zimcricketforums.com

I'll get the ball rolling:
[*]I don't think guards of honour are necessary
[*]Steve Smith is massively overrated
[*]Raza is in the top 5 fieldsmen in the world at the moment (Maybe not so unpopular around here)

Mankads,
Teams should be looking to mankad at every opportunity.

Also the Ashes,
I love it as much as anyone but its too frequent now.
Once every two years is enough.


We should be playing South Africa and Windies more.

ZIMDOGGY wrote:Also the Ashes,
I love it as much as anyone but its too frequent now.
Once every two years is enough.


We should be playing South Africa and Windies more.

Yeah I agree they've played 'too much' Ashes cricket of late obviously both nations enjoying the revenue it brings .....

Werent the Ashes always every ~18 months?

The Ashes have always been this frequent, plus they are more interesting now than in the 90s when England had no chance whatsoever of victory.

This Ashes serious was as boring as it gets. Every game was won in the first session and no team was able to fightback enough to take any game into day 5.

eugene wrote:The Ashes have always been this frequent, plus they are more interesting now than in the 90s when England had no chance whatsoever of victory.

The last tour of Oz was fast tracked one year to avoid the clash with the WC since Australia was hosting both, there fore this ashes which was hosted in England was also brought forward one year to re establish the the normal cycle ( England host then 18 months later Australia host then 30 months later England host )

I agree with the Steve Smith is overrated viewpoint. But I want to be proven wrong.

As an Australian I hope he keeps it up, but I'd like to see him score more runs away from home.

I think the public was too quick to turn on Clarke, because they were blinded by Smith's good year - and as a result we've rushed Smith's captaincy and Clarke's retirement.
Clarke was in a form slump - that is undeniable. But I still rated him as our best batsman as he had the track record over an extended period. That hundred after Phil Hughes' death was so courageous, that showed a steely resolve I haven't seen in any other Australian batsman of the current generation. As they say, form is temporary and class is permanent. As a world class player of spin, I reckon he would have scored runs in Bangladesh (a series which I expect we will seriously struggle in) and had a good summer.

But that's all hypothetical now. Clarke is gone, we'll just have to hope Smith's rise continues.

Smith has 5 centuries away from home plus 2 90's, so I don't think it's his away form that needs improving. It's whether or not he can keep his form going for as long as Ckarke did without letting the captaincy drag him down, with the massive turn over of players there will be a lot of pressure on him and we will learn a lot about him over the next few years ......