As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
If we're serious about the test side, I don't think county cricket is the answer. Given the available talent pool isn't enormous, we can't sustain 18 counties playing top level cricket, but the politics of trying to narrow it down to the sort of numbers that the Sheffield Shield has would be horrendous. We hoped that the two-division structure would cause all the best players to move to the top division counties and make games more competitive, but that hasn't happened, and there's still the issue that the counties need to play T20 in mid-summer to bring the money in, so the first class games get squeezed out to the margins. So the suggestion is to hold some sort of regional competition with only a few teams, perhaps 4, funded by the ECB and treated as the way to get into the test side. Players who choose the Hundred or the T20 blast over this competition would be quite entitled to do that, but would be putting themselves out of contention for the test side. End result, if it works, is red ball cricketers getting serious competition without the counties having to give away their main sources of revenue.
I’m feeling the need to post something but I don’t know where to start. These 12 days of Test cricket in Australia have been coming to us; it feels like the ECB has sleepwalked into it. To make it worse, I don’t believe this is a particularly great Aussie side.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
The big thing I'd want to do is to have more focus on developing young players, via clubs. In this case, cricket could learn from football where academies and centres of excellence for training kids are absolutely standard for professional clubs. Cricket is very dependent on the public schools for the sort of intensive coaching that turns a kid with talent into a potential international. That sort of thing is expensive, so use the profits from the Hundred to fund it and the Hundred could potentially be the saving of test cricket rather than the death of it.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
None on red ball only contracts but some who play none or very little white ball cricket. Amar Virdi for example is yet to play a single professional white ball game.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
problem is, county cricket doesn't pay the bills or the salaries .. perhaps, a slight exaggeration but one evening 20/20 game at (say) Canterbury could attract as many spectators as an entire 3/4 day cc season .. I have been 'forecasting' the death of test cricket for a long time, so far I am happy to have been proved wrong, but many more farcical series such as this one will hasten that death. England now produces a plethora of talented one day players, the attraction of playing tests for the majority of these youngsters seems to have lost it's allure
If we're serious about the test side, I don't think county cricket is the answer. Given the available talent pool isn't enormous, we can't sustain 18 counties playing top level cricket, but the politics of trying to narrow it down to the sort of numbers that the Sheffield Shield has would be horrendous. We hoped that the two-division structure would cause all the best players to move to the top division counties and make games more competitive, but that hasn't happened, and there's still the issue that the counties need to play T20 in mid-summer to bring the money in, so the first class games get squeezed out to the margins. So the suggestion is to hold some sort of regional competition with only a few teams, perhaps 4, funded by the ECB and treated as the way to get into the test side. Players who choose the Hundred or the T20 blast over this competition would be quite entitled to do that, but would be putting themselves out of contention for the test side. End result, if it works, is red ball cricketers getting serious competition without the counties having to give away their main sources of revenue.
That's a great idea but it still doesn't get round the fact that Counties do not coach young cricketers to play straight. They actually do the opposite. It also assumes that those youngsters have been brought up to play straight. How many Indian IPL batsmen do not look like they are capable of playing Test cricket? Not many because of their education from an early age. Youngsters learn bad habits.
"What are your scoring areas? How are you going to access those? You have mid on and mid off up, how are you going to push them back? Bowler is now bowling wide yorkers, how are you going to score off those? Show us your reverse sweep. Show us your ramp."
Those are all things that age group county cricketers are asked and told. Counties have no incentive whatsoever to produce Test players because, for them, white ball is the money earner. So, unless, as I've said above, the ECB incentivise Counties to produce Test batsmen then they are not going to work with players on playing in the "V". Equally, the ECB has no infrastructure whatsoever that will enable them to educate kids to do so. And as a result they are wholly reliant on Club, District and County coaches to do so. But those institutions either want to make it fun for young cricketers (which doesn't involve hitting ball after ball of bobble fed tennis balls) or, in the case of the last named, they have an eye on the money.
