Tuesday 2 June 2015

INDIVIDUAL HIGHLIGHTS MASK ENGLAND FAILINGS

COOK, GOOCH AND THE UMPIRES CALL

Once again many pundits were heralding a new dawn after England had beaten New Zealand last week. False dawns are always put forward by those under pressure to deliver results and failing, who hasn't fallen for that one. It is however incumbent upon us to put jingoism aside and actually look at the facts. One for instance is the Jimmy Anderson praise.

His longevity cannot be faulted nor can his ability to swing the ball or rattle through inferior opponents at home, what is far more useful would be to look at his bowling average against decent sides away from home, once you do that you find he is not in Botham or Willis's class. The standard of scoring runs quickly has risen since they played but the actual standard of batsmen around the world is certainly not as high. One only has to look at the quality of bowling around in the 70's and 80's to realise that.

Still not convinced / Ok then lets just look at the anomalies in the manipulation of batting records by Cook and Gooch, yes you did hear that right !
Gooch was England's second highest run scorer at the time of Gower's nadir under his captaincy and he effectively finished Gower's career. Had Gower played another twenty test matches would Gooch have caught him ?.  Highly unlikely.



Now look at KP and it is almost a carbon copy, under Cook's captaincy KP's test career has followed almost exactly the same path as Gower, do you really believe in that much coincidence ?.
They say Gooch is the mentor to Cook, well you can blinker over that one if you like.




You may want to blinker over the UMPIRES CALL manipulation in test cricket,which enables the ICC to manipulate matches one way or the other. When one team runs out of challenges it is amazing how many borderline reviews go in favour of that team, forcing the other team to still use one of theirs. Have a look at recent LBW decisions that are just clipping leg stump or just going over the top, shocking stuff i am afraid.
Time to go back to the old 51% of the ball hitting the stumps, whatever happened to the batsman getting the benefit of the doubt.


No comments:

Post a Comment