The Official Cricket '07/'08 thread!!

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20 zimbabwean bucks???

harmison in for freddie, haddin for manou and clark in for hauritz :)down:)

the standard of umpiring in this series has been deplorable. there are only two half decent umpires, aleem dar and simoun taufel, but taufel can never umpire an australian test, for reasons i cannot comprehend. strauss' lb first ball was even more plumb than bell's 30 million chances at edgbaston.

what a ripper of a catch marcus north!!

on paper, england's side looks shithouse. bopara's a spud, cook's done nothing this series, the sherminator is a little weed, and the best bat outside of strauss has been your worst bowler, hoppers crossing's own stuart broad.

The reason is the infamous umpire Bunsall (spelling?) fiasco in India. Aus needed 100 to win the series in the final innings, 4 wrong decisions, and the final one, McGrath, LBW to Harbijan, the slow motion replay actually showed him raising his finger before the ball hit the pad
 
ah righto. i didn't know that.

meanwhile, the selectors get shown for the idiots they are. again.

bring clark in for the fourth test. ripper idea
 
allowing peter fucking siddle a five wicket haul :doh:

christ our batting line up looks bad without KP and freddie. why did trescothick have to go and retire!!
 
Test match is as good as over after Day One, but the series is very much alive.

Roll on The Oval...
 
I'm still flabbergasted that we bowled the Poms out for 100 and something. Good work there. :up:
 
That is a quality dunny brush five-for.

Clark should be getting the choccies... i don't think Sids is going to be the Merv Bill is hoping for.

Meanwhile, I ask. Where has all the goddam character gone? :scream: The post-day interviews are so fucking boring.
 
Interviews are bound to be boring when someone like Clarke is interviewed. That guy's personality is dishwateringly dull.
 
Only an earthquake of about 9.7 on the richter scale, epicentre at Headingley, Leeds, can save this test match for England

Somehow i dont think it will happen
 
Why the fuck, when you've already got a severely weakened batting line up, would you play 5 bowlers, when none of those bowlers is any good anyway, and one of them is named Onions?
 
Do you know what's even funnier than that? When soft Matt Prior's back just went on him, you know who their options were as replacements? Their coach Andy Flower and Alec Stewart :lmao:
 
Do you know what's even funnier than that? When soft Matt Prior's back just went on him, you know who their options were as replacements? Their coach Andy Flower and Alec Stewart :lmao:

Haha, as much as I loved those two players in their day, Stewart was a gun player, the English national side is farcical. Andy Flower isn't even a PoM. Why not just bring back Warren Hegg or that 40 year old they brought on their tour of Australia a few years back.

Fact of the matter is that Pommyville don't have any decent cricketers, reflecting the inrceasing national apathy towards the sport. Pietersen's a South Efrican. They'd all much rather play football.

This match'll probably be over within an hour
 
I just thought it was funny the next best two choices were a retired Zimbabwean and a retired commentator.

Anyway, match is over, England's best batsmen have been their bowlers, how the fuck were we ever in doubt.
 
Just for the nation that owns cricket, the fact that they've never seen fit to increase the capacity of their charming little grounds beyond 30,000 suggests the willingness of the general public to watch international cricket just doesn't seem to be there. Quite staggering for a nation of 50,000,000. And a lot of the folk in the crowd at these current Ashes test matches look like old geezers like Parkinson.

And while we've wrecked some of our grounds by turning them into concrete donuts (Gabba, MCG), it's usually been done in the name of increasing the capacity of our cricket stadiums. MCG holds 100,000, Sydney and Brisbane hover around 40,000. Tiny cities like Adelaide and Perth still have 25,000 seater stadiums. We've only got a population of 21 MIL.

And I've never met a young Pom who appears all that enthused by cricket, seems to be the older guys.

And why are Ingerland's players so crap? Is the government funding cricket development programs sufficiently enough? Would they be justified in doing so, or is the demand for England to do well in cricket (as opposed to Football and Rugby) just not there?

I'm not tryin' to get all "haha, look at you Poms", (quite frankly, I couldn't care who wins this series with no Hodge playing, and people like Watson, Clarke, Haddin and Clark playing for Australia, of whom I just don't like) I'm just stating my observations about cricket in England.
 
We may have invented cricket but much like the rest of Europe, South America and most of Africa, football just dwarfs every other sport over here. So even people who don't care too much for football will still take a passing interest like watching premiership highlights on a saturday (my dad does this) and watching world cup matches. It's impossible to avoid really.

Sports like cricket and rugby are much more divisive. you either like them or you don't. they're also more middle class sports so generally they don't appeal much to poor kids growing up on council estates across the country. This lack of exposure means that if they don't start playing at a young age it's hard for them to ever properly develop.

Maybe the funding hasn't been there for young people to play cricket over here, i don't know. Then again we aren't particularly good at any sports, despite how much money is invested in them. I suppose tennis would be the most obvious example of not enough funding going into a sport in england. But cricket will always have a solid fan base here. Also people have jobs to go to during test matches on weekdays and during this recession some people just don't fancy paying £75 for a ticket when it could be spent on more important things.

The 20/20 World Cup was a massive success here with full houses at each game and maybe that's just indicative of where cricket is going now. I personally believe the 50 over game will be dead within a few years.

So I don't think there is an increasing apathy towards cricket here (regardless of how crap our team is). I would say though that the goverment could do with spending more money on cricket development when looking at our middle order!
 
Ah yes, forgot about pricing. £75 a ticket is rather nasty. Adults can watch a day of test cricket in Melbourne for $25 which is £12.6 according to a currency converter thing I did, which is a stark contrast.

50/50 is as good as dead. A shame, because it still required cricketing skill. 20/20 is inadequate in distinguishing who the better cricketers in the world are. So much chance involved. By all means have it as a sport, but it's just not "cricket".
 
AND SKY have taken cricket away from the masses
the ECB claimed they money from SKY was for future development of the game

what development?
I cant see any especially with Ramprakash back in the running
 
Yep, it's just sad that England's tail enders are much better batsmen than the top order itself. Haha.
 
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