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Joined July 2019
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Watto has a good enough sense of humour to have a laugh at himself, but the reputation is undeserved, to be honest. He copped a lot of stick during his career because we wanted him to be another Keith Miller, or our version of Kallis, and he didn’t quite live up to that.
Test Mortem: Aussie aura living rent free in Kiwi minds, Marnus officially in a form slump, DRS needs review
The reviews he burned didn’t look good, I agree – having the ball thud into his pad as he plonked his foot down in front of middle a few times cemented his reputation, I think. But he cops a lot of stick that isn’t deserved.
Interesting that Stuart Broad is profligate with reviews as a batter, but he was (at the time of the article) uncommonly good with them as a bowler.
Test Mortem: Aussie aura living rent free in Kiwi minds, Marnus officially in a form slump, DRS needs review
Has to happen sometimes! 😂
Test Mortem: Aussie aura living rent free in Kiwi minds, Marnus officially in a form slump, DRS needs review
Eight in test cricket, according to The Cricket Monthly article, “The art of the review”. He reviewed 12 decisions in his test career, and got four of those reviews correct, for a 33 percent success rate. The average success rate for batters reviewing decisions at the time the article was written (June 2017) was 34 percent. At that time, Misbah-ul-Haq (18, 28% successful), Brendon McCullum (15, 27% successful) and Stuart Broad (13, 31% successful) had all reviewed more decisions with poorer success rates. Steve Smith had also reviewed more (13) but with greater success (38%). Joe Root was exactly even with Watson.
Test Mortem: Aussie aura living rent free in Kiwi minds, Marnus officially in a form slump, DRS needs review
With smart movement patterns and good coordination, there’s enough talent in the forward line to be very dangerous, certainly.
The Roar's AFL top 50 players, 40-31: Is this man the most underrated player in the game?
A trident, you say?
The Roar's AFL top 50 players, 40-31: Is this man the most underrated player in the game?
I think the reasoning used in the analysis is pretty sound, but there needs to be a qualifier of at least thirty or so innings applied (I’ve seen the suggestion somewhere that a batsman’s average starts to converge to his long-term average around this number of innings). Barry Richards is one of the great what-if’s unfortunately, but he just played too few tests to really be compared directly. And Arif similarly played too few, and benefited from most of his being played at home (and all of them being played on the subcontinent).
Legacy on the line: Smith competing with all-time greats, and Voges, as he takes opening gamble in final phase of career
There’s an interesting statistical analysis carried out by Peter Kettle on Cricket Web titled “Making All-Time Test Batting Averages Fully Comparable” that attempts to normalise batting performance across eras. It was done in October 2023, so it’s pretty current, and puts Smith fifth all-time. Interestingly, Bradman moves well down from his stratospheric average, and is placed second on the list. I would note though that the players in first, third and fourth place – Barry Richards, Adam Voges, and Taslim Arif, all played relatively few tests (and very few in the cases of Richards and Arif) so they might reasonably be excluded from the analysis as not having representative samples of data.
Legacy on the line: Smith competing with all-time greats, and Voges, as he takes opening gamble in final phase of career
“And Cameron wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer.”
Legacy on the line: Smith competing with all-time greats, and Voges, as he takes opening gamble in final phase of career
(The disguise is working perfectly…)
Cheers – I can’t claim credit for the idea, but I’ve seen it floated in a couple of places and it seemed eminently sensible to me 🙂
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
Why not Rowdy – as long as it’s not on a weekend 😂
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
I thought Jimmy was their watch!
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
That’s my thinking – and the fact that hardly anyone has heard of it or knows about it seems like a big reason to move it to that date in my mind. I feel like lots of people think we’re still really closely tied to the UK, but in reality we only have a symbolic connection now with the head of state, and it should be more widely known that we’ve come a long way from the times when our Governors General were sent out from the UK, and you appealed to the Privy Council in legal matters. The way that the High Court described it is nice and succinct:
The act “gave voice to the completion of Australia’s evolutionary independence … it was a formal declaration that the Commonwealth of Australia and the Australian states were completely constitutionally independent of the United Kingdom.”