I was called out on here once for calling this team cowards and bottlers.Well im going to call them bottlers and cowards again.Absolute shambles of a team.Apart from Root and Anderson the others can all eff off for all i care.
When i went bed we were 49-5.I thought id wake up and see us make a fight of this and at least give the Aussies a fight but no the pathetic cowardly bottlers let us down again.The whole red ball structure needs ripping apart and starting again.No more white ball experts playing test cricket PLEASE.Rip up the central contracts and let them play for their counties.Yes i know covid and the weather didnt help but we were so under prepared for this series.
Yet again il call them cowards and bottlers and they thoroughly deserve to be called this.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Counties don’t want to produce red ball cricketers because they hardly play any red ball cricket. And when they do, their best players are away at the ipl. Re format the county championship, have it played throughout the year (like they used to) and work from there. If you take away central contracts then you can kiss producing the next Jimmy Anderson goodbye - do you really think he’d have lasted as long as he has done without a central contract?
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
None on red ball only contracts but some who play none or very little white ball cricket. Amar Virdi for example is yet to play a single professional white ball game.
And Virdi is a bowler. Our issue is finding batsmen who can bat time. And Counties won't invest in those.
If we're serious about the test side, I don't think county cricket is the answer. Given the available talent pool isn't enormous, we can't sustain 18 counties playing top level cricket, but the politics of trying to narrow it down to the sort of numbers that the Sheffield Shield has would be horrendous. We hoped that the two-division structure would cause all the best players to move to the top division counties and make games more competitive, but that hasn't happened, and there's still the issue that the counties need to play T20 in mid-summer to bring the money in, so the first class games get squeezed out to the margins. So the suggestion is to hold some sort of regional competition with only a few teams, perhaps 4, funded by the ECB and treated as the way to get into the test side. Players who choose the Hundred or the T20 blast over this competition would be quite entitled to do that, but would be putting themselves out of contention for the test side. End result, if it works, is red ball cricketers getting serious competition without the counties having to give away their main sources of revenue.
That's a great idea but it still doesn't get round the fact that Counties do not coach young cricketers to play straight. They actually do the opposite. It also assumes that those youngsters have been brought up to play straight. How many Indian IPL batsmen do not look like they are capable of playing Test cricket? Not many because of their education from an early age. Youngsters learn bad habits.
"What are your scoring areas? How are you going to access those? You have mid on and mid off up, how are you going to push them back? Bowler is now bowling wide yorkers, how are you going to score off those? Show us your reverse sweep. Show us your ramp."
Those are all things that age group county cricketers are asked and told. Counties have no incentive whatsoever to produce Test players because, for them, white ball is the money earner. So, unless, as I've said above, the ECB incentivise Counties to produce Test batsmen then they are not going to work with players on playing in the "V". Equally, the ECB has no infrastructure whatsoever that will enable them to educate kids to do so. And as a result they are wholly reliant on Club, District and County coaches to do so. But those institutions either want to make it fun for young cricketers (which doesn't involve hitting ball after ball of bobble fed tennis balls) or, in the case of the last named, they have an eye on the money.
Cricket is a much more accessible game in Australia and India...If you go on you tube you will literally see thousands of Indian kids in nets playing with a solid technique..or in parks / the street .there are whole academies set up for this
In Australia you won't be made to feel excluded because of your class ( for race see Yorkshire)
A straight bat ,application and concentration will get you a long way and should be the first thing you learn..not to mow it over cow corner The coaching mantra is to encourage kids to hit the ball these days..not how they hit it
Cricket has been completely and utterly mismanaged by the ECB.
Facilities Schools Coaching Accessibility
Cricket is still a game largely accessed by the privileged in this country and has been for a long time.
