At the time of writing South Africa B has the Australians on the back foot with Mike Hussey (107*) and Brad Haddin (33*) chasing another 226 runs for victory with only Mitchell Johnson to come after them.
I thought the South Africans put together a pretty accomplished performance with:
- Andrew Strauss contributing 133 runs in the match
- Jonathan Trott contributing 160 runs
Excluding Matt Priors contributions (giving the Poms the benefit of the doubt) - these two contributed 41% of all the runs scored by the English team and Strauss ran out Michael Clarke at a critical time. With due respect, the English cannot claim they "retained" the Ashes.
Bugger I see that the South African Strauss has just caught Haddin pushing the English one step closer to winning the Ashes...
Posts
4 comments:
Marc,
C'mon mate, learn to take defeats in the right way. If your comments has to be taken seriously, then Aussies also white washed 5-0 the South African B side down under in 06/07 coz there were 2 in that England team also (KP and Strauss). Then you guys will not tell this and will boast that we white washed 'England' 5-0. But when losing to the same team all sort of nasty reasons begins to pop up. It will take a bit of time to digest mate...the current ICC test ranking of the Aussies (No - 4) justifies the team.
Hi Baiju
Just having a bit of fun but seriously an English side which will effectively play with 4 South Africans in it is a bit hard to swallow (KP, Trott, Strauss, Prior)... Can't they find their own talent...?
I don't think there is any question that we have given the poms some backbone though and given their fans something to cheer about.
Would this English side have won if they had been playing in Oz for instance??
Don't get me wrong - kudos to the English for winning - world cricket needs a competitive England to keep the standards up and maybe a win will boost their confidence a bit.
Marc,
Hmmmmm.....yeah your point is sort of right, but you know England for a long time now had different nationals during various times playing in their team. KP, Strauss, Hussain, Prior, Trott, Panesar, Rashid, Solanki, Sajid Mahmood...to name a few. But I don't really know whether we can put that against the team.
What this points out is the non-availability of serious English talents and the decline in the standards of county cricket. If you analyze most of the county teams you can see atleast 4-5 players who are nearing 40 and some more than that. This will not help in grooming the youngsters. Its my personal thought, may or may not be right.....Cheers mate.
Correct! The decline of English county cricket which sets the scene for my next blog post - Changing the format of domestic cricket to develop global strength on strength and the role that the IPL has to play in all of this...
... It is a lesson to all the other cricket playing nations that if you want to nurture your homegrown talent you cannot allow your domestic game to go down the toilet.
Best domestic setup in the world probably remains the Australian one. South Africa starting to reward mediocrity....
Post a Comment