Comments on: Who are England’s best bowlers at the moment?

By: SimonC

SimonC — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:16:43 +0000

To be fair, Bert, was the homer bonanza not at least in part to do with the batters in question being juiced to the gills?

By: e normous

e normous — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:01:57 +0000

also I think Pietersen should be bowling a lot more.

By: e normous

e normous — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:00:01 +0000

I’d say Broad, Flintoff, Harmison, Hoggard and Anderson should be your top five, screw the rest. Harmison COULD still amount to something. I wonder what someone like say Shane Warne could get out of him. Anderson does not (and never will, probably) convince me about his ability to lead an attack – which he should be doing, because he has the weapons. Always going to be an inconsistent performer. Broad of course could be big. But more than his bowling I’m interested to see how his batting develops, he’s one of the cleanest strikers (or sweetest timers, whichever) around. That shot off his hips is seriously something.

Flintoff… who knows? Let him exhaust whatever he still has.

Hoggy is great.

By: Will H.

Will H. — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:14:02 +0000

Are you suggesting a cull? That would make things simpler. Or maybe some cricketers could be rehoused on an island somewhere, like those hedgehogs in the Outer Hebrides.

By: Price

Price — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:05:38 +0000

A regional system with a playoff at the end of the year?

That sounds way too australian

ugh

By: String

String — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:19:32 +0000

The two tier structure has helped, to a degree, but you still have too much dross at county level. Sadly, we need to regionalise in the 4 day format.
After lengthy midnight discussions with a former flatmate, we decided that we’d create 4 regions. Each region plays home and away, so 6 games each. 3 need to be in the spring, before the tests, 2 between the test series, and one after. There could then be a play-off between 1st and 2nd. List A matches can remain with counties, and can fit around this.

By: Benno

Benno — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:30:44 +0000

Would you have Woakes in the “host of other names who are but a few good matches away” group? Haven’t seen enough of him myself yet but people seem to be getting pretty excited about the guy.

If he is good enough I’d like to see him given a chance early. I felt the selectors waited 6-12 months too long before putting Broad in the test side, and Rashid should have been played in at least one international match of some format over the winter, especially after Swanny went to get his elbow sorted out.

By: Ged Ladd

Ged Ladd — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:15:15 +0000

Perhaps Bert has a worryingly convincing e-mail address of the ed.smith@googlemail.com (or similar) variety.

By: King Cricket

King Cricket — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:10:24 +0000

That was like reading Ed Smith. Top comment.

By: Bert

Bert — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:52:55 +0000

The problem of too many counties is not just that you can’t keep track of bowlers. A few years ago, Major League Baseball introduced four new teams. Immediately, three batters broke a fifty-year-old season home run record. The reason was that adding four teams doesn’t increase the number of high quality pitchers – by definition there were pitchers playing MLB who wouldn’t previously have got a game.

Even if all else were equal, two out of every three batsmen in county cricket wouldn’t get a game in any other country, there being three times as many opportunities (teams) here. This is the main reason that we can’t assess bowlers – who really knows what a county five-fer actually means. The division thing was supposed to fix this, but it only works if all (all) the best players resign from the second division and go to play for counties in the first.