Coaching is undervalued...most club cricketers learn by themselves after a while or from peers .Level 1 and 2 coaches dont really give you any training on technique...fantastic at safeguarding, drills and being a play leader. It would be easier for a kid to read the MCC coaching manual.
This is where it starts but of course on this tour you can add
Selection Preparation Coach Leadership
I am very angry at the moment...in any sport I dont mind competing and losing but this showing was embarrassing
I never thought I would see the day when England's run total did not surpass my age. Lords have sent me an email inviting me to enter the ballot for the test matches next year. I think I will swerve it.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players,
Just thinking aloud here: what if a significant chunk of the ECB's funding to county cricket was distributed to the counties that developed the members of the test squad? Perhaps funding for everyone with a central contract, with a proportion going to the county that developed the player, split pro rata if they changed counties at some point during their development? That could potentially make it more lucrative to develop test players.
At present, if anything there's a disincentive, because the test players are unavailable to their counties for a large chunk of the summer. So a county which produces a world-beating T20 player who can't handle test cricket will have a big name available for their financially-lucrative one-day games in high summer, but the county that produces the England captain will have their biggest star name unavailable.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Are you happy we got embarrassed on day 3 before lunch and lose to an innings defeat when the oppisition only get 267? Pathetic.They SHOULD play more county cricket and if the central contracts arn't helping by stopping them from playing county cricket then yes it has to be scrapped.
I was called out on here once for calling this team cowards and bottlers.Well im going to call them bottlers and cowards again.Absolute shambles of a team.Apart from Root and Anderson the others can all eff off for all i care.
When i went bed we were 49-5.I thought id wake up and see us make a fight of this and at least give the Aussies a fight but no the pathetic cowardly bottlers let us down again.The whole red ball structure needs ripping apart and starting again.No more white ball experts playing test cricket PLEASE.Rip up the central contracts and let them play for their counties.Yes i know covid and the weather didnt help but we were so under prepared for this series.
Yet again il call them cowards and bottlers and they thoroughly deserve to be called this.
R.I.P English test match cricket☹
I don't disagree with anything you've said there, but i'm surprised that at 49-5 you thought we'd seriously make a fight of it. At 49-5 the fat lady was on her last chorus.
1st test: 112-5 to 147 all out. 266-5 to 297 all out.
2nd test: 169-5 to 236 all out. 105-5 to 192 all out.
3rd test: 128-5 to 185 all out. 60-5 to 68 all out.
I was called out on here once for calling this team cowards and bottlers.Well im going to call them bottlers and cowards again.Absolute shambles of a team.Apart from Root and Anderson the others can all eff off for all i care.
When i went bed we were 49-5.I thought id wake up and see us make a fight of this and at least give the Aussies a fight but no the pathetic cowardly bottlers let us down again.The whole red ball structure needs ripping apart and starting again.No more white ball experts playing test cricket PLEASE.Rip up the central contracts and let them play for their counties.Yes i know covid and the weather didnt help but we were so under prepared for this series.
Yet again il call them cowards and bottlers and they thoroughly deserve to be called this.
R.I.P English test match cricket☹
I don't disagree with anything you've said there, but i'm surprised that at 49-5 you thought we'd seriously make a fight of it. At 49-5 the fat lady was on her last chorus.
1st test: 112-5 to 147 all out. 266-5 to 297 all out.
2nd test: 169-5 to 236 all out. 105-5 to 192 all out.
3rd test: 128-5 to 185 all out. 60-5 to 68 all out.
Our tail over this series has scored 285-30
Was hoping lol but obviously it was a massive failure.Question is can it get any worse? Next test over in 2 days is a possibilty with this pathetic team.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Counties don’t want to produce red ball cricketers because they hardly play any red ball cricket. And when they do, their best players are away at the ipl. Re format the county championship, have it played throughout the year (like they used to) and work from there. If you take away central contracts then you can kiss producing the next Jimmy Anderson goodbye - do you really think he’d have lasted as long as he has done without a central contract?
