Australia will smash these easily. Not even a contest.
Australia will smash these easily. Not even a contest.
Especially now Smith is out. I don't know he makes the T20 team, to be honest.
Modern T20 is not a difficult game to read, if you let any kind of specialist batsmen get to the last 3 overs with 40 or fewer required, you're cooked, as these two games have demonstrated. It's just easy sixes no matter who bowls or where they bowl it.
To win batting first you have to have an insane total, or take wickets constantly so that you have one or more bowlers in and can tie them down. You cannot allow any partnerships at all. Pakistan lost that when they had them 5 down and allowed Stoinis and Wade to pat it around for 5+ overs and still be there.
Dropping Wade didn't help but think they'd still have won easily tbh.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 11-11-2021 at 05:46 PM.
Originally Posted by thommo
And thus begins the inevitable journey to meek capitulation.
Vaughan is in trouble now. Be interesting to see what he does. Either accept the L and apologise, or double down on the denial.
'Rashid backs Rafiq racism allegations against Vaughan'
http://www.skysports.com/share/12469123
Again, with Vaughan, it's just his stupidity now that makes it worse. He should have just come out immediately and said yes I said it, I was very stupid to do so, I'll go round apologising to all concerned and be better in future. Instead he did that absurd Telegraph piece denying it which has probably torched him now that Rash has weighed in.
A nation mourns.
Which is a shame as I liked him as a pundit. The daft racist.
Yep, you would think that he turns round apologises initially and says he felt it was banter at the time but accepts that it isn't banter. He's sorry that it happened and that he mortified that he has made this mistake and it will never happen again. He might lose his Beeb stuff but he's not unemployable in this country though. Now he will struggle to ever get another gig here moving forwards.
From the Mail:
God I love the absurdity of this sort of thing. It's like the other week when a key part of the Yorkshire house of cards collapsing was the public condemnation from Harrogate Spring Water.- Michael Vaughan's sponsors have distanced themselves amid his racism storm
- The England captain is accused of racially abusing players of Asian heritage
- Men's outfitters Charles Tyrwhitt said they are 'monitoring the situation closely'
- The BBC are facing calls to drop Vaughan from their Ashes coverage this winter
Meanwhile Azeem Rafiq is testifying today, it's all in this thread and there is some incredible detail: https://twitter.com/NakulMPande/stat...35682909282309
Blimey.‘Kevin’ as a name for any player of colour began with Gary Ballance and spread to the England dressing room, including Alex Hales naming his black dog Kevin.
Jesus Christ.
Feels like there could be a few more mainstream careers coming to an end too, I'd missed the stuff about Bumble. What happened there?
I'm not sure, though I guess he was involved with the PCA at one point who are also getting steamrollered here, so could have been that.
Harrison will have to go in the end I think, ECB are going to get obliterated later.
That red wine story is fucking mental as well.
It's fucking rife. The bigger club down the road from me had an infamous incident of 'jokingly' throwing bananas at one of their own black players a few years ago, and the guy didn't complain or anything - we were always astonished at how that could be a widely known incident and nothing happened. I played against the guy, asked him about it and he said it was 'well meant' - does he really think that, or is he just so isolated he doesn't feel able to do anything about it?
I'm going to put out a revision of the inclusivity policy in the next few weeks and if any club in the country isn't doing that, they're not listening.
Fuck inclusivity policies. They need to be ripped up and replaced with 'not being a cunt' charters.
I can imagine there being a lot of people involved in things like that banana stuff, say, who'd be genuinely flabbergasted if you told them they were being racist because "He was laughing about it!" (or just not actively complaining, but then we all know in any environment if you rise to a joke or barb then you're just going to make it worse for yourself) without once stopping to ponder whether, as you say, the guy just felt he had to laugh/go with it or be excluded altogether.
I think there are situations where one to one or in very small groups people genuinely have the sort of friendship / relationship where they can make jokes around some of this stuff and it genuinely be "banter" (ugh) but if you're at the point where a dressing room is sitting watching that happen it just feels ghastly and I can't imagine just 'going along with that' even if the guy seemed to be part of the 'joke' and not just the butt of it.
Not being a cunt isn't enough. You also have to, as an organisation, actively stop others from being cunts. Which is what inclusivity is.
And yet we have bananas being thrown around in changing rooms.
Then clearly they weren't doing anything about it, and then some.
In order to change or improve a culture you must first lay down ground rules.
I guess what I'm getting at is policies are a box ticking exercise (I don't doubt Yorkshire Cricket Club had one) and sending a revised one is going to do next to nothing.
Ironically, what will do more than anything else could is the tidal wave of justified media exposure this hate filled shit show has generated.
I assume he's going down the route of "But there are so many non-white players!" In which case I dunno how he believes that racism exists at all.
I've been enjoying the fallout of all this. How could cricket clubs - chaired exclusively by white male pensioners(?) - possibly be racist? Shocking stuff.
