for an ad-free Fetcheveryone experience!

Cricket Thread

1 lurker | 108 watchers

phal 28 Jan 5:44pm, 28 Jan 2025 5,074 posts	0 phal The commentary was pretty damming towards the end of the England batting unsurprisingly and harping on about dew in the pitch… Will go and find the match report for the second half… 😀
phal 28 Jan 6:09pm, 28 Jan 2025 5,075 posts	0 phal Apologies to bring it back up again, but this is a really good article about the Australian superiority in Women’s cricket and reasoning behind it. bbc.co.uk I also really like this quote in it about the England Women: “Are England any good? Yes, compared to almost every team they're exceptional. But compared to Australia they are light years behind. To beat them, they must match them, down to every last tiny detail and beyond.”
Ocelot Spleens 28 Jan 6:31pm, 28 Jan 2025 40,332 posts	0 Ocelot Spleens I think you can add livingstone to Wood and Rashid. Good article indeed, in that it shows how hard the Australian women work at their games. Also that the underlying organisation of the Women's game in England is a bit of a mess, as is Men's cricket, especially 50 over/T20 and how County Cricket is getting sidelined. As ever it seems when comparing Aus and Eng, they're always ahead, which why Eng get smashed over there more often than not.
rf_fozzy 28 Jan 6:31pm, 28 Jan 2025 23,527 posts	0 rf_fozzy Did you listen to the TMS podcast? I have to say I tend to agree with Michael Vaughan's comments (and these days I often don't!) I don't deny that all the things Henry Moeran cites in that article are important contributing factors and of course need to be considered, but they are excuses for a series of poor performances. I tend to lean more of his discussion around fitness, game reading and attitude as being what has being glaringly missing. The point is that they've not just been beaten by a better side - they've been hammered by the better side every time (apart from perhaps 2 games), and not improved on glaring weaknesses that were there before the tour. And when the discussion as to why they've not worked on those things, the outside view seems to be that they're in denial of the issues.
phal 28 Jan 7:00pm, 28 Jan 2025 5,076 posts	0 phal Not yet, Fozzy - I’ve been working most of today and chose to listen to the T20 instead this ago while I was in. OS - the Rashid and Wood didn’t do badly for Tailenders 😉 10 off 10 and 10 off 9 ‘ll do! Thank goodness for the Orange Popcorn pair of Livingstone and Duckett too. However, it worked out quite well 😉 Rash’s figures were quite something 😀 I like the article as well because it’s written by Henry Moeran who’s followed and commentated on the women for years rather than being male cricketer making comments. (Not that they’re going to say things that are wrong, just that he’s been around the set up and properly followed the women for years) They have been hammered by them - but I like the fact that it shows how far ahead the England women still are of every other side (India however are hot on their heels and this summer will be interesting) England women are Not Shit which I feel they have been painted with over the last few days - they’re just Not As Good As The Best Team In The World. I didn’t read it as excuses. I read it as Reasons. They lost one game in the T20 World Cup to West Indies - which was a surprise and was from poor fielding - however if you read the reports you’ll also see how well it’s reported WI played too. Up until that point they’d had a good run. They’d got a good record in 2024 taking the majority of the matches across all formats against South Africa, Pakistan and they absolutely annihilated NZ over the summer. Altogether they lost 3 out of the 28 matches they played against all of the above) I’m not sure that’s poor form or glaring weaknesses. So their run of ‘poor form’ started with the WI T20 and then this WAshes. So maybe that’s part of the ‘denial’ because they actually ARE good - it’s just that Australia ARE better! There’s another good article on the beeb by Alaistar Cook that talks about England women being 20% behind Aus across all areas. Worth a read as well.
phal 28 Jan 7:10pm, 28 Jan 2025 5,077 posts	0 phal Agree OS about the mess around the Cricket - they’ve just been doing Everything better in Australia for the women for far longer than we have here. Especially having women and girls as part of cricket clubs - they’ve cricket initiatives of getting more girls playing cricket are only just starting to show fruition of women coming through into teams as they get old enough - also the U19s England Women are through to the T20 semis in the U19 World Cup.
phal 28 Jan 7:14pm, 28 Jan 2025 5,078 posts	0 phal (I wish you could edit comments once posted to remove typos 🙄)
phal 29 Jan 8:28am, 29 Jan 2025 5,079 posts	0 phal (Sorry, my very last little bit which I wanted to edit but couldn’t yesterday and it’s bugged me. In the “run of poor form” between the T20 World Cup loss in October and this WAshes was the SA tour in December - six out of seven matches won by England…. ) Test minus one day 😉
paulcook 29 Jan 8:53am, 29 Jan 2025 7,339 posts	0 paulcook phal wrote:So their run of ‘poor form’ started with the WI T20 and then this WAshes. So maybe that’s part of the ‘denial’ because they actually ARE good - it’s just that Australia ARE better! I noticed in the link you previously posted, the chart of winning percentages. England have a positive record against everyone bar Australia. Many aren't even close. The debate really centres around how England go from (comfortably?) second best side in the world to either competing to be the best, or being the best.
xt350 🇳🇿 29 Jan 9:27am, 29 Jan 2025 1,903 posts	0 xt350 🇳🇿 Just a question ... if you please. I have just been watching the T20 from India where England just won by 20odd runs and was thinking about the New Zealand home games, so apart from the England games, are they shown on Sky UK? we have a few home T20s coming up with Pakistan and recently we hosted Sri Lanka, and just wondering if you get to see them in the UK?