My boys will be batting first
The first Cricket sheep thread
- Thread starter KM
- Start date
My boys will be batting first
We are going to put em in. Knock em out and be batting by the end of day 1. Looks like there's plenty of help for my quicks and I plan on Donald and Hall hurting his boys.
12th Man is Nicky Boje.
Learnt my lesson, next time I'll say "idiot post".
@The Man Himself Mate, can I change my toss so I bat first?
Sorry I got work from 7 am to 21:30 GMT
1 VS
2 GG
3 Trott
4 KP
5 Yousuf
6 Botham
7 Prior
8 Ashwin
9 Johnson
10 Philander
11 Rhino
2 GG
3 Trott
4 KP
5 Yousuf
6 Botham
7 Prior
8 Ashwin
9 Johnson
10 Philander
11 Rhino
I picked him when I first had the chance, got blocked. Then picked him again for the 9-10 round that was scrapped, and finally this time in the final round, and I am absolutely chuffed to draft one of THE greatest players to ever grace the game, Sir John Berry "Jack" Hobbs.
Arguably the greatest opener to play the game, with Sir Len Hutton being a close second, and history's most prolific batsman, Sir Jack Hobbs was one of game's most gifted players. Technically flawless, and a habit of looking invincible with the bat no matter how dirty or ragged the surfaces were, his opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe is cricket's greatest ever. With him in the side, the team is more or less guaranteed to always get a perfect platform for the rest of the team. A man who had no weaknesses, and in my opinion in terms of ability he was as talented as Bradman, self taught as well like The Don, except he seldom played for the stats. Point being, if you think of batsmen who can claim of challenging Bradman with the bat, he would probably be best candidate, such was his class. So the final team now looks like:
01. Sir Jack Hobbs
02. Barry Richards
03. George Headley*
04. Stan McCabe
05. Ted Dexter
06. Mike Procter [3]
07. Don Tallon†
08. Sir Alec Bedser [1]
09. Abdul Qadir [4]
10. Andy Roberts [2]
11. Devon Malcolm [5]
12. Basit Ali
The Master
61 matches. 5410 runs. Average 56.94.
61 matches. 5410 runs. Average 56.94.
Arguably the greatest opener to play the game, with Sir Len Hutton being a close second, and history's most prolific batsman, Sir Jack Hobbs was one of game's most gifted players. Technically flawless, and a habit of looking invincible with the bat no matter how dirty or ragged the surfaces were, his opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe is cricket's greatest ever. With him in the side, the team is more or less guaranteed to always get a perfect platform for the rest of the team. A man who had no weaknesses, and in my opinion in terms of ability he was as talented as Bradman, self taught as well like The Don, except he seldom played for the stats. Point being, if you think of batsmen who can claim of challenging Bradman with the bat, he would probably be best candidate, such was his class. So the final team now looks like:
01. Sir Jack Hobbs
02. Barry Richards
03. George Headley*
04. Stan McCabe
05. Ted Dexter
06. Mike Procter [3]
07. Don Tallon†
08. Sir Alec Bedser [1]
09. Abdul Qadir [4]
10. Andy Roberts [2]
11. Devon Malcolm [5]
12. Basit Ali
It's fine by me
Your a star!
@Aldo who is taking your 20 wickets
Pretty handy to have a Pakistani leading spinner, I guess.Cheers
Pollock was very good in Pakistan and with him and Alderman I have swing covered. Srinath in his limited games didn't do so well but maybe I can get away with him being an Indian pacer and doing awesome at home if conditions aren't too dissimilar.
Benaud also did well, especially at the ground I'm playing on.
I should probably talk more about Roberts, the original leader of the Windies pace revolution, and at a point the most feared bowler in the world, at par with Lillee. Botham here repeating the same:
I've already talked about Alec Bedser, perfectly compliments Roberts and even Bradman couldn't play him.
Qadir is one of the greatest leg spinners ever and I am on a home pitch for him, he'll be a game changer here.
Procter's late swing at full pelt will be a major threat as well.
This man, by his own admission, went out to hurt people, for him letting a batsman know he could physically hurt him with the ball was a major part of the game and he used it to full effect, and had world class ability along with a great cricketing brain, using variations and generating variable bounce from the same delivery, and he did it on all conditions. Absolute nightmare to face.
