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Andrew Strauss is so painfully sensible, he’s allowed to engage in a bit of nonsense every now and again. Over the last year or so, he’s tended to crave nonsense round about the point that he’s scored 22 runs in a Test match.
“The underpants are ironed, the silverware’s nicely buffed – I feel like indulging myself,” he says and promptly aims a wild drive at a wide one. He did this yesterday, but for once he missed it. He then got right back down to the business of being jolly sensible again.
England’s fifth-best batsman didn’t make too many other mistakes yesterday. There’ll always be a few when you bat all day, but in general he didn’t try to hit deliveries which had a good chance of getting him out and he hit enough of the other ones to get over a hundred runs. England fans tend to take such things for granted these days, but they shouldn’t.
“England’s fifth-best batsmen”.
Haha. No.
How many did Bell, Morgan and Pietersen score in Pakistan again?
Okay, firstly, we forgot Matt Prior, so Strauss is actually England’s sixth best batsman.
Secondly, no-one went to Pakistan. No-one’s been to Pakistan for years.
Thirdly, Strauss didn’t make many runs over the winter either.
Fourthly, the recent failures of Bell and Pietersen fall amid longer periods of fairly heavy run-scoring.
So yeah, you’re right, Strauss isn’t England’s fifth-best batsman – he’s the sixth-best and that’s a pretty good achievement really.
zing
That was an uncharacteristicfit of pique, You Maj. [reporting, by a miracle ipadery, from the Granstand atLords]
The Smudge – is it as slow as it looks today?
Sam, a slow day at Lords beats most other ways to spend a day
Apart from one – spending the day lying in bed watching it on Sky.
The second point is a criticism of a mis-type, a little weak really.
And Prior? 209 runs to Strauss’ 264 over winter. Oh, and 19 runs to Strauss’ 122 in this test match.
Cook is a better batsman, clearly. So is Trott. KP is miles, miles better, and again, that is a clear as day. So that makes him 4th, even before you get to a question. 4th, 5th or 6th is all that’s up for grabs here.
But enough qualitative asserting. All the six players under consideration have played 20-24 matches in the last 2 years, plenty enough to mean that averages tell a true story. So, match these batting averages to the right players.
63, 59, 58, 49, 47, 35
Debate over.
Actually, if you look over the last 12 months only, it is far less clear cut where Strauss is (in terms of his batting). Is it 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th?
(Clue, it isn’t 4th, 5th or 6th.)
Having said all that, we forget sometimes that cricket is purely a team game, and a winning team needs a winning captain. Strauss is a total superstar who can claim as much credit for England’s success as anyone.
It’s a bit boring being so predictable and all. Why are the West Indies always here in May having their trousers pulled down in the cold weather?
Poor sods.
Because unless or until they get better at test cricket, the West Indies will be a second rate crowd-puller of a side.
This has only been the case in the last few years – they got the main gig in 2000 and again in 2004, by which time they were so poor that New Zealand (of all test nations) were rightfully piqued that THEY were forced to play second fiddle that summer.
How the mighty have fallen.
And the sad bit is, that if the WICB could get its blithering act together, if Windies were to send their actual best 16 as a squad, they would be competitive and they could pull in crowds.
I knew I shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee. Sunday morning rant over.
Employing the ascending numeric system to take apart a fellow is an excellent weapon, but the sting goes out after “Secondly”. The third, fourth, and fifth points designed to repeatedly stab only serve to dilute the poison. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. Or something like that. Or maybe not. No, definitely not. Nothing like that. Actually like that old uncle who says an absolutely hilarious joke, has everyone in splits and then proceeds to connect it to an incident that happened in 1912 and ruins the fun. Or the aunt who does the same. Or any old person for that matter. Pithy. That’s the word I was looking for. Comments should be pithy. Never more than a couple of lines long. If you cannot say what you need to say in less than ten words, chances are you don’t have anything meaningful to say in the first place. I feel like I haven’t stressed this point enough. Be brief. Yes, be brief. No more than Secondly. Never more than Secondly. Of course, it is entirely possible that you didn’t mean that as a stinging criticism and therefore were allowed to be verbose, but this is not a possibility I wish to consider.
So there, you have it.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul and all them battings and that and them and that
And then some.
Geez with the way Roach was bowling last night this could be an interesting first session. Good to see an angry quick in action.