U19 World Cup | South Africa | Jan-Feb 2024

[Googly]

That was a comprehensive beat down . Eeish

[Googly]

I've been pleasantly surprised with this team. They've been savaged, but some tidy bowling and a couple of decent looking batters. They've been our worst team in a while, but they've not been terrible at all.

Prosper is resigning timeously because there is no next batch. As far as I know this is pretty much it for a while until a couple of 6-14 year olds come thru.

[Googly]

Watch McKinney bat for England. Already a Durham Pro. Some player, he's about 6ft 5 . Beautiful batsman.

[Googly]

Kiss of death.
This Aussie bowling attack is serious.

[ZIMDOGGY]

Since Mangongo is back in the frame and he is considered good for kids, it would be an ideato get him coach of the under 14s and stick with that batch till under 19 level. Gain some momentum.

[Googly]

He's the U25/Zim A/Emerging/ High Performance coach

[Googly]

The age group thing has to be resurrected. Even if it's trials to see who the best players are in the respective age groups and then you combine a couple of age groups and play some internal games. Anything other than the drudgery of stupendously low level school cricket. We're in reverse at 50kph.

[ZIMDOGGY]

Is he technically sound as a coach?

[Kriterion_BD]

This team is very much at par with Ireland, Afghanistan, and slightly better than associate sides but not going to be challenging the top sides by any means.

From U19s we just need to see of we have 2-3 good prospects and I think we have a few from this team, apart from Ronak, I think Nyamhuri is good, so is Schonken. There is some. Potential in Kamwemba as well, what I mean is these players can be worked upon for future.

schonken last 5 games:

Batting ave: 12
Bowling ave: 38

This includes playing Ireland, Namibia and the USA.

Gone are the days when a decade back Malcolm Lake tonked a better than run a ball century against India and we were only reasonably excited.

Good point. U-19 cricket has relatively low sensitivity in picking out future stars. What that means is, Kohli/Rohit/Babar/Williamson/Rabada dominated at YODI level and at the WC. Everyone knew they would be stars. Thats very true. However, many other U19 stalwarts don't go on to become sernior stars. In fact, some never make it to international cricket at all. There's various reasons for that: other players overtake their talent, some players are lazy and excel at age 18, but are ordinary at 22, some players are unlucky (think McGill vs Warne), some might get injured or have family/personal struggles, etc. Remember Unmukt Chand? Do you know where he's at now? He's doing commercials targetting Indian expats for State Farm insurance company in the US thats ironically airing during the 2024 U-19 WC!

https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/to ... -2012-6767

Take a look at the top run-scorers from 2012

#1 Anamul Haque - played all the same opposition as Babar Azam, and led the tournament in runs. Bang average international player whilst Babar is one of the best.

#3 Javed Ahmadi - another mediocre player. And mediocre is "success" in the sense that so many players don't even make it to senior level to begin with.

#5 Bowes - right behind QDK, and while his name sounds familiar, has he even gotten a single international cap?

#6 Chand - as mentioned above, not a single cap. Now India are perennially stacked with batters so could that he could have cracked any other Test lineup just not India. Very possible, so perhaps leave him out.

#7 Bosisto - I rememeber this guy creating headlines because he was only dismissed once, averaged 276 for the tournament, and I think led his team to the final, IIRC.

_________

In that context, all the hype that was given to Madhevere, Shumba, Marumani, Bawa, and Myers for averaging 20 against the likes of PNG, Scotland, and Belarus seems very premature. Out of that 5, only Myers and Madhevere seem to have talent (relative to international standards), and only Myers has a game seemingly organized enough to potentially succeed against top 12 teams. Context is key here. Runs against Pakistan or even New Zealand count more than they do against Canada and Nepal. The gulf is just too wide.

I'm quite excited about Ariful Islam. He hit hundreds against both Pakistan and South Africa at last year's world cup, hit another 100 against Afghanistan (who are usually very good at U-19 level, although not this batch), and has scored some runs vs USA and Nepal. But its his runs against PAK and SA that count...the knocks against USA and Nepal are just icing on the cake, but when you've got no cake, even a tub of icing is nothing to get excited about. But the chances of him being another Anamul Haque are higher than him becoming a Najmul Hossain Shanto.

As Googly always says: its a brutally tough game.

[secretzimbo]

only Myers and Madhevere seem to have talent

Wrong