Comments on: England’s batsmen lucky to be playing in this era

By: Dean Measor

Dean Measor — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:32:45 +0000

The cricket in Australia was dead boring, West Indies and Pakistan (especially) really, really struggled. I hope Australia are not that good, you can only beat who you play against though.
With England, you just never know what team is going to turn up and play?
I agree, for years not enough England batsman have gone on to make enough 100′s and big hundreds at that.
I hope England can put on a good show here in Australia later this year.
Come on England.
DEAN

By: Paul A

Paul A — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:24:09 +0000

England were great at Durban, but constantly through the series the batting let us down. It seems common place for England’s players to get to 50 and decide to “switch gears”, not sure why they do it! You don’t see guys like Kallis, Ponting, Tendulkar and other great players do that. They just play normally right the way through and get hundreds, not 50′s and decide to have a go at the bowling and get out. The bowling was quite good most of the time for me, the batting is the worry. I’m not sure South Africa under-performed as much as some people think, I think the teams are quite evenly matched, there’s no doubt that both teams were inconsistent however, which has been the case for England in the last 12 months (all 3 losses in the last 12 months have been by an innings). One more thing I’ll add is the question; what in gods name happened to 5 match test series?? The ICC and the boards need to seriously use some common sense on these matters, obviously the ashes should always be 5 test matches regardless, but series between the teams at the top such as Australia, South Africa, India & England should be longer and the series involving the lower ranked teams and the top sides vs the bottom sides should be the shorter series.

By: Ross Done

Ross Done — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:33:36 +0000

My view on the series is just that feeling you got of the level of performance from the teams. It felt like England were playing out of their skins. And conversely, it felt like South Africa were under-performing, as they did throughout 2009. Kallis, Smith continued to perform regularly, but Ntini and Harris were woeful in their bowling, Duminy and Prince poor in their batting, and Steyn was off-key for half the series, coming back from injury. SA only starting peaking towards the end of the Newlands test, and you get the feeling that if they had been at that level from the beginning, the overall scoreline would have been vastly in their favour.

By: NICK NEWSUM

NICK NEWSUM — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:04:56 +0000

AS EVER COMMON SENSE FROM THE MASTER