Cricket - Matches & General Discussion Thread

[phiggins]

18 hours ago, Futtocks said:

How many times did you blink and, as a result of that, how many batters' innings did you miss?

Looks like some batters missed their own innings.

Not often a team wins after being 7 for 6 at one stage. Seen some comments on Twitter trying to defend the pitch, but looks like a horror show.

[gingerjon]

Just now, phiggins said:

Looks like some batters missed their own innings.

Not often a team wins after being 7 for 6 at one stage. Seen some comments on Twitter trying to defend the pitch, but looks like a horror show.

Has to be a 25 point deduction coming Essex's way after that.

[phiggins]

48 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Has to be a 25 point deduction coming Essex's way after that.

You'd think so. 40 wickets in something like 120 overs can't be just down to bad batting / good bowling.

I see England's white ball games next season have been shunted to September, while 5 ashes tests will be played in something like 6 weeks. 

Schedules getting worse, not better.

[gingerjon]

6 minutes ago, phiggins said:

You'd think so. 40 wickets in something like 120 overs can't be just down to bad batting / good bowling.

I see England's white ball games next season have been shunted to September, while 5 ashes tests will be played in something like 6 weeks. 

Schedules getting worse, not better.

They've accidentally scheduled 1 (one) women's international at the very end of August.

They'll feel proper fools for having done that and won't make that mistake again.

Still, at least we now know that the ECB are so befuddled that they are prioritising the crisp league over the actual Ashes - and know how absolutely obsessed they've been with the Ashes for the past century.

The rot cannot now be stopped.

[JonM]

2 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Has to be a 25 point deduction coming Essex's way after that.

I avoided tempting fate last night, but I was thinking that if Lancashire could get a lead of 80 or so, it would probably be enough to win the match, and so it proved, with Essex all out for 59. Essex should probably have taken the bad light last night rather than opting to bring the spinners on, as it gave Lancashire a vital five or six wicket-free overs and an extra 20 or so runs.

Obviously Balderson will get a lot of praise for the hat-trick but I thought 19 year old George Bell was absolutely outstanding on his county championship debut, both as a wicket-keeper and as a batsman.

Essex players and officials are going to try to make out that the pitch was ok, but Lancashire clearly had a different view with Glenn Chapple's comments such as "completely ridiculous"  and "Is it an acceptable pitch for first-class cricket? Absolutely not, no way, shape or form." 370 runs across 4 innings tells its own story.

I don't think you can blame the mid-September weather - I'd suggest the months of severe drought in the East of England probably more to blame. It's 25 points for "unsuitable for four day First-Class Cricket" or 10 or 15 points for a "poor" pitch. Probably more interesting is whether the deduction applies to this season or next season - there is some precedent for the latter.

Edited September 21, 2022 by JonM

[gingerjon]

A bit of praise for the ECB for this though. Very classy, I think.

[phiggins]

18 hours ago, gingerjon said:

They've accidentally scheduled 1 (one) women's international at the very end of August.

They'll feel proper fools for having done that and won't make that mistake again.

Still, at least we now know that the ECB are so befuddled that they are prioritising the crisp league over the actual Ashes - and know how absolutely obsessed they've been with the Ashes for the past century.

The rot cannot now be stopped.

I wonder when the ECB will realise that franchise cricket isn't trying to compete with county cricket, it's actually trying to compete with international cricket, and they seem to be blindly letting it happen.

17 hours ago, JonM said:

Essex players and officials are going to try to make out that the pitch was ok, but Lancashire clearly had a different view with Glenn Chapple's comments such as "completely ridiculous"  and "Is it an acceptable pitch for first-class cricket? Absolutely not, no way, shape or form." 370 runs across 4 innings tells its own story.

 

Some Essex fans on Twitter claiming that it's down to bad batting, based on a couple of clips of wickets (e.g Croft pulling out of a reverse sweep and edging one), but without seeing what goes on in between wickets. Some bouncing, some keeping low. Some skidding on, some holding up. Some moving off the pitch, some not. 

[JonM]

1 hour ago, phiggins said:

Some Essex fans on Twitter claiming that it's down to bad batting, based on a couple of clips of wickets (e.g Croft pulling out of a reverse sweep and edging one), but without seeing what goes on in between wickets. Some bouncing, some keeping low. Some skidding on, some holding up. Some moving off the pitch, some not. 

