Sceptical? Kidding me? Can't you see the faintest line between Australia doing well in the Ashes in England and players like Allan Border, Steve Waugh and God knows how many others doing at least a season or two of county cricket?

Compare and contrast our batsmen (save Rogers) with Kane Williamson from New Zealand. On a green wicket at Lords, with the ball hooping all over the place, Kane Williamson played the ball nice and late and scored a great century against Broad, Anderson, etc. Look at our batsmen. Until now, if there has been a hint of movement, they have been back in the dressing rooms quick smart.

What does Kane Williamson do in his winter? Oh, he plays for Yorkshire.

And curiously, it's only now (after four tests) that Australia's batsmen are finally starting to adjust to the conditions.

Think it through logically. The ball moves a lot more in England than in Australia. If players (especially batsmen) aren't used to lateral movement in Australia, they'll struggle against it in England. If they play a couple of seasons of county cricket, they'll have some idea of how to deal with it.

Please tell me you see the sense in our players (especially batsmen) playing County cricket.

As for Warner's scores. I'm not saying he has done terribly. But I think you're missing a trick to say he has done well.

If you're an opening batsman and you're a walking wicket in the first innings there's a big problem. Scores of 17, 38, 2 and 0 in the first four tests tell us there's a problem. You can't rely on runs in the second innings. Warner hasn't been good enough. England realise this and have cashed in. Warner realises this and is trying to fix it. Listen to Warner's own words. He said in the innings last Test where he scored a half-century, he never felt like he was in. He felt like every delivery was a real struggle for him. He just felt at sea against the movement. He was doing his best to play late, but he's not used to have to do that. Don't you see how that points to a problem?

First innings runs are all-important, they give you a chance to win and they are likely to at least stop you losing. Second innings runs can't compensate for that.



South African conditions are a lot less alien to our players than English conditions. India? Good point. That's why we're doing Australia A tours there. But at the end of the day, people care more about the Ashes than they do about beating India in India.

Also, in terms of pace bowling, English conditions are the most testing for Australian batsmen. If they can thrive in English conditions (lots more lateral movement) and can thrive in Australian conditions (bouncier, quicker), they can thrive in South Africa and the West Indies. English conditions test proper batting technique more than Australian conditions. They make batsmen play with a straight bat, through the line, with soft hands under their noses. This is proper technique and this is what's missing.

Please tell me how it weakens the Shield to have players doing stints in County cricket? The seasons are at different times of the year. For years, Rogers would play just about every Shield game and every county game.

And who gives a shit about T20 cricket. I wish it had never been invented. It's here to stay and I realise it has to stay if Test cricket is to have any chance of surviving.

But do we seriously give a shit about how we go in T20 compared to how we go in the Ashes? The only thing in sport that compares with the Ashes for me is the FIFA World Cup. Getting thrashed in the Ashes is a bit like failing to qualify for the World Cup, for me. Who cares about weakening our T20 team.

Seriously Warner and a bunch of others need to be playing in county cricket.

You should.

Australia has done well - so far.

I'm enjoying the technical knowledge of other posters about cricket, Draups.=d>

Hope you are, mate.:)

England are the traditonal owners of the game and traditional technique (really style) is the traditonal english style as thry have a monopoly on what is orthodox and traditional.

The thing is they have not been as succesful away from home as australia or dominated over long periods

root is not an aggressive player. His strike rate is about the same as michael husseys at 3 runds per over
Hussey would flash at the ball hard by the way he was just exteremely picky about which balls to hit. He used soft hands mostly for quick singles
our best batsman don bradman had a strike rate of 65
other golden generation includes gilchrist hayden symonds ponting and leighman.
All would flash hard at the ball

It seems to be a recurring theme.

Many Aussies laud their sabbaticals in English county cricket.

Ps fair point about non overlap of sheild and county cricket seasons

U may not care about 20 20 and give higher priority to england. But that is an ideology. Nothing wrong with an ideology, but ca and the australian cricketing public are unlikely to share that

2nd innings scores are harder than first innings scores. He also has an 80 in a first innings

In general it doesnt matter when a team gets there runs 1st innings are just when most runs are scored because it tends to be easier (although the last test is the exception to this rule. This has been true for the rest of this series). There is a lot of randomness in test cricket and if he played this series 100 times his scores would be randomly distributed accross the two innings with a bias to the first innings.