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Good thing my batsmen are proven in all conditions against the very best bowlers when arguably test cricket was at it's peak level of quality
@Aldo so you have a bowler Bradman couldn't play ( I don't think they ever crossed paths in tests, or maybe right at the end of Bradmans' career?), and a batsman who is the best candidate to challenge him. I hate hyperbole.
Good luck with that Wessels love batting first.
We are going to pile up huge score and hit back with our strike bowlers.
This is obviously a little different from the footie drafts, How are we meant to do the write-up? what are we meant to describe?
Hit what? The solid middle order of Lara/Crowe/Lloyd/Ames? Not to mention Hunte at the top? Edrich isn't a bunny either... I'll take my chances. Lloyd probably schooled your boys in training. They will be taking orders from him, not your captain.
On the other hand, I look forward to digging into Ganga and Smith. If your top order doesn't hold, this is going to be bloody
Need a nice medium between highlighting a player without hyperbole or ending up playing Top Trumps.
It's overkill describing someone as talented as Bradman when you've never seen either play.
Yeah thought that was overkill
We are starting Friday now so you have time.
Ya if PS18 is OK.
Maybe, but it wasn't really my words to describe him like that, like I said yesterday as well, It is the people who saw them who make these comparisons, and claims.
Hyperbole aside, the point is that once you go past the average that makes him look twice as good as anyone else who held a bat, which quite honestly anyone who has a sense of cricket history would tell you is just not true, he maybe the greatest ever but certainly not by a margin of twice and obviously if you think about it, there would be others in the sport who would at least come close to him talent wise even if they didn't get the same stats, we can agree with that much? It's not just Hobbs, it would be a perfectly legit statement if someone said Garry Sobers was as talented as Bradman, for example. Anyone who witnessed these players could not find a single fault in their game, you can add Tendulkar to that list, again, technically and in terms of natural talent, the man was flawless.
Bradman's legacy revolves around the 99.96 stat and it's great but even he had more important qualities like the fact that he is both statistically and technically the most difficult batsman to get out in the history of the game, and that he dominated the opposition in terms of consistently piling on the runs like no other, those are both absolutely correct things to say but is it not possible that there are others, 'capable' of doing the same given the level of ability they had? It's completely obvious, Bradman is not peerless when it comes to ability, and again those are not my words.
And we are talking about Jack Hobbs here, who also has a few legendary stats to his name, like the fact that he is THE most prolific batsman in the history of the sport, he has 199! FC centuries - that is one massively incredible stat, 199 centuries - Sachin, who played for two decades has 81, for example.
100 years after the start of the game, Sir Neville Cardus, one of the greatest students of the game, included Hobbs, and Bradman, in his list of six giants of the past century of cricket. Hobbs is one of three people in the history of the sport to be twice honoured with the Wisden Cricketer of the year award.
And these men are not merely made by statistics, their legacy goes far beyond. To take another example of another English opening legend, Sir Len Hutton is also one of the greatest players who held a bat, and he a statistical giant himself, but what makes everyone rates him high is the fact that he turned up in a generation where world cricket was littered with world class bowling attacks and where everyone else failed, he stood up. The man scored a fecking triple century in his 6th test and it took Sir Garry to break that score a few years later. Similarly, Hobbs legacy goes even beyond these incredible stats and honours, his technique was so immensely polished that it allowed him to dominate bowlers fearlessly even on surfaces that were absolutely hopeless, and time and again, he did it. What he shares the most with Bradman (and the same goes for the likes of Sobers) is that they looked unbeatable no matter what you had or did, that sheer aura, where a batsman time and again controls the game completely, is what sets these people apart.
I mean no disrespect to The Don, he is the greatest of the game, I have never once suggested otherwise, but what IS actually a hyperbole is people usually assuming that no one past or present has ever been close to him talent or ability wise - which obviously in a century and a half old sport just cannot be true, and it isn't. And like I've said it isn't just Hobbs who I think was his peer, I'd happily argue the same for Sir Garry. Maybe it is an unheard opinion to some here, but most former writers, journalists, players and anyone who saw them would and do find them incredibly hard to separate, they've all done enough to be counted in the same breath, in my honest opinion. Even if you cannot agree to it, which is fair enough, the least it does is highlight how legendary these blokes actually were to even warrant a long lasting comparison with the greatest.
