Why Are England So W@nk?

Actually Malan was born in Roehampton, but you get the gist...

JKLever wrote:

Dello wrote:

Eric Air Emu wrote:Surrey & Middlesex- the entire Surrey squad whoever they are nowadays and Shaun Udal.

Suddlesex


Dexter
Malan
Jordan
Dernbach
Meaker

And yet still we managed to sneak 5 overseas born players into a combined side.

Also Shah, Strauss, Morgan and Compton (did I mention him?).

Why Are England So W@nk?

Misplaced arrogance and Complacency.
Couple that with ..
Lack of application from all the batsmen and sh!te bowling from all the bowlers at some point during this test.

PS - Anyone else notice the lack of body language between Strauss and KP over the past 3 days?
KP did not "form the circle" pre Aussie innings/days play ... preferring to stand a pace back with his arms folded ....
Strauss striding off this evening, yards ahead of KP, without so much as a backward glance at him.
Going to be interesting to watch developments ... I reckon they've had a tiff, meself.

Those 2 tests against the Windies at the start of the Summer papered over a whole lot of huge cracks.

Flower and Strauss would appear to be.....uninspiring, if not just extremely dull. KP is being a drama Queen, Freddie has his best mates club, Cook, Bopara, Broad, Panesar and Anderson are pathetically naive, Swann has lost the magic.......Only Prior and Collingwood have come out of this game with any credit so far.

beamer wrote:

JKLever wrote:It's 5th rank v best in the world... have you not seen any of our cricket for the past 2 years Gus?

The point is though this isn't even a great Australian side. Decent batting line-up though nowhere near what it's been for the past 15 years, ordinary bowling side especially without Lee and the bizarrely omitted Clark.

I think England and English fans have fallen into the trap of underestimating it though. The old names such as Lee, even McGrath, Symonds, Hayden, Langer et al sound great on paper but haven't been consistently near their best for many years now. I couldn't agree with those calling for Warne and McGrath to be recalled to taunt the poms. The reality is that the likes of Johnson, Hilfenhaus and Siddle will never emulate the careers of McGrath and Warne, and North and Katich for instance won't be spoken of in the way that Langer and Hayden were, but represent a talented, determined, fit, strong and super hunger group of players. And their performances in the SS have been impressive and hinted at success at international level.

That leads into the pressing point of the respective domestic competitions. For as long as I can remember, wise cricket tragics here in Australia have pronounced that the county competition has been England's biggest enemy with the huge number of teams which dilutes the talent and hence the intensity of the competition. Having so many teams must make selection more difficult in terms of comparing matches, venues, the relative strength of teams et cetera. This is all compounded by the fact that some counties seem to field so many foreigners. You have to wonder if some of these journeymen prevent young England talent from emerging - even deter some young Englishman from pursuing their cricket dreams. Maybe they could follow the Aussie model and have fewer teams and employ overseas players sparingly. Currently foreign players are generally used for the shorter competitions and Murali and Bravo coming to Victoria next season for T20 is the first example of that state using overseas talent/aliens.

People refer to the insurmountable problems regarding inter-county jealousies and money being the overriding factor. But the ECB has to decide whether it wants a domestic system dictated by individual boards with money determining the direction of their feeder competition, or if the performance of its national team is paramount in its mind. In Australia the prevailing attitude has generally been that the SS is there to nurture players for national level and some state coaches will actually freely admit that while winning trophies is important, most pride is derived from how many players they were able to produce who went on to carve a career wearing the baggygreen, or the custard yellow, bottle green (for home matches) pyjamas.

the only way ECB can get an alternate league going is by inviting none less than Lalit Modi to preside over the new league as its CEO.

After watching the Stanford fiasco, what I am convinced about is ...

ECB ~ Couldn't organize a root in a brothel.

Dello wrote:Get some mergers going. Cut the teams down to 9 or 10. No overseasers.

Hampsex - Hampshire and Sussex

Carberry
Yardy
Lumb
Pietersen
Joyce
Crawley
Vince
Wright
Prior+
Hodd+
Dawson
Rayner
Beer
Riazuddin
Tremlett
Tomlinson
Kirtley
Cork

Is that as in, put 22 players out?


Or why stop there? Why not slice & graft the best bits together, and leverage these merged sides to success?

Cardy
Jawley
Lumpersen
Vight
Prodd +
Rawnerson
Cormlett .... etc.

Henry wrote:Flower and Strauss would appear to be.....uninspiring, if not just extremely dull. KP is being a drama Queen, Freddie has his best mates club, Cook, Bopara, Broad, Panesar and Anderson are pathetically naive, Swann has lost the magic.......Only Prior and Collingwood have come out of this game with any credit so far.

And they are two players who people are very quick to call for them to be dropped whenever they have a bad game! We could do with another Collingwood or two, he's the only one of the top order who seems to really value his wicket and make the opposition work for it. The opening pair really concerned me in this match, they neither took the game to the opposition nor made them work particularly hard to get them out. Strauss and Cook have never struck me as being the ideal partnership (what would we give for a Trescothick or Vaughan in their prime right now?) I'd like to see one of them drop down to 3 with someone with a fresh approach tried at the top, but realistically they're not going to try it in a live Ashes series.

Strauss has become shaky against the short ball. I remember in 2004, he was pulling Dale Steyn over mid wicket for six. He's not sure if he should take on the short ball now. Cook played 2 poor, naive shots at Cardiff. It really is time he did something against a top bowling attack.

We're not going to see 2004 Strauss again, but recently it seemed he had come to terms with Test cricket again using a more limited game that was bringing him results. Too early to say that decent run of form is over, but I think both openers are perhaps feeling the pressure of getting them off to a positive start, and it's not really their natural game to really take on the bowlers early in the innings.

....which was why Tres was so important.

From what i've seen, Denly could be the attacking opener England are looking for if he can improve his consistency.

Mal Loye.

Mal Laise.

Melee

Mel B

My Lai Massacre

Meltdown = Englands Batting bowling under pressure

Henry wrote:From what i've seen, Denly could be the attacking opener England are looking for if he can improve his consistency.

If we have to dump Cook, i'd rather Denly than Keysie tbh.

Joe Denly is looooose.

Quite a good player, though, when he get going.

Just has no sense of permanence at the crease. Even when he's well set, there's no expectation of him surviving beyond the next ball.

At least he's in some form, I guess. Three championship hundreds @ 68.

What if he agrees to change his name to Cppk?

Hence the problems dropping a bloke with 9 test hundreds....

Henry wrote:From what i've seen, Denly could be the attacking opener England are looking for if he can improve his consistency.

I'm sorry, I just can't have Denly in the England side. Nothing to do with his ability, but everything to do with the fact that I used to play against his Dad, and Joe gets in the England team, I am officially old.

Why, that's just selfish, old bean.