The Cricket Thread

[Deutsch Wolf]

Thing is I've enjoyed a lot of the cricket in this era (we were bloody awful under Silverwood, and I cannot abide Peter fucking Moores). But there's so many issues that could be quite easily solved, and we don't. And Key is a wanker, the way he talks to people is appalling.

 

[Tony Towner]

It's the way he speaks about the errors made like he wasn’t a part of them that I can't abide.

We were too loyal to players - Crawley averages 31 for the last few years, goes to Australia and averages 31. We perhaps could have had a more competitive warm up game in Perth. For a management team who spent the last 18 months saying the Ashes is the goal, to the detriment of team selection in the games beforehand to then say preparation could have been better is ridiculous, then to not take any ownership of that incredulous.

Plus after covering up the Brook situation Key then openly lied about it.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

And there's no consistency. So you'll back Crawley forever but just happily throw away people like Leach, Malan, Woakes, Livingstone, Bairstow (whatever you think of them) and basically not bother explaining or telling them what they need to do?

You go all in on Bashir despite the fact he has basically no track record at all - I think he's alright but got miles to go to be an international first choice spinner - then we'll just abandon that when it comes down to it, and we'll pick Will Jacks, who would probably struggle to lay a claim to being Surrey's best spinner.

 

[Tony Towner]

If Bashir had batted at 8 you could make a case for it, be it a flawed one as Jacks showed. Problem is he's as number 11 as you can get, now been released by Somerset and gone to Derbyshire who haven't had a current England Test player for 24 years.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Yep. Leach would probably rank alongside Giles or Croft if I were listing English Test spinners in my time (behind Swann, Tufnell and Panesar, maybe even Mo but he was always very hit and miss) but he's quite clearly a safer bet than a kid who barely had 10 first class wickets when we called him up.

 

[Sniffer]

Caught some of his interview on the Monday night club but will listen in full later.
He was claiming that he and Vaughan had spoken about how Australian pitches had changed last summer. Claims he knew that spinners wouldn’t be successful hence the picking of Jacks but ignored the fact that he went for an all out high pace attack. If he did have the conversation he obviously didn’t listen very well.

 

[North Shropshire Lad]

The county championship starts next week, a full two months ahead of England's next test on June 4th. Plenty of time for the coaching team to look at players form and maybe temperament. Unless you're Baz of course and he returns to work as England coach at the end of May. As Vaughan says, it's not a great look for someone who has supposedly only clung onto his job on the proviso that more attention to detail is used and the cosy boys club nature is removed.

 

[Stan Hullis]

He's been busy bless him.

Hardly had any time to go horse racing or play golf, he needs a break.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/woakes-love-for-the-grind-is-warwickshire-gain-in-post-test-return-1529433

A measure of the man that Woakes is that he didn't put the boot in on Key even though he had every right to.

I wouldn't even argue he should have been picked vs Aus, his record there especially is poor and his return against India was alarming (he bowled better than it suggested). But why do you talk about a man with 200+ international caps (and two World Cup wins) like that in public, rather than let him go out on his own terms.

 

[Tony Towner]

Willey and Topley now adding to Bairstow and Livingstone as critics of the management. I'm sure they all just have an agenda though

https://twitter.com/x/status/2038655000067584423

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Willey was coming to the end anyway but we handled it dreadfully, Topley didn't even seem to do anything wrong? He was doing alright and then just disappeared.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

End of an era as Ravi Bopara won't play in the Blast this year

He and Samit Patel were the last two to have also played in the first year in 2003

Edit: Jimmy I suppose, but he spent ages never playing. Those two played every single season up to now