joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Yep, can't even see them even managing to contrive at least one draw - let alone a win - from the last two.

Utter...utter tripe.

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Did anyone else see Punter and Fiery 'going at' each other, in the post mortem?

Boycs is such a **** at times.

An0n0m0us

What really got my back up was seeing Root claim they weren't hammered. What drugs is he on? There lies the problem, until they they grow some ***** and accept what a drubbing it's been so far they won't change. Its all too namby pamby must not upset anyone and tell anyone they have been ****. Bring back the days of Gatting/Botham giving the players an absolute roasting if they played **** and saying it how it was.

Vaughn was spot on saying he wasn't surprised with how it's gone when you look at the tool box England turned up with to do the job, it was missing a hammer, spanner and screwdriver. And he said the same as me, there is no one in that team with any true pace.

You can't go and expect to win in Aus without any pace in your attack.

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Totally.

And 'Team England' lol came across in the various interviews as if they were almost surprised that their attack would be/was ineffective in Oz.

We could have told them that years ago!

I mean, what planet are they on?!

An0n0m0us

A quick phone call to Devon Malcolm is required to see if he still has his whites and fancies a holiday in Aus for a few weeks.

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

And the Welsh wizard, Greg Thomas. Remember him?

Outrageously fast... But even more inconsistent than Malcs.

Indeed, his outright raw pace led to him being erratic. Giving a boundary-ball off pretty much every over.

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

... Oh, and David 'Syd' Lawrence.

An0n0m0us

There is something seriously wrong in county cricket if we are unable to bring through anyone who can bowl continually at 90+mph

Every top Test playing nation has pace bowlers except England. Even New Zealand out bowls us now in the pace attack.

When Broad and Anderson are trotting in and bowling in the mid 80s on flat dead pitches how do they expect to get anyone out when the opposition are used to facing 90+mph bowlers from their own side in net practice. Our lot are just serving up dollies at that speed.

We have to stop relying on bowlers who excel in English conditions which of course Anderson is the best ever and start producing bowlers who can trouble batsmen for pace as that's all there is when a pitch is flat and dead. We haven't had anyone since Harmison and he played his last test in 2009

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

SIMON HUGHES, The Analyst
December 8 2017, 12:01am, The Times

Why English cricket puts brakes on its fast bowlers

England have played six Test matches away from home since November 17 last year. They have lost them all. Mostly by huge margins.

They conspicuously failed the trial by spin in India last winter (and Bangladesh before that), and are now suffering a severe examination by pace in Australia. You could blame the batsmen, but that is only half the story.

The galling fact is that, away from home, England rarely seem to have the right bowling ingredients with which to fight back. In short, why don't we produce breakneck fast bowlers or mystery spinners?

The stark reality is that English cricket has rarely unearthed bowlers of genuine, gold-standard, 90mph pace, or high-class spinners for that matter. The most recent truly fast attack that England had was in 2005. Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones all touched 90mph occasionally.

It was pure coincidence that they came along together. Before them truly fast bowlers were mainly lone wolves. Darren Gough sustained England's pace bowling through the 1990s (with some help from the often wayward Devon Malcolm). Bob Willis did so (in between injuries) in the 1970s. Going farther back, Fred Trueman, Frank Tyson and Harold Larwood were once-in-a-generation exceptions to the English line-and-length merchants.

Why? The leading wicket-taker in last year's first division of the County Championship was Essex's Jamie Porter (75 wickets at 16.82) who bowls decent outswing at about 81mph. In the second division in the past two seasons, Kent's 41-year-old Darren Stevens, who trundles them down at 75mph with the wicketkeeper standing up, has taken 99 wickets, including 62 at 18.08 this year. Therein lies one issue.

Most four-day matches are played in April and May or September, when the pitches are green and juicy and reward traditional seam bowling more than they do outright pace. The strategy is based round that horrible cliché "bowling in the right areas" (in other words on a consistent line and length) rather than attempt to beat the batsman for pace. It is percentage rather than explosive cricket.

Bowlers who might develop into genuine quicks feel a responsibility to hold back and seek accuracy instead. I remember how this affected me in my early twenties. Under the captaincy of Mike Brearley at Middlesex, I was encouraged to bowl fast and seek wickets with yorkers and bouncers and swinging half-volleys.

I was successful, topped the first-class averages one month and was chosen for an England Test trial. But, when Brearley retired, a more regimented approach to bowling was favoured and loose ***** less tolerated. It made me more inhibited as a bowler and ultimately less successful. It was partly my own fault -- I should have stuck to what had worked before -- but you tend to comply with the captain.

That was in an era when there was little coaching, or understanding of what was required to be a fast bowler. Those that emerged were through luck not design. Gough, brisk but not rapid when he started, was only urged to bowl genuinely fast by the West Indian Richie Richardson, standing at slip for Yorkshire and seeing him tonked around by a tailender.

