The Cricket Thread

[essembeeofsunderland 811]

really

[McFaul 35]

Mackems though, really.

[McFaul 35]

Why have Northumberland not got a first class cricket team? Genuine question, I honestly don't know.

[essembeeofsunderland 811]

The race will now be on at sos to get the trophy and players on show before we do.

[donaldstott 0]

Why have Northumberland not got a first class cricket team? Genuine question, I honestly don't know.

 

They play in the Minor Counties. There is no relegation or promotion in to first class cricket, you have to apply for first class status.

 

I assume they either don't want to do so, or feel it would be a waste of time trying - Durham are the only team in the last 90 years to have gained first class status.

[Tooj 17]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/story/675789.html

 

Ben Stokes, the Durham and England allrounder, has capped an impressive season by winning the Cricket Writers' Club Young Cricketer of the Year award. Derbyshire's Wayne Madsen, who led the Division One batting averages for most of the season despite his county's eventual relegation, took the William Hill County Play of the Year award.

The recognition for Stokes, who is part of England's Ashes squad to tour Australia, comes less than ten months after he was sent home from a Lions tour for indulging one late night too many. He will now hope that he can follow the 2012 winner, Joe Root, in becoming one of a number of recipients of the award to subsequently establish themselves in the full England side.

Stokes has been capped by England in the limited-overs formats, making his debut in 2011 and taking a maiden five-wicket haul against Australia earlier this month. His impressive displays in the ODI series spurred a call-up to England's Test party for the first time and he could eventually be asked to fill the allrounder position.

As part of Durham's Championship-winning side, Stokes scored 615 runs at 27.95 and took 42 wickets at 26.57. His father, Ged Stokes, played rugby league for New Zealand, but Ben went to school in the northeast after the family moved to England. He played for Cockermouth CC before progressing through the Durham academy.

Stokes is the first Durham player to win the award, which is voted for by CWC members. Eligible candidates must have been under 23 on May 1.

Madsen, the captain of Derbyshire, was the second winner of the CWC county award, after Nick Compton in 2012. The 29-year-old made 1221 runs at the top of the order as Derbyshire kept their hopes of Division One survival alive into the final round of the Championship. He was the first batsman to cross 1000 Championship runs and finished as the second-leading scorer in the division, behind Yorkshire's Gary Ballance.

The South Africa-born Madsen, who has been with Derbyshire since 2009, was also recently named the inaugural winner of the Christopher Martin-Jenkins Spirit of Cricket Elite Award, created by MCC and the BBC to acknowledge exceptional sportsmanship, for walking during a crucial Championship match against Yorkshire.

The winners will be presented with their awards at the annual Cricket Writers' Club lunch in London on Monday.

[Kid Dynamite 5974]

I know Ben Stokes. His Mrs, my sister and my wife used to knock around. Been on a few nights out with him, canny lad. Hasn't even begun to show his batting talent on the international stage. He was never much of a bowler either which is strange giving hes managed to get an international fiver and is being talked up as Bresnan's replacement as an all rounder

[Tooj 17]

Is he still a bit of a pisshead? As it would be a shame to see him waste his talent.

[Dr Gloom 19879]

You can get away with a bit more as a cricketer.

[Kid Dynamite 5974]

He got sent home from the lions squad not so long since for what I assume was a bit of late night drinking!

[Tooj 17]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/677587.html

 

Two retirements took hold of the Twittersphere on Sunday. The first, of Rahul Dravid, provoked a tearful consensus and an outpouring of affection and respect. Dravid, as a cricketer and as a man, has been treasured. The second, of Steve Harmison, produced no such universal sentiment. Indeed, as Paul Frame, a sharp observer, noted, Harmy's announcement didn't even receive the uncomplicated love that Matthew Hoggard's had earlier in the summer. He did not enjoy the ceremonial farewell and instant celeb afterlife of his pal Andrew Flintoff, nor the rueful what-might-have-beens of Simon Jones, the last of the 2005 pace attack still playing professional cricket. Harmison, it's clear, represents something more complex. He is a lightning rod for opinion.

As outsiders, we know nothing of the private man. His public image has been formed by his actions on the field, where the great peaks and troughs of his cricket have marked him out. There are few players, especially bowlers, whose highs are as distant from their lows, whose statistics are as open to interpretation as Steve Harmison's. The story behind his 226 Test match wickets at 31.82 can be read more ways than Shakespeare; there are silences between those figures as pregnant as Beckett's or Pinter's, and to stretch the literary analogy to breaking point, he has been part Lee Child, part Tom Sharpe. Where do you start with a bowler like Steve?