It used to be that if u score 600 accross the two innings you would get a positive result from most tests. Since short forms of the game came about lower orders and bowlers have been a lot better so these days its changed to if the top 7 get 600 runs in a test match they will win most tests. Based on this warner has done his job. The fact u single him out and also single out ozzie players with solid averages as players to emulate shows you have a philosophy rather than an objective way of improving australia. Nothing wrong with a philosophy. But keep in mind it is subjective and there is nothing wrong with australias philosophy that has been succesful over sustained periods at home and away.



Edited by Grazorblade: 21/8/2015 04:48:41 PM

Oh yeah definitely keeping my eye on the thread, the guys in here are brilliant. Just so utterly pissed off at what went on in the 3rd and 4th tests. Unforgivable really. I know it's just a game after all haha, but cricket is my favourite sport (tests that is) and just, ARGH, just shit. It's one of the sports where I can watch my team get hammered and recognise the talent of the other team and actually enjoy it at time, but my god, it was just horrid.

Edited by Draupnir: 21/8/2015 05:15:17 PM

Are you sure about that? I agree that the Australian cricketing public really like T20 cricket. But the ideology that the Australian cricketing public really get behind is the Ashes. Look at attendances for Ashes Tests. I think the Australian cricketing public like the Ashes most of all. But I agree that interest in the longer form of the game is falling behind interest in the Big Bash, etc. The problem is that most (but not all) of the Australian cricketing public aren't savvy enough to perceive a link between success in Test cricket and success in f/c cricket. They can't put two and two together.

I, begrudgingly, agree that T20 is here to stay and it has to stay if Test cricket is to have any hope of surviving. My point is do you really think the standard of Australian T20 will fall by players like Warner, Bancroft, etc. going to play county cricket in the Australian winter rather than fannying about in the IPL? I sincerely doubt it. Test cricket on the other hand requires far greater skill than T20 cricket. So it's much harder to adapt from T20 cricket to Test cricket (do-able, but harder and certainly not traditional). Players need to be playing as much first-class cricket as possible to be ready for Test cricket.




True. The fact that all the Australian batsmen seem to be doing better in this Test supports my point. If you play enough in England you can adapt to the conditions. You can't hope to do well straight away without having played there. This is why we need more players to play there.

Also another problem has been the mentality of the players. Michael Clarke was asked how he might do better against the moving ball. He responded with something like hit it harder. This is ludicrous and totally against coaching (both English and Australian) for playing against swing/seam. I don't know exactly what Lehmann and Di Venuto are telling the batsmen (or were for the first four Tests) but it's absurd and not how they went about playing in England.



True. I have a theory about Warner. I think he goes out there with the wrong attitude and is spooked by the movement. In the first innings, he's all at sea and either gets down for by poor technique or just poor attitude (i.e. trying to play a shot half-heartedly). Then in the second innings, he realises he has done wrong and goes about trying to adjust his game and fix it. It's a credit to him that he can amend it like this. But it shows his problems are every bit between the ears as they are technical.



In purely mathematical terms, it doesn't matter which innings you score your runs because they count the same. As such, statistically, both Warner and Hazlewood have performed just, even well, this series.

But stats need to be looked at through the prism of context. The context here is that Warner has, until now, been scoring his runs when the match has been virtually unwinnable sometimes even neigh on unsaveable. Can't you see how this causes a problem for Australia? The same goes for Hazlewood's wickets. Listen to any of the expert pundits, they've been fairly horrified by Warner's first innings batting and Hazlewood's appalling lengths.

Australia's philosophy has been successful for long periods of time both home and away. My argument is that Australia's philosophy has changed. Listen to Ian Chappell, the Victorian coach Shippherd and a host of others. They think the Australian philosophy has changed. They think that not enough focus is put on defence. Not enough focus on other technical elements which I've raised a lot already. They think not enough focus is put on Shield cricket.

