The Cricket Thread
- Thread starter TheSecondStain
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Two things strike me. One that the players had only one warm up game (at least three are necessary to get use to the climate and pitches), two the scheduling of the tests. I feel England could have played more possible Test players and left their primary pace attack at home, as the requirements of the South African will be demanding with some Tests played at altitude.
Well done NZ. Given that the pitch was slow, did England just bat recklessly as those who applied themselves, stayed around.for a long time. Expect a similar sort of pitch for the next test. NZ won't want to lose this oñe, and so récord a rare series victory over England.
Next season's CC fixtures are out. Hants seem to have a favourable schedule. Only have to play Essex once (although it is at Chelmsford) and won't be going to Old Trafford. We've got Gloucestershire home and away which is excellent - they're the weakest team in the division for me. Not playing Lancs away is big for me. We've got a wretched record there.
We're not much better against Surrey either (seem to regularly come away with high scoring draws or defeats). So yes, not having Surrey or Essex at home or Lancs away is great news. Only downside is that we play Northants just once. But three out of four isn't bad.
Interesting to see that they've mixed up the one-day groups. I can't remember the last time we played Durham in a group game (never in t20). And I'm very pleased that three of our four home matches will still be at the Rose Bowl. I appreciate that the standard will be lower this year, but I'm still keen on going - at the Rose Bowl.
Having three Championship matches mixed in between the t20 matches (rather than the usual one match) almost certainly means that we won't sign two specialist t20 players. Just the one, either by himself or with Lyon joining him (currently Lyon is a red-ball contract only). Because unless the ECB have changed the rules this year - and I'm not aware that they have - you can only have two overseas players registered at any one time. And although you can de-register a player at any time, you have to wait 14 days until you can re-register them again. So given that the fixtures are quite close together, it makes it difficult to leave out a player for 14 days in a row, if trying to juggle three players between two spots. Hence my guess is that we'll leave Lyon as a registered player throughout, regardless of whether we play him in t20 or not. We had that problem a few years ago when McLaren was our red ball overseas player, but Afridi and Sammy in t20. The one Championship match during the t20 season we had to play without an overseas player, because we didn't want to de-register Afridi or Sammy for 14 days.
(If we did want to try, then the one option would probably be to de-register Lyon just before the competition starts, have him miss the Championship game vs Warks, re-register him straight after the home Surrey t20 game - to allow him to play in the Championship matches vs Gloucs and Surrey - and then immediately de-register him again. That's a window of exactly 14 days, amongst which there is only one t20 match which the de-registered t20 player would have to miss.)
With Stokes carrying an injury, apparently, this could well hamper and ruin England´s chances against SA. I hope England have arranged plenty of warm up matches 5 or 6, in order to acclimatise to the range of conditions there - from the humidity of Durban to the High Veld and altitude of Jo´burg!!!! And going with one or two players who are not quite 100% fit, is going to be a tall order.
NZ have produced a pitch and performance to all but clinch a rare win in a series against England. Good Luck to them.
PS: As a thought, I feel the scheduling of these winter tours is very poor. It might help if players expected to perform in the test series are omitted from the one-day squads, otherwise the likes of Archer, Buttler, Stokes, Root and Woakes are going to turn up knackered performing on the unyielding pitches of the High Veld.
Went to a Book signing . Henry Blowfeld and his new book , he was interviewed first and then a bit of Q&A with the audience . Very funny and interesting 
A miserable old git, but one of the greatest. He will be forever remembered for this game:
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RIP Bob Willis 