England's_No7 wrote: Think about it, if you were the coach of a county, would you like to have a good quality practice match or a nice and easy one where most players score runs and take wickets for fun?
In the context of the levels my coach did not want us to even play street cricket because of the soft balls, the lower quality of batters, the lower quality of bowlers, the lower quality of fielders, lack of standardized rules, bowling only from one end, three stumps at one end and one stump at other end, bad field placements etc etc. By his thinking he felt that we needed to play in a competitive cricketing environment and not with those who do not take cricket seriously or do not play cricket properly.
Personally i preferred practicing against tough opposition. For example i used to enjoy batting against one of Indian International cricketers coach , who is an exceptional bowler as well and who could move ball both ways. It was challenge which i relished. On the contrary I did play the street cricket but scoring runs was very easy for me. I remember my mates had to bowl for about 30 odd overs and i did not get out until it was dark. We both used to make mockery of street cricketer bowlers and fielders because we played at higher levels than our opponents and hence had much better skill set at least at cricket. I used to treat the street bowlers with utter disdain and make mockery of their field placements , literally at will. They moved a fielder from a position and i used to hit a ball in the position left vacant. When they covered that position, i hit it at the position from which they removed the fielder. Paddle sweep to pace bowlers you name it and that was possible against them. Personally that was not competitive because i found it difficult to do it as frequently against club bowlers. So the gist is that runs scored against professional opposition are more valued, gives more confidence and satisfaction than those scored at unprofessional levels. Having said that we had a fielder in street cricket. He at one point of time gave me a feeling that he was better fielder than me even though he never played club cricket. I could not accept that someone could be a better fielder than me and that is when i started to do fielding drills which included diving catches, diving runs out and then i started to execute them in matches and surpassed him again as a more versatile and better fielder.
The point is that the lower levels will have the odd talented player, but on the whole the upper level players will make mockery or beat the lower teams comprehensively. So if the idea of the University is to give the university players better practice then yes, they must play county teams. If the idea of county teams is to play practice matches without getting hurt etc and still be successful by giving warm up efforts then yes they should play against lower levels. If they want competitive teams then they should play another counties. It depends how they want to plan in context of injuries, warm up efforts, get more batting practice etc.
I think the university teams should be merged to form one or two teams so that they can get best players in every discipline into one team and make a competitive opposition for counties. That would be a balanced solution IMO.
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 7:35 pm