Perhaps with that gap between best and worst, between Sabina Park and Brisbane, between 7 for 12 and a wide to second slip, because both thrum with resonance in the memory. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has written about the function of the Availability Heuristic in decision-making. Often, our judgements are based on the most easily recalled piece of information. Well, Harmy certainly got those sorted out: both his greatest moments and his lowest are indelible in their way, and reflect how we think of him.

That gap is also important in the sense of the possible that Harmison offered. He could produce brutal spells, unplayable deliveries, moments of irresistibility. He just couldn't do it as often as we thought he should. There was not just a gap between his best and worst, but between his best and his usual, and in that gap, spectator frustration grew.

The dichotomies didn't end there. To see him bowl on television was to watch a slightly uncoordinated giant lolloping in, a man who arrived at the crease with a high skip, arms and legs in freeze-frame. To watch him live was something entirely different, especially from side-on to the wicket where his approach gathered thrillingly, that take-off the culmination of a great rush of effort that saw the ball flung down at the batsman from steepling height, a blur until it dug hard into the wicket and leapt back up. I saw the delivery with which he struck Ponting at Lord's in 2005 from that position - or rather I didn't see it, and neither did the batsman, at least not until too late.

Of the four quick bowlers in that famous team, Harmison carved his niche on the first morning of the series. Hoggy would go on to torment with his curling swing, Flintoff to produce one of the great overs in the history of the game in Birmingham, Jones to fire out stumps with seam and skid, but it was Harmy who was the spreader of discomfort, the man who brought to the bowling what Pietersen injected into the batting, a vivid unpredictability that kippered Michael Clarke with a slower ball in the last over of the day at Edgbaston, that flicked Kasprowicz's glove when all was lost in the same match, that plucked out Ponting at Old Trafford and threw the game back into the balance.

It was after that series that the ambivalence towards Steve Harmison began. He was just over halfway through his Test career, and his best was already in the book. He had 138 wickets at 28.49 from 35 games. Over the next four years, he played another 27 Tests for England and took 84 wickets as his career average drifted out to 37.6. There was the revelation of depression, the struggles of being away from a young family, the growing register of injuries inflicted by his calling. Above all there was the damage of that first ball in Brisbane, a moment that became an emblem for psychological and physical defeat and that led to Harmison sometimes embodying defeatism.

There was another side. The King Cricket blog carried a quote from Shiv Chanderpaul describing how Harmison had pulled off his boots after a day's work at Durham to find them full of blood. Perhaps uniquely in the age of central contracts, Harmison's county provided him with his most cherished moments. Durham was home, and home was where his heart was. Twice he got the wicket that won them the County Championship, and he burns with rightful pride in the achievement. He took almost 500 first-class wickets for them.

"I don't like travelling, full stop - that's just me and I'll never change," he said this week. When Harmison felt at home, whether physically or emotionally, the thing that really travelled was the ball. It's not really mysterious enough to be enigmatic, but the public enigma that is Steve Harmison hangs on that sentence. Farewell Harmy, and well bowled.

[Gemmill 34884]

Nice article, cheers for that.

[Kid Dynamite 5974]

Bled Durham dry for the last 3 years unfortunately

[Tooj 17]

I see Sachin is finally retiring. It's about time like.

[Tooj 17]

Thought that this might be of an interest to some. Looks similar to The Blizzard.

http://www.thenightwatchman.net/about

[Tooj 17]

Started reading this yesterday. Would recommend it to anybody that loves a bit of Warne and the aura surrounding his bowling.

[Tooj 17]

 

 

Warne attacks Ponting, Cook
Daniel Brettig

November 4, 2013

Shane Warne has accused Ricky Ponting of being motivated by "jealousy" in criticising his Australian captaincy successor Michael Clarke, while also asserting that Alastair Cook will risk losing the Ashes for England should he continue to lead in a "negative" manner.

In a typically showstopping stream of opinions ahead of Australia's return bout with England, Warne leapt to the defence of his "best friend" Clarke, arguing that Ponting's written critique of the incumbent leader in his autobiography was the result of bitterness. He also said Ponting's actions did not compare favourably with those of Allan Border and Mark Taylor, the "two best captains" the former legspinner played under.

"I know he beats himself up mercilessly about being the only Australian captain ever to lose three Ashes," Warne said in a press conference call with English media for the Ashes broadcaster Sky Sports. "And I know Ricky made that horrific decision to put England in at Edgbaston in 2005. I don't want to be mean about Ricky - he's a good guy and he tried to do the best he could.

