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Cricket XVI


Jeor

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New thread time.

Go NZ! For once I'd like to see them have some joy even if we're going to get spanked later in the year.

Malcolm batting at 10 was a distinct possibility in 1990s England...I seem to remember Mullaly, Malcolm, Giddins and Tufnell all being in the bowling mix at some point for Team England. Four number 11s in the batting order would have been rather fun...

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Really excited for the kiwis. They've had some tough time recently,. To have the ability to beat, or atleast challenge England, must be a huge boost to their new lineup. I hope they can keep it up.

On the other hand, SL is slaughtering Bangladesh. Not too upset considering this is Bangladesh, and I am pretty used to them losing. Nonetheless, I don't think having two loser teams (bang and aus :P) will do any good for my long term mental health lol.

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Malcolm batting at 10 was a distinct possibility in 1990s England...I seem to remember Mullaly, Malcolm, Giddins and Tufnell all being in the bowling mix at some point for Team England. Four number 11s in the batting order would have been rather fun...

I do remember reading once that Duncan Fletcher's seeming obsession with how good the English lower-order batting was began after his first match as coach had Alan Mullally batting at number 9, and he felt that it should never happen again.

Given the time lost to the weather I think New Zealand should probably declare immediately to give them as long as possible to bowl England out. It's not a bad batting pitch and they can't be sure that the English batsmen will be so self-destructive the second time round.

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*settling in for a doze with TMS on in the background*

I can tell not much is happening because they're talking about sheep.

Before England started batting I'd have said an NZ win was the most likely outcome, and if the first wicket goes within an hour, I think it still is. I refuse to underestimate England's collapsible nature.

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218/0 . Cook 109 compton 94. 7 overs left for the day. NZ cant win this. its most likely a draw.

Great innings from Compton (from Cook as well, but we expect him to do that), I think he's managed to cement his place in the team for the next few games. England still have more work to do tomorrow to make the game safe but I agree a draw is the most likely outcome.

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It was a bit much to hope that the NZ bowling attack could take another 10 wickets reasonably cheaply, but they should still be pretty happy with how they did in this Test. Rutherford came through and they managed to put together a good first innings score without a big contribution from Taylor.

In other news, Wade might have hurt his ankle and Haddin is being prepared to fly in. This could actually be a good thing...I've always thought Haddin is a bit of a fair weather batsman and flat-track bully but it'll be interesting how he handles being one of the senior batsmen if he plays.

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Bangladesh has batted surprisingly well. The pitch is really shit (i.e. batting track), so I wasn't surprised at SL batsmen amassing huge lead, but Bangladesh has done fairly well so far. Rahim passed 150, and Ashraful nearing 200, and both unbeated at the end of the 3rd day. While a win for Bangladesh is very unlikely, I hope they can grind out a draw. They need to learn to draw before they can start to win.

Although I must say, these batting tracks are awful, both the NZ one and this SL one. They should force all the test pitches to be bowling pitches. It's more fun to watch the batsmen working hard to try and survive. If i want batting pitches, i'd watch T20s.

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Agreed on the more exciting nature of pitches suited to the bowlers. It really shows you who the good batsmen are, and it exposes the growing number of 'sloggers who have a cover drive and therefore can't be called sloggers'. Not that they were huge bowling wickets, but the last tour to England of India (where Dravid got all the runs) showed that he was the only one who was really qualified to technically succeed in very trying, seaming conditions where the ball was moving everywhere.

That being said, the bowlers these days just aren't good quality either. Still, there aer a few too many high scoring tests these days. It used to be that 300 was a healthy first innings score, but these days it would be considered a failure.

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Hmm, Watson, Pattinson, Khawaja and Johnson are all excluded from the Third Test due to disciplinary reasons - apparently failing to provide a written analysis of how they were going to improve for the next game. I'm ambivalent about the whole thing but it's probably good to give some people a kick up the backside.

If it were possible to lose by two innings, we would probably find a way to do it in the next Test...

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Hmm, Watson, Pattinson, Khawaja and Johnson are all excluded from the Third Test due to disciplinary reasons - apparently failing to provide a written analysis of how they were going to improve for the next game.

Really? I saw they'd been dropped and assumed it was because they'd gone out and missed a curfew or something, not doing your homework seems a bit of an odd one to be dropping players for.

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