The Silver Fern

@Chris-B said in T20 World Cup:

@LABCAT Yeah - I was a bit surprised to see Milne there, but seems he's still plying his trade around the T20 leagues with success.

https://www.thepost.co.nz/sport/360767431/black-caps-zimbabwe-tri-series-adam-milne-winds-back-clock-15th-year-international-cricket

An article I read about the team naming seemed to be suggesting Zac Foulkes as the next seam cab off the rank and, if that was the case, I can see why they'd go with Milne. A bit surprising he's there ahead of Jamieson - but, I guess both have IPL contracts, which is indicative they're rated to bowl in Indian conditions.

Jamieson has been named as the travelling reserve, so maybe it was meaning Foulkes as next up after that?

Bit of a shame we couldn't have waited until after the end of the Indian tour to make these calls, but I assume there are ICC deadlines for this stuff.

For some reason, Neesham is the guy I feel the worst for after the god awful super over nonsense. I'd love to see him find a streak of form and blast us to an improbable title.

Bethell looks pretty classy. Wonder how the series turns out if he'd been playing over Ollie Pope. Hell, even just the Adelaide test could have been a big difference.

The difference between his first and second innings performances are pretty stark. Probably just an early career quirk, but wonder if there's something psychological there.

John Harbaugh is one of the best coaches in the league and most of the teams in the league should be thinking about hiring him.

The scheduling formula is:
Rest of division x2
One other division in your conference on a rotating basis (eg AFC East goes North, West, South)
One division in the other conference, on a rotating basis
The teams with the same finishing position as you in the remaining 2 divisions in your conference. (Eg if you finish 3rd in AFC East and have AFC South as your rotational division, you'll get the 3rd place teams in AFC North and West).
The same place finisher from one division in the NFC on a rotational basis. (This is the recently added 17th game)

So you're guaranteed to have played every other team in the league after 4 years. But for teams in your own conference you'll see them at least every 3 and often more regularly.

There's also a small scheduling advantage to teams with worse records the previous season, but that doesn't always work out because the NFL is so dynamic, with teams that were rubbish one year being good the next.

Eagles v Niners and Bears v Packers should both be great games. Rams should stomp the Panthers but it's a playoff so will probably be closer than it should.

AFC could be all road winners. Bills and Texans will win pretty comfortably. Chargers should too, but they are terrible come playoff time so I think they'll be up and looking dominant through 3 quarters and then find some insane way to lose in the 4th.

I think the 6 best teams in the league are in the NFC this year (Seahawks, Rams, Niners, Eagles, Bears, Packers). So I think an AFC team will win as whatever team they face will be exhausted. Bills to finally win one.

Yeah I think it's a point in Kane's favour when your compare him to Smith, Root and Kohli that he has almost always batted at 3. Much tougher spot to bat than 4. Kohli and Smith always had a world class 3 in front of them that kind of justified it, but no such excuses for Root.

I think England would be better with Root at 3 and Brook at 4, but I don't think it's totally crazy to have your best batters at 4 and 5. Steve Waugh spent most of his career at 5.

You can kind of see what the groundsman was going for when you look at how we've been preparing our pitches lately (the basin and hagley especially), where the pitch is almost as green as the outfield at the toss and often by tea a lot of the life is gone. I can see why they went for that option. Will be very interesting to see what way they go next year.

@sparky said in Ashes 2025/6:

So who wins the moral Ashes?

Would be a massive upset for England to lose. They've held them for so long. Last time the Australians managed a Moral Ashes Victory was probably 2005 when Ricky Posting managed to salvaged an unlikely win when Gary Pratt ran him out.

Would love a tie.

@booboo said in Ashes 2025/6:

@sparky said in Ashes 2025/6:

@booboo said in Ashes 2025/6:

4 in the hutch

Atkinson has a buggered hamstring so he will require a runner.

Didn't think runners were allowed anymore?

@booboo said in Ashes 2025/6:

@sparky said in Ashes 2025/6:

@booboo said in Ashes 2025/6:

4 in the hutch

Atkinson has a buggered hamstring so he will require a runner.

Didn't think runners were allowed anymore?

Yeah same.

One thing here is because Carse came in at 3 England bat slightly deeper.

@Godder said in Ashes 2025/6:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ashes-2025-26-short-tests-are-bad-for-business-ca-ceo-hints-at-intervening-on-pitches-1517220

Wonder if the SCG will be a 4 day pitch...

Everyone thought that Bazball was thinking short term, but he's been playing 3d chess all along. Lose in 2 days, bankrupt CA, tank their development programs and in 2060 the English will win 10 on the trot!

My normal formula for when a chase is beyond doubt is when runs remaining/(wickets in hand - 2) is below ten. Right now that's 35/(6-2) or a little under 9. But there's no way this is settled - these are going to as tense as you get.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/espncricinfo-xi-unusual-hat-tricks-540237

The same batsman out twice in a hatrick has apparently happened once in first class cricket.

I'd love a stat on how well a player performed based on the score when they came into bat. It feels like Watling produced his best innings when we were 120/4, but struggled when it was 300/4 because his game wasn't really to go out and play aggressively, but he was selfless enough that he'd have a go and often get out cheaply. I dunno how accurate that is or if it's swayed by a couple of big innings when we were under the pump.

Incredible that there are only two guys with 10+ centuries in that list. Shown how hard it is to bat for a long time when you're also keeping wicket.

Watling didn't quite get there (7 as keeper) but he is one of only 9 keepers to also score a double century.

Special mention to Brendon Kuruppu who scored a double opening the batting for Sri Lanka, carrying his bat, then keeping wicket for the remainder of the match in a high scoring draw (he never kept wicket in a test again - who could blame him?).

I find this all really strange - as far as I can tell there's no misconduct here. It all just feels like pearl clutching (would anyone care if they were winning?)

I wish we had more in depth analysis of the actual individual performances (although in fairness, I'm not closely following this specific tour, so maybe there is elsewhere and it just doesn't generate clicks so I don't see it... Which is probably also part of the problem, but I'm inferring the quality of coverage from the cricket I follow more closely).

It seems wrong that the highest quality analysis now are the commentators doing it live. Obviously they're good thinkers and I expect them to provide good analysis as the game goes on (another bugbear of mine with some comms), but after the match when you've had time to go through everything, I'd expect it to be even more in depth rather than just 'player X averaged 34.43 a middling tour' followed by a description of the most notable innings, which is often about the most in depth you see these days.

Wagner is obsessed with the heavy roller. Basically every commentary stint he'd mention the heavy roller at least once.

I agree with him on the pitch though - was a really fun pitch with a bit for everyone.

I wonder if that was Ajaz Patel's last hurrah? 37, no sub continent tours this year. He's played in England before so maybe he gets a call up for that, and he's up to 91 test wickets (at a shade under 30 - very impressive!)

Vettori will always have the tag for our best spinner, but a lot of his value was that you could rely on him to be effective in our conditions plus the additional skills he brought. As an out and out attacking spinner he was pretty limited (a big part of that was the early back injury that forced him to remodel his action).

If we were playing on a real spinning wicket, I think Patel is probably close to our all time XI.