I am saying that they have become too reliant on the Central Contract. It's too easy for them to say that they need to rest because they've been playing so much cricket a la Stokes, Buttler, Archer etc etc when a major part of the issue is that they have been away playing franchise cricket. The IPL doesn't finish 'til 3rd June this year - by that time last season Counties had played half of their County Championship matches!!!
What should happen, in my opinion, is that there should be a much bigger amount paid to those who make each squad with an appearance fee paid on top of that.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Are you happy we got embarrassed on day 3 before lunch and lose to an innings defeat when the oppisition only get 267? Pathetic.They SHOULD play more county cricket and if the central contracts arn't helping by stopping them from playing county cricket then yes it has to be scrapped.
Again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. The problem isn’t central contracts, it’s the amount of red ball cricket they play. Now most of the county championship games are played whilst the ipl is on, so the best overseas players and England players aren’t playing against county players - how are they meant to improve? The problem isn’t the players on central contracts, it’s that there’s no production line of players ready to step in.
If you want us to just produce medium pace trundlers, fine, but don’t be surprised if you get rid of central contracts we just regress to the disaster of the England team in the 90s.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Counties don’t want to produce red ball cricketers because they hardly play any red ball cricket. And when they do, their best players are away at the ipl. Re format the county championship, have it played throughout the year (like they used to) and work from there. If you take away central contracts then you can kiss producing the next Jimmy Anderson goodbye - do you really think he’d have lasted as long as he has done without a central contract?
I am saying that they have become too reliant on the Central Contract. It's too easy for them to say that they need to rest because they've been playing so much cricket a la Stokes, Buttler, Archer etc etc when a major part of the issue is that they have been away playing franchise cricket. The IPL doesn't finish 'til 3rd June this year - by that time last season Counties had played half of their County Championship matches!!!
What should happen, in my opinion, is that there should be a much bigger amount paid to those who make each squad with an appearance fee paid on top of that.
Right - so by your own admission the problem isn’t central contracts - it’s scheduling of the red ball game. Central contracts have overwhelmingly been seen as a good thing, now apparently as soon as there’s a problem with the team, that’s the real issue - really?
If you stop centrally contracted players from playing in the ipl, you’re going to have the same problem as the last time the ecb tried doing the same thing - players won’t sign their central contracts. You’ll have another KP situation.
It’s bizarre that in order for us to stop repeating the same mistakes as the last 4 years we have to repeat the same mistakes as the previous 20 according to some.
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Smacks of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Counties don’t want to produce red ball cricketers because they hardly play any red ball cricket. And when they do, their best players are away at the ipl. Re format the county championship, have it played throughout the year (like they used to) and work from there. If you take away central contracts then you can kiss producing the next Jimmy Anderson goodbye - do you really think he’d have lasted as long as he has done without a central contract?
I am saying that they have become too reliant on the Central Contract. It's too easy for them to say that they need to rest because they've been playing so much cricket a la Stokes, Buttler, Archer etc etc when a major part of the issue is that they have been away playing franchise cricket. The IPL doesn't finish 'til 3rd June this year - by that time last season Counties had played half of their County Championship matches!!!
What should happen, in my opinion, is that there should be a much bigger amount paid to those who make each squad with an appearance fee paid on top of that.
Right - so by your own admission the problem isn’t central contracts - it’s scheduling of the red ball game. Central contracts have overwhelmingly been seen as a good thing, now apparently as soon as there’s a problem with the team, that’s the real issue - really?
If you stop centrally contracted players from playing in the ipl, you’re going to have the same problem as the last time the ecb tried doing the same thing - players won’t sign their central contracts. You’ll have another KP situation.
It’s bizarre that in order for us to stop repeating the same mistakes as the last 4 years we have to repeat the same mistakes as the previous 20 according to some.