There's a great article by Greg Chappell in the Guardian about Lord's. He talks about the first time he played there. He was playing for some county and it was just before he turned 21.

That means Greg Chappell was playing county cricket when he was 20. He had already been playing Shield cricket for years and getting loads of runs. The philosophy to which I subscribe is the old-school Australian one. Get the players to be as technically solid as possible (in defence, for the back foot shots and for the drives) and playing loads of Shield cricket, grade cricket and county cricket. Build innings. Leave as much as possible. Let the ball and bowlers wear themselves down. They'll start to bowl bad deliveries and then you look to punish those deliveries. Make big score after big score after big score. Australian batsmen did this right up until about a decade ago.

How many Australian batsmen around the age of 20 are playing County cricket? How many like to leave the ball? Did you see Smith drive the wide ball, on the up, straight to Stokes at Trent Bridge? What happened to occupying the crease?

The nuance is that the Australian philosophy has changed and we need to get back to basics.

Chuck a word in or two, especially if you really like cricket. Fascinating seeing those with football smarts and keenness demonstrating the same with cricket.

grazorblade, with respect, I think you've got this wrong. There are differences in the way Australians and Englishmen play cricket. But when we talk about traditional batting technique, we're not only talking about English technique, lots of Australian batsmen have had much the same technique. Plenty of Australian batsmen have played with soft hands, straight bat and nice, decisive, quick footwork. It's a false dichotomy to suggest that Australian batsmen flash hard at the ball and all English batsmen wait for the ball to come onto the bat. I've mentioned Langer, Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Damien Martyn, Mike Hussey, etc. The issue is that the technique of many of the Australian batsmen has changed (deteriorated) in recent years.

There have been 69 Ashes series. Australia have won 32 and lost 32 Ashes series. England have won 32 and lost 32 series. What you say about England not being as good is plain wrong.

Both sides have had great batsmen. England in recent years have had Cook, Bell, Root, Pietersen, Vaughan, Trescothick. Going back they've had Boycott, Gooch, Botham, Gower, Greig, etc. Going further back, England have got a handful of batsmen with Test averages in the mid 50s; Hutton, Hammond, Compton.

It's not as if England get it all wrong.



Root can be an aggressive player. The great thing about Root is he plays according to what the match scenario demands. He can score at a run a ball. Against Australia at Cardiff, he was scoring very quickly even though the game was precariously balanced.

With respect, can I suggest a distinction? There's a difference between those who hit the ball hard and those who just stand and deliver and flash at it. You say Hussey flashed at balls. He hit the ball hard, yes. But that's not the same thing as flashing at the ball, necessarily. Flashing at the ball is pushing at the ball with minimal footwork and hard hands. You can have soft hands, beautiful footwork and hit the ball hard.

This is what Hussey did. Obviously his hands would be a bit harder when he drove through cover. Exactly the same with Root. But both Root and Hussey use their feet terrifically to get into position before they drive. They generate power that way. And they hit the ball near their body. Hussey had the most amazing weight transfer. That's not flashing at the ball. Flashing at the ball is standing and delivering, not using the feet, but generating all the power from the hands and shoulders.

You're right that players like Hayden, Gilchrist and Symonds played like this. They didn't use their feet much. They stood and delivered. They used their hands and their hand-eye co-ordination. Warner is like this too. So were Gayle and Sehwag. I'm not saying such a style of batsmanship is wrong. But youngsters shouldn't be taught to play like this. Most batsmen can't get by without good footwork and without somewhat softer hands than those used by players like Warner and Hayden.

Also Hayden, Gilchrist, Symonds are not in the same class as Greg Chappell, Steve Waugh, Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.

We need batsmen like them. Those kind of batsmen had soft hands, beautiful footwork and played the ball fairly late.

And let's face it, Hayden was a bit of a flat track bully. Any lateral movement and he'd battle. Whereas players like the Waugh brothers (especially Steve) were still lethal batsmen when the ball moved around.

Certainly when you're blocking the ball, there's no point in having hard hands. You don't gain anything from hitting it hard. Far better to play it late and with soft hand and decisive footwork when blocking the ball.

