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The Ashes 2017-18

redsquirrel said:
There's changing your mind and there's being a weather cock, blowing whichever way the wind turns.
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I’d agree with you if people were switching support but that's not happening. Just folk being realistic and saying it how it is. It’s warranted frustration at a piss poor performance.
 
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Spymaster said:
People are allowed to change their minds. Before the first test we could be reasonably optimistic. After the second everyone’s money would’ve been on Oz, and now you’d be a fucking idiot to bet on England winnng a match. That’s cricket.
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twas always the way. Either we are the greatest thing since sliced bread when we're smashing the Aussies at Trent Bridge, or we're utter shite. The truth is that England really aren't that far off the best in the world. The margins in the first two tests have flattered the Aussies a bit and the momentum from those wins have probably helped them in this test too.
 
redsquirrel said:
This isn't a pathetic team, it's got one of the top post-war English bowlers (still going strong overall), one of the three top post-war English opening batsman and an excellent, potentially truly great, upper-middle order batsman. It also has two very good lower order batsmen/allrounders, an excellent second bowler (although one probably past his best) and some seam bowlers that are very good in home conditions. That's not pathetic.
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Of course it’s not a pathetic team on paper. Anyone saying that means that this has been a pathetic performance, and they’re right. Apart from two or three individual efforts we’ve been worse than ordinary, our ‘top post war’ batsman’s done fuck all and people are disappointed. That's not being “weather cocks” at all.
 
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It's not the fact we're losing it's the margin of it that I find piss poor. It's all very well posting how well Australia do at home but I don't know the margins of those defeats. Our margins of defeat have been pretty huge. Yes of course England don't have piss poor players in the team but the performances this series have been pretty shite. I didn't think like this about England's tour of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in the past couple of years, all had players that are playing in this tour, none of which we won. Hey I didn't even think the same when we last got stuffed in Australia, I just thought England were out played. This time though I think it's pretty shit, especially, as has already been pointed out, the gulf between the two teams isn't particularly large.
 
kabbes said:
It wouldn’t change the fact that England have played poorly for 90% of 2.5 tests.
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I disagree. I'd say they maybe played poorly for about 15-20%, the timing of those poor sessions was critical and the Australians had to tools to ruthlessly exploit those cracks.
 
redsquirrel said:
This isn't a pathetic team, it's got one of the top post-war English bowlers (still going strong overall), one of the three top post-war English opening batsman and an excellent, potentially truly great, upper-middle order batsman. It also has two very good lower order batsmen/allrounders, an excellent second bowler (although one probably past his best) and some seam bowlers that are very good in home conditions. That's not pathetic.
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Agreed, just not quite as good as the Aussies on their home turf. Just as the Aussies haven't been quite as good as England on pitches with movement and a Duke ball.
 
I simply cannot believe some of what is passing for comment and analysis on this board. Some of you must be commenting on a different series. :rolleyes:
 
kabbes said:
NINETY PERCENT
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FIFTEEN TO TWENTY PERCENT!

(and that's my final offer)

Moany pessimistic Brits love to feel sorry for themselves when they're not winning. Remember it's only a game, it's not the end of the world. England have the ability to recover some pride but will be less likely to do so if they're own supporters are slagging them off every two minutes.
 
New Zealand pushed the Aussies harder the last time they met at the WACA and drew if I remember rightLy with Taylor scoring almost a triple century.

With the money invested in Loughborough you would hope they could produce a side better than that of a country of four million or whatever NZ is. The best batsman in the side at the moment is yet another South African. It’s a disgrace.

One decent FAST bowler and a quality spinner. Why can’t the academy produce at least those.
 
There is quite a bit of dissent in the ranks regarding Loughborough, in particular from Ian Pont. Pont believes you can get extra speed out of analysing an action and using physics. He also believes, in stark contrast to the Loughborough approach, that strength and conditioning training is damaging to a fast bowler, that the thing you need to do to get fit to bowl is to bowl. I'm totally with him on this second bit - unnecessary muscle mass just slows you down and makes you more prone to injury - look at someone like Shane Watson. Fitness is activity-specific. Malcolm Marshall used to prepare for the new season by running to get his cardiovascular fitness up. Then he'd bowl. And, um, that's it.

I'm also not convinced that investing in dedicated elite institutions is the best way to produce top players. The most important thing in producing top players is having as many youngsters as possible playing the game for fun.
 
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littlebabyjesus said:
There is quite a bit of dissent in the ranks regarding Loughborough, in particular from Ian Pont. Pont believes you can get extra speed out of analysing an action and using physics. He also believes, in stark contrast to the Loughborough approach, that strength and conditioning training is damaging to a fast bowler, that the thing you need to do to get fit to bowl is to bowl. I'm totally with him on this second bit - unnecessary muscle mass just slows you down and makes you more prone to injury - look at someone like Shane Watson. Fitness is activity-specific. Malcolm Marshall used to prepare for the new season by running to get his cardiovascular fitness up. Then he'd bowl. And, um, that's it.

I'm also not convinced that investing in dedicated elite institutions is the best way to produce top players. The most important thing in producing top players is having as many youngsters as possible playing the game for fun.
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I'm totally with your comment about encouraging the grassroots game. Surely, this is also a desirable end in itself? The best time to learn technical skills is as early as possible and volume of practice, repetitions is important.

I would guess the Loughborough guys would be upset at the charge that they are not applying physics though.

My feeling is a certain amount of weight training, e.g. Olympic lifting is going to be beneficial. I think Steffan Jones reports good results with it.

Also, training with differential ball weights, both heavy and light. There is a very solid evidence base for this for baseball pitching. I don't think it is commonly used in cricket but it should be. Reading the baseball studies it seems the only way not to improve pitching velocity is to stick to the match ball weight in practice!

During this cold weather I have been practicing with a ball weight of 0kg which costs nothing and it is also self-returning after you bowl it :)
 
Here's Ian Pont, who participated in this online discussion a while ago:

Flexibility, suppleness, timing, co-ordination and rhythm are all far more important than strength. I don't know what 'numbers' fast bowlers do with regard to brench presses or lat pull downs and I don't feel it's very important to be honest.

That's because everyone is different firstly, and secondly you are trying to get a body fit for bowling and not for the beach. Weight training has it's place as part of the overall strategy of a physical regime, but it's not significant in my opinion.

Muscles need to be trained to repeat through a series of movements for bowling so if you MUST go to the gym ensure you work through the range of motions you need to bowl.
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squirrelp said:
Also, training with differential ball weights, both heavy and light. There is a very solid evidence base for this for baseball pitching. I don't think it is commonly used in cricket but it should be. Reading the baseball studies it seems the only way not to improve pitching velocity is to stick to the match ball weight in practice!
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That's interesting, and fits well with what I know of martial arts training. It is still training to pitch by pitching, though - making your body that particular activity-fit, which is what this is all about.
 
The draw could still be on eh? England haven't lost the ashes yet.

Vaughny raising concerns that England will have to face 4+ sessions to save the match, and he's not sure they can manage it with the cracks appearing in the pitch.
 
Broad a bit unlucky there, bowled a good over at the right length and still went for 8 runs. Lead nearing 200, good psychological target to declare on...
 
...Aussies now just bursting Englands bubble after the initial successes this morning. Smithy just rubbing their noses in it now. 600+ on the board and lead over 200+ still no no declaration yet...
 
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