"But to bring up the stuff about Pup [Clarke] - maybe there was a bit of jealousy, because Pup was batting so well and Ricky was not making any runs. To me, Michael's very well respected. The best captains keep stuff in the dressing room. No-one ever finds out about it. That's what good leaders are about. So to hear all this in a book is pretty ordinary."

Cook's leadership of England has thus far been characterised by a close relationship with the coach Andy Flower and a calm guiding hand rather than any great invention in the field. England's preferred approach is of a more conservative nature than that of Clarke and the Australian coach Darren Lehmann.

"If Michael Clarke did the same things, I'd say he was negative, but he's not. That's not the way he captains," Warne said. "Cook can be negative, boring, not very imaginative - and still win and be pretty happy. But I think he needs to be more imaginative. If Australia play well and he continues to captain the way he does, I think England are going to lose the series.

"I don't think he can captain like that - and I'm not working in any capacity whatsoever for Cricket Australia. Darren Lehmann is a good mate of mine, and Michael Clarke is my best friend, of course I speak to them a lot but I call it as I see it. And I'm not the only one who thinks Alastair Cook is a negative captain.

"He lets the game drift. He waits for the game to come to him. I don't think he can captain the side like that. For me, Michael Clarke is the best captain in the world at the moment. He just has a lot of imagination. Cook would never have a leg slip, bat-pad and leg gully, like Clarke did for Jonathan Trott in the summer."

To round off his serve, Warne said England would do well not to play Joe Root at the top of the order during the series, suggesting the young Yorkshireman would be "crucified" facing the new ball on Australian pitches. Warne preferred to see Michael Carberry as Cook's opening partner, with Joe Root to bat at No. 6 instead of Jonny Bairstow.

"I don't think Root's an opener because of his technique. Australia found him out in England, and in Australian conditions they'll find him out more. You can't get stuck on the crease in Australia because of the pace of the wickets.

"It could be crucifying him if he has got to face Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle and Mitchell Johnson on some fast, bouncy pitches. I think he's just going to nick off a lot. Besides Lord's, where he got 180, Australia really did have his number."


The bit where he goes on about Cook and Clarke's respective captaincy is embarassing to be honest. We all know you'd crawl over broken glass to put lovebites in Clarke's shit Shane but give it a rest will ya?

[Gemmill 34884]

He made a right twat of himself in the summer, and it doesn't look like he's finished yet.

[Tooj 17]

I think he's spot on about Cook's captaincy.

[Tooj 17]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24941869

 

 

 

"Tendulkar's reputation is based on his longevity, consistency and the fact he has played his whole career under the pressure of being an Indian icon," says Ferriday.

"But I don't think he played the stellar innings that Brian Lara played. Most of Lara's centuries were innings that either saved his team from losing or enabled them to win. Tendulkar's were often hidden amongst those of his team-mates."

 

[Tooj 17]

Shame that we let them get back into it a bit more but all in all a decent start to the first day of the series. Especially considering how much they have all been running their mouths off.

[Ken 119]

Shame that we let them get back into it a bit more but all in all a decent start to the first day of the series. Especially considering how much they have all been running their mouths off.

All?

Only one blunt clown that put one on Root's chin is the only mouthing off I can recall.

[Meenzer 14112]

 

[Dr Gloom 19879]

good to see the aussies continuing where they left off in the summer with their inverted batting lineup. lucky for them that their tail end can all bat a bit as their top order all look like number 11s right now, so many cheap wickets. england didn't even bowl that brilliantly from the highlights i've seen.

 

tremlett looked a bit off his old pace, offered control but that's not really what he was picked for. we've gone for the big tall men, suited to aussie decks, even though none of them are performing that brilliantly. where one of the best bowlers of the summer (onions) didn't even make the flight.

 

still, minor grumbles aside, an excellent start to the series for once. now we need to knock them over for about 300, and cook and trott need to do what they failed to do in the summer and occupy the crease. they've got a good chance of doing it, this wicket will suit them both better than the slow turners we produced for swann last series. just got to hope mitchell left his radar at the airport as usual. he's the danger man for them if he gets it right.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Dr Gloom

[Dr Gloom 19879]

Shame that we let them get back into it a bit more but all in all a decent start to the first day of the series. Especially considering how much they have all been running their mouths off.

 

did you stay up for it? i passed out at about 40/1. we didn't look that clever at that stage so pretty chuffed to wake up to today's scorecard.