The future looks bright for Australian cricket

On what evidence are you saying Maddinson's technique is made for T20? If anything I'd say he's more of a long form player. His stats don't suggest he's a big hitter T20 player either, averaging 40 in 1st Class and 24 in T20 (with a pretty mediocre T20 strike rate of 123). Actually, I don't know that Australia has turned out all that many great T20 batsmen either. I think the biggest issue is actually deeper than Sheffield Shield even. I think you'll find that if you look into it, there are less kids playing cricket these days. The pool of talent has shrunk. If anything, T20 may actually help to grow that. In the past, playing cricket wasn't that viable an option to make a living out of. In Australia you had maybe 15 people regularly playing for Australia, and that was the only level where you could make a significant living. Below that you had state cricket where you could get a pretty meagre salary to try and get by on. Meanwhile if you look at Rugby League or AFL you have several hundred players in each code making a significant professional living out of it. So that means that you've got much more chance of making a living playing a football code than playing cricket. Cricket is still behind on that, but T20 now means that players on that level below the national team can actually make serious money playing cricket. So while this may mean that the players who come through may be more likely to make sure they know how to hit sixes, it may well mean that out of all those young, talented people out there who have the skills to be good at any number of sports, cricket becomes a more viable option to choose to pursue thanks to T20. That means T20 may actually lead to an improvement in the batting stocks in the long run. And it's a lot easier to take a T20 technique and adapt it to test cricket than the other way around. A grafting batsman will never make it in T20, but someone with a great eye and the ability to pick up the ball quickly out of the hand and pick his spot to hit it can definitely convert that into a very good test technique.

That also can't happen now that they've gone for the franchise model for the BBL teams. So players in the BBL aren't just playing BBL for the same team as they play Sheffield Shield for.

I believe Steve Waugh was suggesting that nobody would dominate in the way the Windies did in the 80s and then Australia did in the 90's and 00's, not just that Australia wouldn't. The fact that there are so many different formats and so much cricket played, meaning it's very hard for any team to play match after match with basically the same 11 players as Australia did for so much of those dominant periods was his argument that while you'll have number 1 teams and the like, it may be very difficult to see any team dominating for a long period of time like those two sides did.

Of course, my apologies to him.

Derek Fowlds (Bernard Woolley) is still alive and well. You can spend ages on Youtube just going through Yes, Minister stuff. Still so relevant. The bankers clip is so appropriate given what they've done to us.

Brilliant. I hadn't seen that before Chris, they certainly don't make 'em like they used to. Sadly, I think they are all dead now.

Do either of you two remember the classic Yes, Prime Minister discussion of the national papers? Genius. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M

:)

Oh come on Jimmy, "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" wouldn't be caught dead reading a common rag like the Mail even if he or she agreed with its sentiments!!

I still know girls like this...my wife for one. :)

I knew girls like this. They'd get you all interested and then....

JGK, we are still on tenterhooks sir...

Nicky, I think The Mail, has the rights to "disgusted from Tunbridge Wells".

I'm pleased someone could be bothered to look it up, fair play Nicky.

I'm not making that assumption Chris, merely pointing out that we shouldn't be surprised that such views might well be expressed in the Telegraph which is after all the home of "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

The Telegraph has always been known for its cricket coverage. There's no reason at all to assume Berry's politics follow that of the paper in any way.

Pope Paul, Scyld writes for the Telegraph traditionally the home of right-wing reactionary views so you shouldn't be surprised at what you consider his intemperate language. Personally I live in a city in the UK where 30% of the population is of sub-continental and east african asian descent and it doesn't cause me the slightest "dismay". Finally, given Australia's own role in Britain's imperial project - who were your forefathers - your treatment of the continent's indigenous peoples and current attitudes to immigration I'm not sure you're in a position to criticise the Brits who have historically opened their doors to immigrants to a far greater degree than most countries.

According to the back-dated world rankings England have been ranked number one in the world four times since the mid fifties: 1955-59; 1970-73 under Illingworth; 1979-80 under Brearley; and most recently 2011-12 under Strauss. In the thirty year gap between 1980 and 2011 the number one spot was largely occupied by the all-time great Windies team and the exceptional Aussie team that succeeded them.

The problem with that argument is that the average age of the two sides is almost identical as I demonstrated in an earlier thread. Indeed the average age of the England side was actually marginally lower than that of Oz if you excluded the spin bowlers.

And Australia's best three players in the current series- Clarke, Harris and Rogers - will all be closer to 40 than 30!