But the IPL and the ECB won't change the schedule will they? The Hundred and The Blast will be played after the IPL finishes on the 5th June so the CC games have to be played in April and May! And why do Australian batsman like Head and the world's number one best batsman Labushagne play for their State, their Club and a County here? They aren't centrally contracted that's why!
As we've all said, need to play county cricket. Not The 100. Maybe forget Central contracts & make all players play for their counties again.
Strong disagree, central contracts has been a great innovation. This is the first captaincy in which we are not that successful since they’ve been introduced.
Really? When they don't have to play County cricket? When they were getting paid £700,000 per annum regardless of whether they were in the side or not and players who weren't centrally contracted weren't getting that? When the motivation is to say "thanks for the Central Contract but, by the way, I'm not available to play because I'm knackered having spent three months at the IPL?"
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Are you seriously, seriously saying England were better without central contacts? Really?
Are you happy we got embarrassed on day 3 before lunch and lose to an innings defeat when the oppisition only get 267? Pathetic.They SHOULD play more county cricket and if the central contracts arn't helping by stopping them from playing county cricket then yes it has to be scrapped.
Again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. The problem isn’t central contracts, it’s the amount of red ball cricket they play. Now most of the county championship games are played whilst the ipl is on, so the best overseas players and England players aren’t playing against county players - how are they meant to improve? The problem isn’t the players on central contracts, it’s that there’s no production line of players ready to step in.
If you want us to just produce medium pace trundlers, fine, but don’t be surprised if you get rid of central contracts we just regress to the disaster of the England team in the 90s.
The test players hardly play red ball cricket.Most of that 11 playing agains the Aussies play white ball cricket aswell.2 different games.One is whack bash wallop the other is full of endurance and skill.We cant adjust from one to the other.Give them a choice red ball or white ball.
I want us to look for young hungry county cricketers to be given a chance to play test cricket.Surely there has to be young county cricketers who are good enough but dont get noticed.Is there anybody scouting the countty scene or are they happy with their current bottlers..Yes lets go back to that period in the 90's because this current lot are finished.Dont care if it takes 2/3 years to rebuild but id like to see a good young experienced team getting matches then competing to win the Ashes back in the future.
And how do we make it easier for those players to play championship matches… maybe don’t schedule the majority of them during the ipl?
So you think that the ECB will schedule The Hundred and The Blast in April and May? Cloud cuckoo land that is!
It also doesn't address the fact that our white ball players do not play straight. KP was brought up in South Africa. And Buttler is no KP when it comes to Test cricket
I think, on balance, central contracts are a good thing and we wouldn’t have seen the success of 2005-12 ish without them. Compare it to the 90s and the pre-contract days.
If the concern is that centrally contracted players aren’t playing enough CC, then perhaps make it a stipulation that they must play x number of CC games throughout the season in order to maintain match sharpness etc.
We aren’t going to develop better batsmen in the county champo until we have the best bowlers in there as well.
Going from facing Stevo and Tim Murtagh at 70 , is no preparation for Starc and the rest of the crew at 90.
Well, if the English bowlers like Wood, Archer & Robinson play county cricket then the batsmen will be facing them. Sprinkle in a few overseas players as well then there is no reason to be facing 40 year old's dibbly dobblers.
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Going from facing Stevo and Tim Murtagh at 70 , is no preparation for Starc and the rest of the crew at 90.
The tail is wagging the dog where players are saying they would rather play franchise than Test cricket, And the ECB in their promotion of The Hundred are adding to that.
Counties are financially incentivised by the ECB to have English qualified players in their squads. They are not incentivised to produce Test players, So, as I keep repeating, from grass roots to the very top everything is dominated by white ball cricket. There are no, as far as I am aware, players on red ball only contracts. But loads on white ball only ones. And that will become more and more prevalent as things stand.
