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Cricket XXIII


Xray the Enforcer

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This from the cricinfo website during the first over this morning:







Bad news for people who love good news: we're hearing that Morne Morkel won't be bowling today, having hurt his shoulder in the field yesterday




Morkel has been sent for a scan, so we'll let you know about his prospects for the rest of the match as we find out










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They might be in luck if they can get these next four wickets.

The pitch looks like it has runs in it, and South Africa batting could buy Morkel/Steyn some much-needed recovery time.

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FUCK YEAH, ON YA MO!

Smith gone.

Totally worth it staying up to watch the first few overs lol

edit:

Of course the hard part is yet to come. Amla, du Plesis and de Villiers all have 50+ average.

:grouphug:

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Looks like Johnson is continuing his Ashes form. It sounds like the South Africans are also struggling with his pace on the short ball the way England did which I wasn't really expecting.

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Ye fully agree. Though last test played in SA Johnson went on a rampage a swell and Phil Huges as well

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Well, didn't expect to be in this position after two days - the good Johnson is still around, I thought we'd see his evil twin.



Sending them in after winning the toss is not looking like a great move now, as it seems they'll have to bat last chasing a big total and didn't make best use of the second and third day batting.


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(More KP, for which I apologise. But he keeps invading my eyeline while I'm trying to look at other stuff.



It's become routine for commentators and columnists to refer to KP as "England's best batsman"; this mantra has been going unchallenged for a while. Perhaps this was the case from 2006-2009 or so when Vaughan and Strauss had lost form and Trescothick had retired. But these days I think it's highly questionable, if not outright false, so I dug out some stats for the last five years, covering quite neatly the period since KP lost the captaincy.



Is he England's highest- averaging player? No. In terms of traditional average, he's fourth on the list, with an average under 45. Bell averages over 50 and Cook 49.98.



Is he England's biggest-scoring player? No. Cook has scored more runs and more centuries (more than twice as many). Bell and Trott have also scored more centuries. In terms of runs per innings, ignoring not outs, KP is fourth on this list too. Taking undifferentiated scores over 50, KP is third (behind Cook and Bell).



Has he been England's most difficult player to dismiss? No. He has faced among the fewest balls per innings of any England specialist batsman. Among batsmen to have played more than ten innings in the last five years, he places tenth on this measure, behind Nick Compton, Andrew Strauss and Ravi Bopara, and ahead only of Carberry, Morgan, Bairstow and Matt Prior. He has also got out more frequently (dismissals/innings) than any other batsman except Strauss, Morgan and Carberry; he's tied with Paul Collingwood on that measure.



Has he been England's fastest-scoring player? No. Pietersen is head and shoulders above most of his colleagues on strike rate, with only four players hitting at a rate of over 50. However, Matt Prior scores even faster.



The only measure by which Pietersen actually tops the charts is number of sixes, and sixes hit per innings (Cook has hit more fours, and more per innings).



The above figures only take into account Test cricket, of course, but his ODI figures are so mediocre that they don't bear comparison: Eoin Morgan has been comfortably England's best ODI batsman since 2009, and the figures for Cook, Trott and Strauss indicate they have been more valuable to the team than KP.



So where is this coming from? KP might be England's most talented batsman, but if so he's failed to translate that talent into meaningful scores. He's almost unquestionably not England's most technically correct batsman. What the figures suggest is that he entertains the crowd by hitting a lot of sixes, and punctuates long spells of relative mediocrity with the odd high score. But that's not "best batsman"; that's "mercurial".



ANYWAY



Now I've got that out of my system I can concentrate a bit more on cricket that's actually happening. New Zealand look like they're in terrible trouble; I did fear for them in the absence of Taylor. (I know Taylor didn't go big in the last Test, but if it hadn't been for his steadying presence in the middle order in the second innings, NZ would almost certainly have lost). On the other hand, if the Indian quicks are doing this, what will the Kiwis do to the Indians?


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Crap crap crap. According to reports this was an ideal wicket for bowling first, almost guaranteed to harrass and terrorise the batsmen. And that's 9 tosses in a row that McCullum has lost. He's really pushing the odds with that number of coin toss losses in a row. Perhaps if NZ can get out fast the the wicket can still heavily favour the bowlers and they can knock over India cheaply. At any rate it's looking like this test is heading to someone winning, unless the Wellington weather can intervene, thogh I believe the weekend forecast is looking pretty good. The weather was shite for most of this week and all of last weekend. So if the test had been played last week it would have been a rained out draw. The weather is really nice today, not even much wind...oooh is that a grey cloud I see out of my office window? Meh, not grey (or big) enough.

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