I'm looking forward to the Rugby edition where someone called Geoff has sniffed indignantly at someone doing the Haka.
Race relations in cricket are a bloody nightmare. In the leagues where I operate there are plenty of white players and plenty of Asian players. There is always a massive culture clash between the two (particularly Pakistanis). To summarise it as tactfully as possible, white players tend to be interested in the sport as a social activity - i.e. it's not just about playing the game but also about socialising afterwards (often involving alcohol), being proud of your club and your role in maintaining its reputation and facilities, being organised, presenting the ground well, wearing the correct kit, and all the other facets of team sport that are familiar. With many Asian players - and this is a slight generalisation, but certainly a valid one - they are basically only interested in playing the game itself. That means they tend towards turning up 5 minutes before start time, don't want to warm up, don't want to help set the ground up, don't want to put away afterwards or socialise, and are happy just slinging on the cheapest generic kit from Sports Direct rather than 'representing the club' as the white man would see it. For them the joy is in bowling and batting, rather than in the surrounding stuff.
This can end up with really bitter enmity between the two, who are playing the same sport and love the sport equally but have completely different visions for how to enjoy it. I've seen clubs where either the whites or the Pakistanis will attempt hostile board/AGM takeovers in order to keep the club to themselves and exclude the other group. I can very well imagine that scenario where 15 year old Azeem Rafiq would get press-ganged into having wine poured down his throat. I have also seen the opposite scenarios where clubs fall apart because the Asian guys don't want to involve the wider community, women, or anyone outside their immediate social circles, and don't give back to the institution.
There's no easy solution except for the one where each group is happy to accommodate the other's preferences, something I have yet to see happen in many places.
"Steve"
Now I dunno where I stand on ones like that (calling one person Steve because you're thick as mince and can't pronounce his name is a bit different to deciding all non-whites should share a name and sit by the toilets) however a) names aren't that fucking hard and b) if somebody would rather you call them by their actual name then.... y'know, call them that.
Whether it's racist bullying or just bullying, it all comes from the same toxic dressing room culture.
Whilst this thing isn't about individuals, as Rafiq kept saying, I genuinely find it incredible that Moxon and Gale haven't resigned yet.
It's just a reflection of how the whole organisation have handled this though, isn't it. The attitude they have that they either seem to genuinely believe they've done nothing wrong or are just not prepared under any circumstances to admit it.
Even weeks in my mind still boggles at how they've gone about dealing with this. You know there are plenty of backwards people knocking about but to have such a concentration of them is a bit of an eye opener.
The fact that things were said to have improved under Jason Gillespie and then immediately descended into this as soon as Gale and Ballance took over demonstrates how big an impact leadership has.
His description of Joe Root as a good man who never did any of this but that if he didn't remember this going on it's because he didn't care and/or because it doesn't affect him was very damning-with-faint-praise.
Joe Root put out a properly rubbish statement the other day that was clearly written by his lawyers. The establishment clearly don't have a clue what to do in this kind of situtation. I saw a great tweet when Tom Harrison (salary: Ł700,000, I have to mention it every time his name appears) came out to give evidence after Rafiq: 'Here comes Harrison to exude oil onto troubled waters'.
That is excellent.
Didn't the ECB's top brass also decide to award themselves so nice big bonuses to celebrate how much they'd 'grown' the game?
Odds on Root being a mega wrong un down the line?
Root's not a mega wrong un, or any kind of wrong un. I think it's possible that he's a bit thick, at least in the way that many footballers are 'thick', i.e. they are so focused on their sport that there is not a lot of other thought that goes on.
I mean if Rafiq is right that Root has been there when people are throwing the word 'paki' about then that's already a very, very bad look. "I didn't hear it" isn't really much of an excuse if you're the captain and it's been happening regularly, you're meant to be making sure you know what's going on.
I'd be a bit surprised in Root's case if it got worse than that but who knows.
I suspect Root dreams of the days when all he had to do was smack the ball about and give a cheeky grin to anybody seething at him.
Not that I blame him.
EDIT: His response to the homophobic sledging (which is in the field and picked up by stump mics and therefore not some kind of premeditated response) against whoever it was reflects well on him too.
Last edited by Ian; 18-11-2021 at 10:17 AM.
The state of that.
Check it for Vaughans fingerprints
Plot twist.
That isn't a plot twist.
It is now.
Oh, shit, so Yorkshire isn't racist and the brown guy IS the baddie.
What a relief.
'Well you once said something racist too! Aha! Gotcha!'
*toxic power structures which aid and abet casual racism and other bullying persist*
There are a lot of people with powerful voices who aren't intelligent enough or informed enough to be part of this debate. Some are MPs, many are in the media, others in cricket itself.
Neither is right but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
What?
Neither is right but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Ah. Got you.
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