Sport Today

Had Lara been left out of this team though, WI would now be 180 all
out at best.

Hinds and Chanderpaul played very well indeed for their 30s, but this
is a pitch on which the bounce is very unpredictable already. It's not
spitting really viciously, so the batsmen aren't in physical danger,
but it's very difficult to pick up what shot to play from the apparent
length.

I don't think there's another batsman in the world who could have got
the runs Lara did today: you'd back a Kallis or a Dravid to have
survived it, but they'd be on 73* and feeling that they'd done pretty
well, not 159*. I don't know what the Australian batsmen would have
done, but we'd already be inundated with posts from Alvey calling for
the removal of Port of Spain from the Test match circuit.

Cheers,

Mike

Australian batsmen who could have done something similar: Ponting,
Hayden (in form), Langer, Gilchrist, maybe Martyn (given his
performance at Melbourne last year). That's why they're great, and
everyone else, bar Lara, is an also-ran.

Aditya

Cheers,

Mike

Dravid very rarely scores when everybody else around him is falling.
Only 3 times in his career has RD scored 50 in a completed inning
when no one else has scored a 50 (1 of this 3 is a 100).

More info found here
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.sport.cricket/msg/c8519d37080...

Among the Indians, Tendulkar is most likely to make batting look easy
on a difficult wicket.

s.

Since you've found that old thread, you should read Shripathi's
evisceration (Marathi translation: gaand phataila) of your BS theory in
that thread, and the multitude of times people have told you how flawed
it is subsequently.

And the BOBD idea is not just to do with past accomplishment. Bar the
167, no-one would have expected VVSL to do it at Kolkata, but he did.
It takes an innings like that to make someone's name. Tendulkar hasn't
done it to win India a match, and Lara has done it several times, which
is the difference between a great player and a gifted player with
flawed temperament.

Aditya

Try to make your biases less obvious, Samir.

Aditya

Try to make your biases less obvious, Samir.

Aditya

Aditya

snip irrelevant

alvey
in brish, thinking about forming a Chardonnay CC.

alveu

Australians tend to think of poor pitches as appalling natural
disasters which should really lead to the match being called off
rather than as natural hazards which any professional player ought to
be capable of dealing with. People like Langer and Hayden with
extensive experience in English domestic cricket are probably somewhat
better able to cope than those like Ponting, Martyn and Gilchrist who
have virtually zero experience on bad wickets, but Bradman played
quite a bit in England and never mastered poor pitches either.

Cheers,

Mike

s.

Poor pitches make the game interesting so long as there is no advantage
to a team on account of the toss.