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
Most welcome – it’s something that I hadn’t really thought about too much before I read the Cricinfo article, but when you look at the number of indigenous players in Aussie rules and league, and contrast that with their almost complete absence in cricket, it becomes apparent that something must be different about how the game is perceived in the indigenous community and how the game treats indigenous players, and those two pieces (the article and the report) illustrated those reasons pretty well.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
Cummins was asked to give his opinion by a journalist, and he gave it.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
In terms of elite Indigenous cricketers (those that have represented Australia), there are only a few who have played at test level – Faith Thomas, Jason Gillespie, Ash Gardner and Scott Boland – a few more who have represented Australia in limited-overs cricket (Dan Christian, D’Arcy Short), and a few more again at state level (Jake Weatherald, Brendan Doggett, Josh Lalor off the top of my head). Much of the reason that so few indigenous players have made it to the elite level is that the game has historically been very unwelcoming to indigenous players. If you’re interested in the subject, it’s worth reading the study undertaken by Cricket Australia and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies into this – it’s titled “For the love of the game : indigenous cricket in Australia”. There’s also a short article on Cricinfo that goes into the same subject, titled “The Indigenous hole at Australian cricket’s heart” which is a quicker read.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
Changing the date doesn’t change what has happened, true. But it mean’s we’re not celebrating on a day when the Union Jack was first raised on this soil, which is a pretty big symbolic act, and a divisive one. There are undoubtedly less contentious days on which to celebrate the country as a whole – the one I have seen suggested is March 3rd, and while it doesn’t have the irreverence of Mate, it’s the date when Australia officially became independent from the UK.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
“He turned me into a bunny! I got better…” – Joe Root
No Joe, you didn’t.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
Fair enough – there must be something vaguely important that happened in the middle of the year we can engineer into a holiday then! 😂
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
“Exactly who are the elite indigenous players they are talking about? I know of Boland and Gardner, anyone else? And Boland isn’t in the current team.”
That sounds like the kind of attitude that ensures young indigenous players get discouraged from following their cricketing dreams. It has long been seen as a white sport, unlike the football codes, and this kind of attitude is just another example of the ways that indigenous players are pushed away from the game. Why not be inclusive, and access the latent sporting talent in that part of our community?
As for the date, why not March 3, the day Australia officially became fully independent of the UK? It makes far more sense.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
How about March 3, the day that Australia officially became an independent nation? It’s still basically in summer, it is at minimum three weeks before Easter, and it’s far enough into the year that it’s a nice time to have a bit of a break.
'Choose a better date': Cummins wants Australia Day moved as CA chief sledged for 'bizarre' trainwreck interview
I was at the match, so wasn’t listening to the commentary, but you’d think they would have Lawrie or Ric on the stats telling them who had achieved similar feats (though I’m not sure if Colliver is still doing the stats now that the broadcast is on Seven).
It was certainly an impressive feat by Joseph, made even more impressive by the fact that he was really the guy who made a game of it, both with the ball and the bat (with those last-wicket partnerships), and to get Smith with his first ball in test cricket was pretty special too. But if the commentators were saying it was unparalleled, that shows a bit of ignorance.
Plenty of Test cricket's records look safe, but which ones can still be broken?
There was a little slideshow/story on Cricinfo in the last couple of days that listed players who took 5+ wickets and made 50+ runs in their debut match since 1980, and it was a short list, but it’s not a vanishingly rare occurrence (those players were Peter Taylor, Tony Dodemaide, Dominic Cork, Tim Southee, Will Jacks and Joseph).
Plenty of Test cricket's records look safe, but which ones can still be broken?
Whatever led to those four coming out of a small place at around the same time is pretty remarkable, no doubt! I’m sure that the talent is all there at the grassroots level, it’s the pathways that bring those players into the international game and consistently develop them to international standard that are breaking down now unfortunately. Which isn’t that much of a surprise in some ways – talent was enough to get you to the top in the eighties, but the level of resources that the top teams put into their players now mean that the smaller, poorer nations are left behind, because they just can’t compete financially. There will probably need to be some kind of financial equalisation system put in place (something similar to the AFL system that props up the smaller, poorer clubs), with oversight from the ICC to ensure spending is above-board, in order to sustain test cricket in the longer term outside the big three.
COMMENT: What's the point in playing the Windies? Only the future of Test cricket itself
😂
The Roar's AFL top 50 players, 40-31: Is this man the most underrated player in the game?