Cleavy
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Probably using the most popular/recognisable cricketer from each?
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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Cricket things that annoy you
- Thread starter Gethelred
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- Jan 13, 2015
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scrolling text in red on cricinfo for ground breaking news eg. IPL auction etc
Gethelred
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- May 1, 2016
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At what point do we just up and say that Australia are precisely as guilty of pitch doctoring as India are, and when it backfires in the way it has over the last three days we deserve it just as much as when they roll out a rank turner and get smashed by visiting spinners?
Black Diamond
Sleight of Hand
Is the pitch really that bad? They did just score 500.
Gethelred
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On day 1, it absolutely was. Springing off a length, movement off the seam.
It was still a new ball deck, and they played it a good deal better than we did. But it's more placid today than it was on day 1.
Agree, Jim used to be sharp as a tack - loved listening to his commentary through the 90s for all our overseas tours as a kid. That was 20 (30!) years ago.
Border is another one. He usually starts off ok, but no more than ten minutes in and he's slurring and stumbling over words, starting sentences and then trailing off into silence when he realises he forgot his point.
It's sad and actually really hard to listen to.
Commentators that say this batter grew up on the bouncy or low slow pitches of this place.
- May 5, 2016
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And in the last 15 years or so this couldn’t be less relevant with teams playing more and more shield cricket at suburban grounds and grade teams obviously rarely if ever playing at test grounds
Black Diamond
Sleight of Hand
You know what annoys my shitless? Batsmen picking up the ball or knocking it to the fielders. Why TF are the Australians doing this constantly against India?
nobbyiscool
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Doesn't matter whether it's cricket or footy, Tests or t20, home or away - there's something about Mark Howard's voice that resemble's mine, it causes Siri (on my homepod) to wake up and start giving random answers anywhere from 4 to 12 times a day.
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Have you considered a career in podcasting?
Cleavy
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maybe you're secretly Mark Howard...
Gethelred
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That for a team and a nation that has always won a lot of games - more than just the dominant 90's into 2000's, we've been pretty good historically as well - we certainly can seem like a team without a spine sometimes.
Other teams find ways to win back to the wall or when they're behind in games. We don't do that: we either absolutely pulverise opposition or are absolutely pulverised ourselves. Games don't go close with us in them.
The closest they've been and the result has gone our way in modern history was Cummins and Lyon winning the Edgebaston test, and even that wasn't all that close in the end. Outside of ODI's, we don't seem to be able to sustain the grit required.
Other teams find ways to win back to the wall or when they're behind in games. We don't do that: we either absolutely pulverise opposition or are absolutely pulverised ourselves. Games don't go close with us in them.
The closest they've been and the result has gone our way in modern history was Cummins and Lyon winning the Edgebaston test, and even that wasn't all that close in the end. Outside of ODI's, we don't seem to be able to sustain the grit required.
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The win vs NZ earlier this year was reasonably good. Wasn’t a lost cause or anything but could have very easily gone the other way
Gethelred
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But that's the thing: it wasn't close in the end. When the chips are down, Australian cricketers don't have it in them to pull off the impossible. English cricketers can do it, Indian cricketers can do it; Sri Lankan cricketers are ****ing well known for finding a way against the odds; NZ cricketers punch above their weight always, unless they're playing us.
No, we're arrogant because of a winning history that features many smashings against inferior sides, but when the roles are reversed we're more chicken shit than every other nation on the planet.
The only solace is that SA have similar arrogance without the winning record.
... and yeah, it's a bit of a melt, but it's still true. At some point, an Australian cricketer will make history as the first person who won a game for their team with their back against the wall in a test match, and they'll be the first to ****ing do it.
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- May 5, 2016
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Though oddly in test matches SA actually built their best era to some extent from being able to do it.
Their win in Australia that capped their rise to the top was based off chasing a target of 414, and backing it up in the following test match and recovering from 8-251 in response to 394 when Steyn and Duminy got together at Melbourne.
The Newlands 47 all out test; that came in an innings AFTER they were bowled out for under 100 themselves.
It wasn’t a win but they managed to ultimately claim the following series here by drawing a test they had no right to on the back of De Villiers and Faf.
So certainly in white ball tournament play SA are that on steroids - completely incapable of fighting back against any odds but they have actually shown numerous times they can do it in tests, and that’s just against the Aussies.
This is probably a big reason why so many people have dropped their heads and given up hope after one bad test in this series. We just don't seem to be able to come back from these situations even in a series context. When we go 0-1 down, we almost always lose the series (we have only won one series from 0-1 down since 1970 ffs).
Mind you this is after most of those same people pre-series predicted a scoreline of 3-1 or 4-0 for Australia. It's one extreme or the other with us.