The tale of another paceman of that period, Essex's Ian Pont, is illuminating. A slingy but relatively unsuccessful fast bowler, he had an incredible throwing arm and went to the US to try his hand at baseball pitching. He was told his technique was terrible.

"You only throw with your arm," the coaches said. "To really throw properly, you need to use your legs. You can't fire a cannon from a canoe." It was only then, in his mid-twenties, that he understood the importance of leg strength in fast bowling and, for a few years, hurled them down as fast as anyone. Something of a maverick, Pont is a qualified coach and has since set up his own fast-bowling clinic, the Ultimate Pace Foundation (upfcricket.com), which operates at home and abroad. He has worked with Dale Steyn, Shoaib Akhtar and India's Mohit Sharma as well as some young English charges, and is quite scathing about the coaching of fast bowling in this country.

"No one really teaches the principles of fast bowling," he says. "We have gone down the strength and conditioning route, mainly to keep people on the park. Speed is coachable, it is about improving the technical aspects of the bowling action."

Pont points out the importance of a vital delay in most genuine quick bowlers' delivery -- the arm whirring through, often in a slingshot style, a split-second after the front foot has planted. "Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Shaun Tait all have this, Lasith Malinga too. The delay -- the shoulder-hip separation -- is what creates the torque that generates the extra pace.

"We don't focus on speed in our fast-bowling coaching, though. We're more interested in producing donkeys than racehorses."

In the end your sportsmen are a product of your environment. A cool climate, grassy pitches and a natural give-em-nowt conservatism promotes reliability and consistency above going for broke. Young bowlers are also hampered in their development by restrictions on the number of overs they bowl in a spell.

The same applies, to an extent, to spinners. Only yesterday, a journalist friend explained that his 13-year-old son, an aspiring spinner, was told by a former England spinner to "just concentrate on line and length because your hands aren't big enough to spin the ball". Shane Warne would have told him, "Spin it as hard as you can and you'll be right".

Australia is where your true cricketing ability is roasted to its raw essence of reflex and speed. Until we change our mindset as to how we train and encourage our bowlers, we will continue to be burnt to a crisp.

An0n0m0us

Glad i'm not alone in my thinking then!

I was a bowler when I played club cricket as a youngster and for me there is nothing better than running in and tonking it down as fast as you can to try and beat the batsman for pace or hit a crack and scare the **** out of him with outrageous bounce I'm a huge fan of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh as they are 2 of the best bowlers there has ever been in my book. I could't wait to see the windies field when those 2 were playing. Also watching Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram at their best was just a joy to see. Fast bowling is where it's at for me in cricket

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Totally.

Loved Wasim's unconventional front-on, whippy-arm action. It was so efficient and effective. Devastating when he reversed it at his pace.

Funkii Munkii

You know we're reaching rock bottom when Devon gets a mention.

Agree, the noises coming out of the England camp are complete BS they've been playing a different game to the ones I've been watching.

BUT, still looking forward to the Boxing Day test even though the series is dead.

lozgti1

Me too

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

I'll still be taking the days off to watch them burn. A devout masochist, me.

An0n0m0us

I'll still watch what I can just for amusement purposes if nothing else

Funkii Munkii

And your SN Match Reports

An0n0m0us

otherwise called my post match whinging.

I'll just have to put on repeat Botham's Ashes to watch how it should be done

lozgti1

Bit better.....

An0n0m0us

Until we have a spectacular collapse as usual

I see our new bowling plan is working a treat, bowl such appallingly bad ***** the Aussies won't be able to play them and chop on

With the Ashes gone it's a lose/lose situation as even if we do put in a great performance and win the test it will be said the Aussies aren't trying as they've won the Ashes.

lozgti1

I give in.lol

An0n0m0us

I predicted an innings defeat when they were 190 for 2 not that’s any great claim more it’s that predictable sadly.

It will be the same old story the ECB will ignore our utter inability to win on tour wait for the summer tests and our green pitches and when we win claim we are amongst the top in the world

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Totally.

An0n0m0us

What really p!sses me off with our bowing attack is there is no aggression. They just carry on trundling in with no anger or aggression. If you aren't getting any movement off the pitch bowl at the body, make the batsmen play and make them hop about. But again you need to put effort in for that and a bit of pace and ours just don't bother

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Totally agree. It's so frustrating. I can't believe they can't 'understand' that and therefore try something different, as you say.

Funkii Munkii

Worryingly we are in the midst of a massive transition, top order is shot to pieces Jimmy and Broad wont last much longer

An0n0m0us

The problem is I can't see anyone coming through to replace them, perhaps Curran has some promise but for me i'd rather see him be coached abroad to progress him rather than be left in the doldrums of county cricket.

lozgti1

They keep waffling on about a spinner

In the 49 years I've been on this earth there has not been an 'amazing' Warne type spinner. Think English people must have the wrong sort of fingers

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

A fellow 49erer FTW. It's the new 50.

lozgti1

(4 weeks left )

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

Early Sep., here. So you're all but 7 months younger.

"Do I win £5?"
- Mr T, Essex <<< literally