We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby braveneutral » Tue Dec 20, 2016 3:22 pm

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Dunno. I suspect posters think I'm a bit negative anyway! I have posted a lot of threads in praise of things though...

I think that you probably think of yourself as negative whereas most would probably see you as balanced and fair and with as many positive moments as negative.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Dec 22, 2016 9:33 pm

7. India v England at the Sarder Patel Stadium, Ahmedabad. November, 2012.

India won by 9 wickets.

England rarely seem to travel optimistically. They pack their comforts and standbys like a gap year traveller's mum might tuck away a jar of marmite and some paracetamol. Like Jack Russell, who took tea on a tour of India. And for their 2012 visit to India, they stowed their part time spinner (Samit Patel), their trusted pace heavy attack, fitness optional, and a few spares that might just come in (Anderson, Broad and Bresnan, and Finn, Onions and Meaker...).

In the arc of England's fortunes under Andy Flower, the series win over India is the outlier that is difficult to explain. After the peak of beating India at home in 2011 and being presented with an ornamental mace, a journalist wondered if they were this period's West Indies under Richards, or Australia under Waugh (or Bradman). Upon which they lost so unambiguously and so epically to Pakistan, it might be mistaken for a film treatment under consideration by Michael Bay. Then England were wrecked on and off the pitch by South Africa.

They were listless in beating the West Indies and Australia at home and drawing with New Zealand away, where they were second best. And then came the big ending, the tremor that finally caused the tired, perished construction to fragment into dust; Mitched 5-0 in Australia. Not just beaten but terminated. Why did the win in India happen? Was it a weakness in the home side that can't be seen for obsessing on the decline and fall of the Flower regime? Was it just the one in a hundred which must happen sometimes? Was there a brief, barely discernible flicker on the graph brought about by Strauss stepping down as skipper?

I don't know. And England could hardly have made a worse, more typical start to the series in Ahmedabad. Ill prepared, disorientated and ingenuous, they were immediately mugged by Virender Sehwag's run a ball hundred on the first morning of the first Test, then worked over more slowly by Cheteshwar Pujara's nine hour 206*. A year earlier in Dubai, England had started with their three seamers and left Graeme Swann to bowl all their spin. Monty Panesar was then recalled and took fourteen wickets in two games. It went against what England knew, and so a year later it was ignored.

In Ahmedabad, Swann bowled over 50 overs on a surface which not only didn't help the England seamers, two of whom were manifestly injured, but they had no insight into how they might take wickets on it. How to make an advantage of adversity. It was the kind of marathon bowling feat from Swann which not only put him under needless pressure, but may even have hastened the end of his career. In response, the Indian slow left armer, Pragyan Ojha, took five wickets and England were bowled out for 191 and were faced with batting for fourteen hours to save the game.

Maybe the hope that was germinated by Alastair Cook's second innings 176, made in ten hours and a clear break from the debacle in UAE, showed the leadership that allowed England a way back into the series. But the drubbing at Ahmedabad was a landmark blunder of the Flower era. And a warning that whenever you hear that changing the plan won't improve the outcome because the opposition are just too good (in the conditions), remember Mumbai and Kolkata and stay your despair.

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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Thu Dec 22, 2016 9:41 pm

Sorry about the positive note at the end there.

Next time...

West Indies beat England in the eighties again. But with a twist.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Fri Dec 23, 2016 10:08 am

6. England v West Indies at Headingley, Leeds. July, 1984.

West Indies won by eight wickets.

England didn't beat West Indies even once in the eighties. Between the end of World Series Cricket in 1980 and Graham Gooch's victory in Kingston in 1990, England drew seven and lost 17. A trio of iron man bats were apparent for England in this decade: Robin Smith, Graham Gooch and Allan Lamb, with the latter's six tons, the most against the West Indies for any team. The bowling met with mostly nonchalance and brutality, with Graham Dilley and Philip Defreitas doing better than most. It was tough for everyone. After New Zealand bested Clive Lloyd's men in 1980 (winning in Dunedin by one wicket!) in a tour infamous for its umpiring, no one won a series against them, (and few Tests) until Steve Waugh's Australians in 1995.

England lost and expected to. A fog of monotonous pessimism settled over these contests and details are mostly indistinct. We remember Holding's over to Boycott, which concluded with the Yorkshireman losing his stumps. Gatting's shattered nose. Viv Richard's ton off 56 balls in Antigua (a game which England lost by an innings and 240 runs). These are details that condense the futility of competing against the West Indies and the danger there might be in trying. England were beaten 5-0 twice in the consecutive series of 1984 and 1985-6, and including the Summer of the Four Captains, they lost 14 out of 15.

When the West Indies toured in 1984, England were a properly poor team and had spent the winter losing to both New Zealand and Pakistan. In the defeat in the first Test at Edgbaston, debutant Tim Lloyd was hit on the head by a fast bouncer from Malcolm Marshall and spent five days in hospital. In the second Test at Lord's, England actually set a target of 300, which was chased for the loss of one wicket (a run out of Desmond Haynes) at well over five runs per over, with Gordon Greenidge making 214*. For the hosts, that was the high point of the series.

Allan Lamb scored three hundreds that summer, a courageous contribution, and he made a dead ton in the third Test in Leeds in extending 87-4 to 270 all out. West Indies turned that into a 32 run lead, thanks to that most discouraging occurrence, tail end runs, with Michael Holding hitting five sixes in his 59.