The problem is that Australian players used to learn their cricket like this, but don't seem to be doing so enough anymore.

So anyone care to enlighten me as to what is so great about the Marsh brothers? Or more importantly, what they have done to justify continuously being selected? I guess our stocks are pretty thin.

Nepotism through the old man

Plus mitch was listed as an afl draft prospect once, hes as useless as any afl player in any sport

Mitch Marsh might be a go in the future. Shaun Marsh is nowhere near mentally tough enough.

I reckon James Faulkner is as good a batsman as Mitch Marsh and somewhat better as a bowler.

For mine, James Faulkner has to be in the side as the all-rounder. Plus he has a great radar. He can hold up an end beautifully. We've really missed that this series.

Agar has potential but I want to see him have a really great Shield. And Maxwell, I previously thought no way. But I'm hearing really good things from English correspondents who watch county cricket. The fact that he's there in the first place speaks volumes about him having the right character. If he shows in the Shield that he has tightened up his batting technique and is more troubling with the ball, then he's worth a run.

grazorblade

Sorry for being fairly vocal in opposing a few things you've said, mate (and for writing a shitload too). If I disagree with (or feel I can add to) an idea and I'm confident of my knowledge in the area, I'll speak my mind. If I'm wrong (or not spot on) and I learn something from other contributors, so much the better. I appreciate that you do have a very good understanding of cricket and you have made some very good points.

Regardless of anything to do with Mitch Marsh, there's a reasonable number of AFL players who could have gone into stuff like cricket, swimming, aths, basketball, etc. Often they're playing at elite junior level then when they're about 16, 17 they've had to choose between AFL and their other sport. Unfortunately all too often they choose AFL. There was a highly talented batsman at my high school (some years before me) who would have been a great chance at playing for Victoria in the Shield but he chose to play AFL. That's Luke Ball. Likewise, another AFL player (in my year) was a nationals middle distance running champion. We'd be better at cricket without AFL and we'd win more medals at the Olympics too.

Lyon bowls Cook with a ripsnorter

Lyth would have to be the worst test cricketer going around at the moment.

Why the hell they didn't pick Siddle ages ago, I will never know.

Warne and Taylor's discussion in commentary was, surprisingly, bang on the money.

Starc and Johnson are strike bowlers who will take wickets but leak runs. That's fine, that's what they do. If you want two bowlers like them you need a class act to keep things tight to make up the attack. Ryan Harris is that class act. Unfortunately he's injured and retired. This means that Hazlewood would have needed constantly to get his length right and, with pinpoint accuracy, bowl on that fourth stump line, maybe looking for seam not swing. This would really challenge the batsmen and dry up the run rate.

Instead Hazlewood lost the plot, bowled too full in search of swing and leaked runs. Three fast bowlers (two of whom are left arm express pace) who leak runs is a recipe for disaster.

Siddle had to be picked ages ago.

Big question marks next to the idea of Starc and Johnson being in the same XI. It just works if you have a bowler with Ryan Harris type of control. But with Hazlewood (at this stage of his career), then Starc, Johnson and Hazlewood is a big no no.

Edited by quickflick: 22/8/2015 01:51:47 AM

Note to Rod Marsh and Darren Lehmann who are fucktards.

Bowling at >145km/h is not requisite to success in England. If you can bowl around 130-135km/h you can take a shitload of wickets with a nice line and length. The ball will seam nicely at that pace and can swing enough.

How did those morons forget that McGrath and Alderman are Australia's most successful non-spin bowlers in English conditions, yet neither bowled with any great speed.

But no. In order to make the Australian side you need to be super quick.

Genuinely pisses me off how wrong they got it.

I agree I've said it a few times now that at this stage I don't think Starc is a test bowler.

Hazlewood is probably the biggest disappointment of this series as he was looking like a superb bowler up until this tour. :(

A case of too little too late for this test match

In terms of which team is closer to winning away from home, Australia is closer than England to take out a series away

Hazlewood hasn't even been bad. 16 wickets at 25.75 is solid return for many bowlers, don't really get why everyone's been on his back. His strike rate was 42 for the series!
There's a lot of pressure on him when you get Starc and Johnson leaking 4 runs an over, and I think he's done a decent job.
I feel like McDermott has been in his ear about pitching it up, and he's not that kind of bowler.