Root 1708
Burns 530
Extras 412
I have been 'forecasting' the death of test cricket for a long time, so far I am happy to have been proved wrong, but many more farcical series such as this one will hasten that death. England now produces a plethora of talented one day players, the attraction of playing tests for the majority of these youngsters seems to have lost it's allure
"What are your scoring areas? How are you going to access those? You have mid on and mid off up, how are you going to push them back? Bowler is now bowling wide yorkers, how are you going to score off those? Show us your reverse sweep. Show us your ramp."
Those are all things that age group county cricketers are asked and told. Counties have no incentive whatsoever to produce Test players because, for them, white ball is the money earner. So, unless, as I've said above, the ECB incentivise Counties to produce Test batsmen then they are not going to work with players on playing in the "V". Equally, the ECB has no infrastructure whatsoever that will enable them to educate kids to do so. And as a result they are wholly reliant on Club, District and County coaches to do so. But those institutions either want to make it fun for young cricketers (which doesn't involve hitting ball after ball of bobble fed tennis balls) or, in the case of the last named, they have an eye on the money.
When i went bed we were 49-5.I thought id wake up and see us make a fight of this and at least give the Aussies a fight but no the pathetic cowardly bottlers let us down again.The whole red ball structure needs ripping apart and starting again.No more white ball experts playing test cricket PLEASE.Rip up the central contracts and let them play for their counties.Yes i know covid and the weather didnt help but we were so under prepared for this series.
Yet again il call them cowards and bottlers and they thoroughly deserve to be called this.
R.I.P English test match cricket☹
Cricket is a much more accessible game in Australia and India...If you go on you tube you will literally see thousands of Indian kids in nets playing with a solid technique..or in parks / the street .there are whole academies set up for this
In Australia you won't be made to feel excluded because of your class ( for race see Yorkshire)
A straight bat ,application and concentration will get you a long way and should be the first thing you learn..not to mow it over cow corner
The coaching mantra is to encourage kids to hit the ball these days..not how they hit it
Cricket has been completely and utterly mismanaged by the ECB.
Facilities
Schools
Coaching
Accessibility
Cricket is still a game largely accessed by the privileged in this country and has been for a long time.
Coaching is undervalued...most club cricketers learn by themselves after a while or from peers .Level 1 and 2 coaches dont really give you any training on technique...fantastic at safeguarding, drills and being a play leader. It would be easier for a kid to read the MCC coaching manual.
This is where it starts but of course on this tour you can add
Selection
Preparation
Coach
Leadership
I am very angry at the moment...in any sport I dont mind competing and losing but this showing was embarrassing
Lords have sent me an email inviting me to enter the ballot for the test matches next year. I think I will swerve it.
At present, if anything there's a disincentive, because the test players are unavailable to their counties for a large chunk of the summer. So a county which produces a world-beating T20 player who can't handle test cricket will have a big name available for their financially-lucrative one-day games in high summer, but the county that produces the England captain will have their biggest star name unavailable.
1st test:
112-5 to 147 all out.
266-5 to 297 all out.
2nd test:
169-5 to 236 all out.
105-5 to 192 all out.
3rd test:
128-5 to 185 all out.
60-5 to 68 all out.
Our tail over this series has scored 285-30
What should happen, in my opinion, is that there should be a much bigger amount paid to those who make each squad with an appearance fee paid on top of that.
I want us to look for young hungry county cricketers to be given a chance to play test cricket.Surely there has to be young county cricketers who are good enough but dont get noticed.Is there anybody scouting the countty scene or are they happy with their current bottlers..Yes lets go back to that period in the 90's because this current lot are finished.Dont care if it takes 2/3 years to rebuild but id like to see a good young experienced team getting matches then competing to win the Ashes back in the future.
It also doesn't address the fact that our white ball players do not play straight. KP was brought up in South Africa. And Buttler is no KP when it comes to Test cricket
If the concern is that centrally contracted players aren’t playing enough CC, then perhaps make it a stipulation that they must play x number of CC games throughout the season in order to maintain match sharpness etc.