On the first day of the game, Malcolm Marshall suffered a double fracture of his left thumb when fielding and was thought to be out of the Test. Unexpectedly he came in to bat one handed to accompany Larry Gomes to a hundred (also hitting a four). If England thought they had gained respite from Marshall in their second innings, an upsettingly hostile bowler at this time, they must have been horrified to see him marking out his run and ready to take the new ball. His left arm was plastered and in a sling. Marshall bowled 26 overs and took his best Test figures to that point, 7-53. He beat England one handed, like a competitive dad trying to even up the contest with a six year old. At a slower pace, his bilateral swing was deadly.

David Gower became the first captain to lose the opening three Tests of a home summer since Johnny Douglas to Warwick Armstrong's Australians in 1921. Marshall was missing for Old Trafford but returned to complete the rout at the Oval. Maybe, over the years, there were many players who could have beaten England one handed. We never found out. In the 5-0 of 1984, the first ever whitewash in this country, England rather regrettably discovered one who could for certain.


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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Fri Dec 23, 2016 10:12 am

Next time. 1999, but England fail to party. And a mathematician actually proves that England are the worst.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Fri Dec 23, 2016 11:06 pm

5. England v New Zealand, The Oval, London. August, 1999.

New Zealand won by 83 runs.

Having been ****ed up by the selectors when they were captains, by 1999 Mike Gatting and Graham Gooch were England management (with David Graveney and David Lloyd) themselves and they returned the favour. Captain hands on misery to captain. They picked eighteen players including a sprinkle of new caps, none of which endured long England careers (Habib, Giddens, Maddy and Read). The gloves were again taken off Alec Stewart, in Birmingham, and yet again returned to him, at the Oval. The allegedly unpopular Phil Tufnell and Andy Caddick were recalled, and were superb all series.

Triumphant against South Africa just a year earlier, an Ashes defeat and another bad World Cup saw the back of Alec Stewart, who at times had been keeping and opening as well as tossing the coin. England had a new skipper in Nasser Hussain. He got his greatest hits in early, making a disastrous mistake at the toss at Lord's, running out a batting partner and breaking his own finger. Graham Thorpe took over as captain at Lord's, but (after the returning Mike Atherton declined) Mark Butcher was skipper at Old Trafford. At the Oval, not only was Butcher not captain. he was out the side, replaced as opener by debutant Darren Maddy.

All summer it was hard to score runs. The pitches were difficult and New Zealand only made three hundreds and seven half centuries in the four Tests. In contrast, England made no tons at all, and six fifties. In Birmingham, 21 wickets fell in one day.The England player to get nearest to three figures was Alex Tudor, who scored 99* in chasing down a tricky 211 at Edgbaston; but the strongest reaction to this win was that Graham Thorpe should have let him get his first hundred. England lost at Lord's and were saved by the weather in Manchester. Chris Cairns had developed a slower ball (learned from Franklyn Stephenson) which comically disconcerted England all summer, most memorably Chris Read at Lord's who was yorked trying to duck a bouncer.

Hussain returned as skipper for the decisive fourth Test. Maddy and Giddens were in. Ronnie Irani was back. Having erred in batting at Edgbaston, Hussain erred by bowling at the Oval on a pitch that got progressively harder to bat on. Whenever England threatened to get on top in the field, they lost control. In the first innings, Dan Vettori (51) batting at ten helped the tail support Stephen Fleming's five and a half hour 66* turning 87-6 into 236; allowing a first innings lead of 153. In the second innings, 79-7 became 162 thanks to Chris Cairns' 80 batting at eight.

England were never going to get the 246 runs to win, but at 123-2 and Thorpe (44) and Atherton (64) together, there was the mirage of hope. There is nothing like a batting collapse at the end to emphasis an unequal struggle ending in defeat. England's last eight fell for 39, and 6-19, with Dion Nash magnificent, as he and Cairns had been all series with the ball. This was the England team of the three number elevens, Tufnell, Giddens and Mullally. The Kiwis had Vettori at ten.

In 1996, Wisden had developed a Test league table, the Wisden World Championship. With this loss at the Oval, for the first time England were bottom of the pile. At last, there was proof. Lloyd, Gooch and Gatting were sacked. The sponsors were pulling out. As Nasser Hussain stood on the balcony accepting the boos of the last day crowd; it seemed like things couldn't get any worse. And if they did, cricket was over as a major spectator sport in this country. Few had the resilience for much more of this. This absolute zero was to be the pitiful inheritance of new coach, Duncan Fletcher.


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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Fri Dec 23, 2016 11:09 pm

Next up. Same decade, different debacle, this time in Asia.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby hopeforthebest » Sat Dec 24, 2016 3:43 am

braveneutral wrote:
Arthur Crabtree wrote:Dunno. I suspect posters think I'm a bit negative anyway! I have posted a lot of threads in praise of things though...

I think that you probably think of yourself as negative whereas most would probably see you as balanced and fair and with as many positive moments as negative.


Would you pass the Bayliss Positivity test? If the answers yes, better lie down in a darkened room until it passes.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Arthur Crabtree » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:19 am

Wouldn't pass the Strauss positivity test. Maybe need to get invited into the dressing room to get me on side.
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby braveneutral » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:01 pm

We would all fail the tests!
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20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
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I suppose.

At times.

Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Durhamfootman » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:08 pm

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Wouldn't pass the Strauss positivity test.

that's because you are a cnut!

:halo:
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Durhamfootman » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:09 pm

so am I
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby braveneutral » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:12 pm

King Canute!
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20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
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I suppose.

At times.

Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby Durhamfootman » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:26 pm

i think they called him king canute at school to stop small boys giggling at the back of the class. canute is spelt cnut really, I think. Pity it didn't work for fcuk who giggled childishly all the way to the bank
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Re: We'll Keep the White Flag Flying.

Postby braveneutral » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:29 pm

You are right of course!
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20/04/17 - Better than Bolt.
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I suppose.

At times.

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