Meanwhile, Johnson 12 wickets at almost 40, 61.8 S/R.

Hazlewood (I know he's got a few niggles or whatever) has been the scapegoat in the media because Johnson/Starc can't tie an end down.

Edited by JayEss: 22/8/2015 10:36:36 AM

So can I.

Probably a good point.

A few years back, Luke Butterworth was a Tassie bowler ( all rounder) who took a lot of Shield wickets season after season. He was rated by opposition as being particularly difficult in helpful conditions.

Ben Hilfenhaus took a lot of wickets because of Butterworth's pressure at the other end. He could bowl long spells and make the batsman play every ball, with slight inswing and outswing, bowling at 128- 138 kph. He has a fluid effortless action.

Locals have been surprised other players for the state have been selected for national team honours in front of him. Injury caught up with him last season. He could've been successful in England, like Alderman and McGrath.

Opposition rated him as being weaker on flat pitches in the Shield.

Stats can often be misleading, there were key moment in this series where Hazlewood has completely lost the plot.

I wasn't up, but it looks like Siddle bowled an unerringly accurate spell with 20 runs from 10 overs and 2 wickets.=d>

It is easy in hindsight, but Siddle should've been in the team from the beginning of the series.



At the end of this Ashes series, I'm going to change the thread title to Kiwis & Windies Tests/Shield cricket thread. The 20/20 and 50 over stuff can go into the other cricket thread.

I've really enjoyed reading the technical details of cricket from members who've played cricket. I've certainly learnt a bit. Hopefully, you guys will keep posting here.:)

Given I'm a TCA member, which is very easy to gain membership of compared to other states where one has to wait 10 years, compared to our few months, we get a lot of access to info with the Tassie coaching staff and TCA management. We are offered a lot of question and answer sessions with coaching staff's presentations.

This would hardly be unfair. Mitchell Johnson has done a lot for Australia and he has had plenty of opportunities. He's only going to be older for the next Ashes series.

Let's go by what we know. You need a line and length bowler and Siddle is the only one who can basically guarantee this. So Siddle is a definite.

Starc has looked really dangerous even when he hasn't bowled well. You also want a left arm quick, but it's preferable not to have two left arm quicks. So Starc should be in the attack.

Then that leaves you with a bit of room for movement with your third quick. Ideally Hazlewood. Because he still has the potential to become that line and length bowler who will eventually take up Siddle's place in the attack.

But there's also Pattinson, Cummins and some others.

In the 2019 Ashes, hopefully Hazlewood will have learnt how to bowl consistent line and length and use seam rather than swing. By then, I'd like to see an attack of Hazlewood and two of Starc, Cummins and Pattinson.

Just be careful with how we regard those bowlers. They're bowlers who can bat, rather than all-rounders

Also don't forget that Faulkner could be a gun all-rounder. His bowling average is 24 at f/c level. Hazlewood, Faulkner, Starc and Cummins offers the perfect amount of variety and balances control with sheer pace, late swing and seam.

But it's not unreasonable what you say, providing we shore up the batting. Let's see how Bancroft, Lynn, Burns, Handscomb, etc.

If we have a vastly more solid middle order, then it's reasonable to play 4 quicks (all of whom are handy with the bat).

Edited by quickflick: 22/8/2015 07:14:27 PM

Edited by quickflick: 22/8/2015 07:15:15 PM

Apparently Clarke plans to enforce the follow on, if given the option obviously, for the first time in his career.

Probably down to the rain forecast for tomorrow and Monday.

On the subject of Australia's bowling attack, does anyone else think Steve Magoffin should have been picked? Obviously not much of an option going foward - he'd be a Rogers/Voges type stopgap which the bowling the attack doesn't require - but given Australia have been crying out for players with experience in English conditions, and he's been one of if not the outstanding bowler in County Cricket the last few years, I reckon he might have been worth a call-up.