It was very plain that the problem was the unpredictable bounce. It was a slow pitch, ball wasn't swinging, just the batters playing and missing because you couldn't work out what the ball was going to do off the wicket.

Still, I expect Balderson is happy enough with the pitch - a first-class hat-trick at the age of 21, including Sir Alastair Cook and Dan Lawrence.

[phiggins]

33 minutes ago, JonM said:

It was very plain that the problem was the unpredictable bounce. It was a slow pitch, ball wasn't swinging, just the batters playing and missing because you couldn't work out what the ball was going to do off the wicket.

Still, I expect Balderson is happy enough with the pitch - a first-class hat-trick at the age of 21, including Sir Alastair Cook and Dan Lawrence.

Yep, not quite up there with Clark's hat-trick a few years ago with Root, Bairstow and Williamson, but still very good. And a first 5fer for him as well.

Still bemused that he was left out of the One Day Cup final team. He can't have been that badly injured.

[JonM]

ECB's new suggested county format seems like an improvement.

1. The start of the County Championship would move from April to May and run continuously throughout the summer months - rather than being split between the start and end of the summer as it is currently - and finish in September, with teams playing a minimum of 10 games. There would be two second division conferences of six teams, with one promotion place decided by an end-of-season play-off.

2. The One-Day Cup would take place in a single block in April and could include minor counties in an FA Cup-style knockout format.

3. The T20 Blast would reduce from 14 matches to 10 and would also be in a single block from the end of May to end of July.

4. The Hundred would be the only white-ball competition to take place in August, with 'first-class cricket festivals' offering specialist red-ball players not competing in that competition the chance to play extra matches.

[gingerjon]

28 minutes ago, JonM said:

ECB's new suggested county format seems like an improvement.

Does it?

Looks awful to me.

[gingerjon]

Surrey take the title.

[JonM]

41 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Looks awful to me.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's not an improvement on 2022 though, right?

Which part(s) don't you like.

[gingerjon]

4 minutes ago, JonM said:

That doesn't necessarily mean it's not an improvement on 2022 though, right?

Which part(s) don't you like.

I really don't like the reduction to 10 games for the Championship and the Blast. It makes no sense to me. It takes income out of the game, reduces opportunities to see and, on a 'high performance' level means you have fewer starting spots for new players versus global journeymen who can do a job. It both contracts the geographical/viewing footprint and reduces the player pool.

One Day Cup - our only 50 over tournament - needs that mix of group games followed by knock out. I'd move it back to something like the old B&H with zonal games to start the season and then knock outs. I like the (re)introduction of minor counties and would add in representative teams from Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands. Start April and finish June/July seems fine.

Quite why you would restrict the Blast I have no idea. But, as with the 50 over idea, I'd look to add teams from elsewhere into it.

The ECB have already shown how utterly cracked they are by prioritising the crisp league over their actual cash cow of international matches - to the extent of even minimising the Ashes so we can all watch McCoys play Hula Hoops - so this was always going to happen. Viewers were down, attendance was down, interest (seemed to be) down. And that's in season two. I have nothing to add about it that doesn't involve firing it into the sun but then I'm two hours (plus) away from one of the seven cities fortunate enough to be considered for this reductive expansion.

[JonM]

5 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

The ECB have already shown how utterly cracked they are by prioritising the crisp league over their actual cash cow of international matches - to the extent of even minimising the Ashes so we can all watch McCoys play Hula Hoops - so this was always going to happen. 

Realistically though, they're not going to just abandon it until the money has run out, and it seems better not to be half-arsedly running other competitions with half the players missing at the same time it is on. Giving prospective England players the opportunity to actually play some red-ball cricket in the run-up to tests seems like a good thing too.

I think they can afford to muck about with the Ashes because they can sell every ticket anyway, at pretty high prices too. It's not clear to me that this proposal is for 2023 in any case - it's part of a much broader set of ideas:

https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/countycricket/what_is_in_ecb_high-performance_review_all_17_proposals_examined.html

And whether we agree with it or not, can you imagine the RFL publishing this kind of actual plan to improve things?

[gingerjon]

Just now, JonM said:

And whether we agree with it or not, can you imagine the RFL publishing this kind of actual plan to improve things?

Let's see what gets put out by IMG and if the bar charts are as bad.

