, not because of county cricket.” Root’s wider point was more detailed and well-meaning, although there will always be something a little odd in hearing the highest-paid person in English cricket telling every county level coach, player, groundsman administrator, development officer, paying supporter and junior hopeful that the thing they like is trash and it’s basically their fault England have just lost 10 for 56 in Hobart.
I don't know if this is true across all sports, but elite cricketers know absolutely fuck all about the sport. They have such narrow experience: freakish talent plus endless nets. That's no level of perspective to have a near-monopoly on the discourse. If they were bright enough I would make them sit down and read Beyond a Boundary with their eyelids taped open.
This especially applies to Joe Root, who doesn't think enough about the game for an England captain.
It now turns out the police were called because Thrope was smoking a cigar, and that he's now facing the sack as a result.
The batting coach getting fired for smoking a cigar would be the most England cricket thing ever to happen.
The cops getting called is so fucking piss weak.
ECB managing director of county cricket Neil Snowball...
I'm sorry, no, you can have a name like that and hope to maintain any sort of credible professional career.
Snowball? No. Not having that.
We've got a guy who works in the mechanical workshop called Kit Man.
Names can also make you.
I have met Neil Snowball a few times, he's a friend of a friend's dad. Seemed a decent man, bit of a smoothie chops. He also got the friend's dad a job as Kumar Dharmasena's personal driver/butler during the World Cup, which led to some interesting anecdotes (and some mighty boring ones).
Must be nice being in the London cricket circle.
Closest I've got to any famous cricketer is shouldering arms to Imran Tahir's googly.
Cunts: Jade Dernbach, Rory Hamilton-Brown, Graham Thorpe, Rikki Clarke, Laurie Evans, Jason Roy, I think probably both Currans though Sam is disputed
Good guys: Arun Harinath, Stuart Meaker, Alex Tudor, Gareth Batty, Mark Ramprakash
Legends: Mark Butcher, Kumar Sangakkara
Absurd parodies of themselves: Zafar Ansari
Chip on shoulder (justified): Mike Carberry
Frustrating lack of intel on Sam Billings, I'd love to get him confirmed in the cunt column but I'm not sure. Oh and Stuart Broad is supposedly the biggest cunt in the world, which for me only adds to the allure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/59998885
Today I learned there is a thing called a 'cricket coffin.'
You don't see them much these days. A staple of the 20th century when everyone wore full whites at all times anywhere near a cricket field, and players were served lemon squash at the drinks break rather than powerade or whatever.
Absolute scourge of amateur cricket changing rooms. We implemented a fine for anything not a duffel bag in an attempt to win back some floor space.
West Indies v England starts in 40 minutes. What a superb schedule this is that you're only ever a couple of days from the next England humiliation.
Exactly three minutes into the game before Cottrell is off doing his fucking celebration again. Well done everyone.
What happened? And what is his celebration?
I put it on, went to stick the oven on and feared the worst when I came back and saw there was already an ad break.
Never mind, I see the celebration. I wonder if he could have shown off more of his stumps. Perhaps take up his stance on the boundary?
Cracking start.
This lot have just lost to Ireland in ODIs and have possibly their worst kit ever, obviously we're ten for fucking three.
Yeah I was just thinking that shirt is pretty shit.