Where were these players in the 1990s England?

Players like Giles, Salisbury, Chris Lewis, Pringle etc have been replaced by far superior cricketers! Not too many players from the 1990s would make the English team today, even some of the better ones like Cork will miss out.

Kindergarten and Primary school

embee wrote:Kindergarten and Primary school

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It's hard to compare eras. Someone like Chris Lewis was super talented and might have thrived under the current, professional, disciplined set up.

Sadly, he somewhat wasted his ability.

Thorpe, Gough, Caddick, Stewart - they'd all be there or there abouts the current team.

How would England's current batting look against the 90's versions of Warne McGrath Ambrose Walsh Akram Donald Waqar MuMu and Pollock?

embee wrote:How would England's current batting look against the 90's versions of Warne McGrath Ambrose Walsh Akram Donald Waqar MuMu and Pollock?

Well, thinking about it the other way round following Fredalo's recent Atherton comments, I think Athers in today's game (perhaps minus the back injury) would average as high as Cook.

Cook and Strauss made to look quite average by Aamer and Asif so i am guessing he would have struggled against Wasim in particular.

Cook did make 1 century against the 2 As but all(6) of his other scores were under 20.

PlanetPakistan wrote:Cook and Strauss made to look quite average by Aamer and Asif so i am guessing he would have struggled against Wasim in particular.

Oh, the cheats you mean?

No. Everybody has seen my criticisms of Cook, but however good Amir and Asif were (and I think they were damned f*cking good) Cook at the time was utterly shot to ribbons. It wasn't Amir or Asif - it was anyone wrecking him. Then he came out and eye of the tiger'd it - it gave me a lot of pride - the force of will took him past every technical deficiency he had. It was unstoppable. Fair play to him for that.

And that summer it was just impossible to bat. Completely impossible, the ball was swinging round corners. I saw 16 wickets in a day's Test cricket I went to...

Then of course someone* flicked the switch and Trott and Broad batted for a day and a half.

*not necessarily a subcontinental bookie...

Yeah, it was a strange one, that innings. Still, it was really like they'd broken the back of the Pak attack with their initial resoluteness and then eye for a poor ball. That was one of the better partnerships I'll watch, I reckon.

The talent in the 90s was as good as the talent today, imo. Imagine this team had no mental frailties, bad management, bad team culture, and were just allowed to express their ability-

Atherton
Stewart
Hick
Ramprakash
Smith
Thorpe
Russell+
Gough
Caddick
Fraser
Tufnell

12th man-Lewis. Talent-wise, that's a very good team. They just never clicked together.

Brass Monkey wrote:No. Everybody has seen my criticisms of Cook, but however good Amir and Asif were (and I think they were damned f*cking good) Cook at the time was utterly shot to ribbons. It wasn't Amir or Asif - it was anyone wrecking him. Then he came out and eye of the tiger'd it - it gave me a lot of pride - the force of will took him past every technical deficiency he had. It was unstoppable. Fair play to him for that.

Cook made a century and 2 50s in SA and following the series against Pakistan he had a Bradman like summer in Australia....
I don't think it was a question of poor form it was merely a question of ability against a high class attack in difficult conditions.

Meh... it was last chance saloon for him. That doesn't come from just six innings.