THE ASHES!

Salmon · Tennis legend

RE: THE ASHES!

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

i've gone for good!

Smith is a good, entertaining player but he's not the sort of guy who will play match winning innings. yes, he'll get quick 30's and 40's but he will rarely be there at the death. like a commentator said on a sussex match 'he will often play the shot of the day, but not the innings.

Salmon · Tennis legend

alex03maccy wrote:

i've gone for good!

Okay. cry

Yeah, but Dwayne Smith is just the sort of player the English T20 team needs. No one barring KP and Luke Wright can hit out early, which makes our middle order terribly weak. Smith will never player Tests for England and probably not many ODIs either, but he's a priceless T20 batsman.

Vandenburg · Futures level

Yeh West Indies cricket sicknens me,

they are all millionairs from the IPL and stanford series,and go on strike,

the test series verus england highlighted how not bothered they looked ,not interested. chris gayle is ****.

i personally see a similar situation to zimababwe(that thru politics), in that they will be forced to resign from tests due to lack of abilty of this 2nd string team.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

england need to find some ENGLISH players who can hit out, not steal.

chris gayle is? hot/gorgeous/brilliant

Vandenburg · Futures level

lol a t-###WAT was the origional post.

Yes agree with the stealing,let me think

Geraint Jones(Australian)
Tim Ambrose (Australian)
Matt Prior(SA)
Jonathan Trott(SA)
Strauss(SA)
KP(SA)

any more.

and as for australian, how about Kepler Wessels for stealing!!!

Salmon · Tennis legend

How could YOU miss out on Amjad Khan (Denmark)?

Anyway, I don't think anyone of those are stealing since they moved to England at fairly young ages/or in KP's case, when he wasn't good enough, and improved their games. Eoin Morgan, Ed Joyce, Amjad Khan, Dwayne Smith (if) etc. are stealing, though.

I used to like Gayle quite a lot, but lost all respect when he stayed in SA to make money while his fellow players were preparing for the Test series. Totally unacceptable and the should have been sacked there and then.

Vandenburg · Futures level

Kids gorwing up today will look at West Indies as joke, not knowing that they are if not the greatest cricketing nation ever, there team of 75-80 would destroy any team of today.
It a common opinion that more Carribean kids want to play soccer now...

Amjad kahn,mmmm hes not danish until he changes his name to kahnson.

Salmon · Tennis legend

Yeah, even 10 or so years ago the crowd really appreciated Test cricket. And now the whole team is on its way to becoming T20 mercenaries.

Bravo and Gayle have signed up to play in the KFC Big Bash. Add that to the already existing IPL contracts and maybe one in the P20 in England next year and they won't need to play for the national team again.

I like Bravo, so this is very sad.

-- Edited by Salmon on Sunday 12th of July 2009 09:37:21 PM

Vandenburg · Futures level

I think its time to have two tiers of test cricket, its getting that bad

In division 2 you can have
WEst Indies
Bangladesh
Zimbabwe
Scotland
Nederlands etc.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

scotland playing test cricket? i could really tease my dad then.

are you forgetting that the windies beat england in the caribbean?

Vandenburg · Futures level

West Indies beat england in one match, the other 4 tests england outplayed them, but just could not get them out due to flat wickets.

alex03maccy · Grand Slam Champion

it only takes one match to win a test series.

indiana · Tennis legend

Harmison been added, making it a 14 man squad for Lord's.

Flintoff appraently in some doubt with knee problems and Harmison's addition supposedly mainly down to that.

I'd be tempted to play Harmison whatever rather than Onions assuming they are going with four seamers and Monty dropping out.

If Flintoff plays and then has injury problems, what prospects of Anderson, Broad, Onions and Swann taking 20 wickets ?!

Assuming he plays, Broad to me has to produce bowling wise at Lords. If he doesn't, I think he should then be replaced whetever the Lords result. He may be a great prospect and verging on all rounder as batsman but to me he just doesn't do it as a test match bowler yet. This is the Ashes, not a great future prospect training ground.

steven · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
If Flintoff plays and then has injury problems, what prospects of Anderson, Broad, Onions and Swann taking 20 wickets ?!

I'm not much of a cricket fan, but even I know that a bowling attack consisting of a tennis player, a body of open water (*), some root vegetables and a long-necked bird would give the Aussies too much of a chance to rack up a big total!

(*) might work between the wickets, admittedly