Herbert Sutcliffe said:
Wilfred Rhodes said:
Jack Fingleton said:
Wisden said:
John Arlott said:
Benny Green said:
EW Swanton said:
Apart from his work with the bat, he was also responsible in influencing crucial changes, like this:
As for the Bedser bit, again, not my words buddy. The Don himself has given his credit for that, I've already posted a clip where he got him three times in a row. Obviously when I wrote that The Don couldn't play him, it didn't mean he dominated Bradman like McGrath dominated Atherton, but he was one of the names who troubled Don more than others, and as far as building a valid argument in a hypothetical match up goes, that is something I wouldn't forget to bring up. He got The Don out 6 times in total, only one other bowler got The Don's wicket more times, Verity (8).
Bedser once bowled Bradman for a duck that led to this statement:
"the ball with which Alec Bedser bowled me in the Adelaide Test Match was, I think, the finest ever to take my wicket. It must have come three-quarters of the way straight on my off-stump, then suddenly dipped in to pitch on the leg stump, only to turn off the pitch and hit the middle and off stumps." - Don Bradman.
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I should be online, give me a shout a bit in advance and let the participants know that they need to include me in the write up PMs.
Everyone, copy Aldo when you PM your write up to me. If KM isn't around, Aldo will start match up threads as he can add polls.
Uhm, just to make sure it is still working I checked a thread I recently created, and I don't seem to be getting the Add Poll option in the Thread Tools menu anymore, wasn't long back when I created polls for another draft so a bit weird that it's gone. Maybe someone did indeed spot it.
So it is back to KM now.
Uhm, just to make sure it is still working I checked a thread I recently created, and I don't seem to be getting the Add Poll option in the Thread Tools menu anymore, wasn't long back when I created polls for another draft so a bit weird that it's gone. Maybe someone did indeed spot it.
So it is back to KM now.
It was a bug where you could add poll after you had created a thread. Niall fixed it some weeks ago.
Uhm, just to make sure it is still working I checked a thread I recently created, and I don't seem to be getting the Add Poll option in the Thread Tools menu anymore, wasn't long back when I created polls for another draft so a bit weird that it's gone. Maybe someone did indeed spot it.
So it is back to KM now.
I had this doubt because in recent past I had created a thread in football forum, wanted to edit something and saw poll option available. It is not anymore.KM hasn't logged in since Monday so we will have to take help from some modmin who is online at that time.
Yep, that was the one. Last I created a poll was November 2nd, didn't realise it was fixed in the meantime.
@Rado_N usually helps out during the football drafts.
I will vote against anyone who bullshits even if they have a better team.
I hope we get more people voting outside those who are playing/assisting. There are still around 10-15 posters at least who follow Cricket and have good knowledge.
Just tag me when you create new threads and let me know what you want the poll to be.
I think it will be hard. I saw the Third draft for the finals between Stobz and EAP and there were only like 20 odd votes in 24 hours, far too few for a football related draft on a football forum. So I can't imagine Cricket even getting 10 really. We'll really have to spread the word or get one of the modmins to sticky it in the home page so that everyone comes across it.
Thanks man, they should be identical to what we ask for in football drafts.
Football drafts can get a bigger audience depending on the players involved, traffic on the forum, timing etc. For example if it is during a united match day no one will give a shit about a draft match. Have it on a day with little in real football to talk about and we've hit over 50 votes quite a few times.
But yes cricket drafts previously have been pretty low for voting. 15-20 is a good target to aim at. Of course now you can tag regulars and get in some crowd.
But even 50 is far too less imo. The traffic on the site most of the time is around 1000 (lowest I've seen is like 600 or so, but yeah I may be including bots and guests as well I suppose), so getting just 50 of them to vote is just 5% of the demographic. And this is for Football!
If we can convince the modmins to post the polls on the home page (like how currently it is posting the van Gaal vs Pep vs Mou polls), that would drive up the votes I'd say or even a notification of some kind, just to pique interest. I know the 16 + AM's + plus a few others here will vote undoubtedly, but it would be nice if we can come close to 50.