[phiggins]

It's an awful proposal, that as far as I can see, is to the detriment of all formats. Including the Hundred.

One Day Cup - May as well be scrapped for what they're doing with it now

County Championship - Reduction in games. So red ball specialists will have less meaningful games to play. Though, looking at the Div 1 table, I can understand a logic for 3 divisions of 6, but to have a top division and 2 feeder leagues (is that the proposal?) is ridiculous.

T20 - Played alongside a block of CC games, so players having to flick between formats. Also looks like it would be more difficult to get top overseas players if it's a Friday night league played over a longer period

Test matches - 5 test matches in 6 weeks doesn't really need much comment

Hundred - Nobody that has played in the ashes will play in the Hundred. Overseas players will continue to leave early to play CPL

International one day games - Shunted to September, nobody will really care by then, pitches will be worn and weather probably rubbish.

But apart from all that...

[gingerjon]

17 minutes ago, phiggins said:

It's an awful proposal, that as far as I can see, is to the detriment of all formats. Including the Hundred.

One Day Cup - May as well be scrapped for what they're doing with it now

County Championship - Reduction in games. So red ball specialists will have less meaningful games to play. Though, looking at the Div 1 table, I can understand a logic for 3 divisions of 6, but to have a top division and 2 feeder leagues (is that the proposal?) is ridiculous.

T20 - Played alongside a block of CC games, so players having to flick between formats. Also looks like it would be more difficult to get top overseas players if it's a Friday night league played over a longer period

Test matches - 5 test matches in 6 weeks doesn't really need much comment

Hundred - Nobody that has played in the ashes will play in the Hundred. Overseas players will continue to leave early to play CPL

International one day games - Shunted to September, nobody will really care by then, pitches will be worn and weather probably rubbish.

But apart from all that...

The thing you need to remember is that Andrew Strauss is really, really, and I mean really, thick.

[phiggins]

14 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

The thing you need to remember is that Andrew Strauss is really, really, and I mean really, thick.

Almost as if knowing when to move mid off back doesn't qualify you to run the game in it's entirety.

[gingerjon]

1 minute ago, phiggins said:

Almost as if knowing when to move mid off back doesn't qualify you to run the game in it's entirety.

Or that coming through an insanely privileged route that will be open regardless of what is cut and shunted elsewhere makes you understand how academies, youth set-ups, pathways and, heck, even opportunities for journeymen professionals work.

[Number 16]

Has anyone been watching the European Cricket Championships from Malaga which is being broadcast live on Freesports?

It's T10 format with four weeks of qualifying involving twenty nations with the four group winners joining an England XI in the week five decider. This week the group is Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and a Dutch XI. 

The set up is very professional and the broadcast quality is high. The commentators are bonkers, but in a good way. Okay, whilst the quality of cricket leaves something to be desired, though there is some excellent stuff, the competition is exciting and great TV viewing. It's also doing wonders for cricket across Europe. Not only is it on Freesports but a number of national broadcasters have taken it too 

If only RL could do something similar such as half a dozen two day 9s festivals from the spring to autumn. With professional set up and filming.

Anyway, give it a watch. 

[gingerjon]

5 minutes ago, Number 16 said:

Has anyone been watching the European Cricket Championships from Malaga which is being broadcast live on Freesports?

It's T10 format with four weeks of qualifying involving twenty nations with the four group winners joining an England XI in the week five decider. This week the group is Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and a Dutch XI. 

The set up is very professional and the broadcast quality is high. The commentators are bonkers, but in a good way. Okay, whilst the quality of cricket leaves something to be desired, though there is some excellent stuff, the competition is exciting and great TV viewing. It's also doing wonders for cricket across Europe. Not only is it on Freesports but a number of national broadcasters have taken it too 

If only RL could do something similar such as half a dozen two day 9s festivals from the spring to autumn. With professional set up and filming.

Anyway, give it a watch. 

Seems to run a couple of times a year.

As someone pointed out: the standard is basically village but the broadcast quality is better than some nations manage.

I do check in from time to time.

[tim2]

9 hours ago, gingerjon said:

The thing you need to remember is that Andrew Strauss is really, really, and I mean really, thick.

He's the right kind of chap, though, and supports the right political party. More important.

[Futtocks]

[Futtocks]

Unlike the people watching the SLGF, some fans had a genuine right to be a bit narked today.