I thought Rankin was brought in for not just extra bounce but extra pace. He's bowling at 83-84 (and too short) which is no more than Anderson, Broad or even Stokes for that matter.
Jesus Christ, Borthwick makes Ian Salisbury look like Abdul Qadir.
Indeed but as they've just said Warne's first figures were 45-7-156-1.
And as I said earlier the time to bring him on was straight after lunch before Haddin had faced a ball. We still had an opportunity to get a wicket the other end with seam and it couldn't have been a worse time to bowl Borthwick than when both batsmen are in.
Not for the 1st time in this series Brad Haddin leads a counter attack & the Aussies move comfortably to 180 for 5. Our inability to bowl the lower order batsmen out quickly has been a huge problem for England all series long.
Jesus Christ, Borthwick makes Ian Salisbury look like Abdul Qadir.
Indeed but as they've just said Warne's first figures were 45-7-156-1.
And as I said earlier the time to bring him on was straight after lunch before Haddin had faced a ball. We still had an opportunity to get a wicket the other end with seam and it couldn't have been a worse time to bowl Borthwick than when both batsmen are in.
Fair enough, I was not expecting 5-50 but the ability to land the ball on the cut strip would have been nice!
now that we're a bit crap again it would be nice to have an england team full of englishmen
But, on that basis, we wouldn't have fielded any of the following 15 players:
Michael Lumb - born Johannesburg, South Africa Andrew Strauss - born Johannesburg, South Africa Nick Compton - born Durban, South Africa Jonathan Trott - born Cape Town, South Africa Ed Joyce - born Dublin, Republic Of Ireland Kevin Pietersen - born Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Eoin Morgan - born Dublin, Republic Of Ireland Gary Ballance - born Harare, Zimbabwe Matt Prior - born Johannesburg, South Africa Craig Kieswetter - born Johannesburg, South Africa Ben Stokes - born Christchurch, New Zealand Boyd Rankin - born Londonderry, Northern Ireland Stuart Meaker - born Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Chris Jordan - born Barbados Jade Dernbach - born Johannesburg, South Africa
Clearly the ECB have some very good scouts especially in Jo'burg!
Some, to be fair, were brought up here but a fair number of the above came here attracted by the prospect of playing International cricket. Either because, in the case of most of the South Africans, they wouldn't have been afforded the same opportunity back "home" or the with respect to the Irish, they wanted the chance to play cricket at a decent level.
That list is actually a bit misleading, a lot of those players were born overseas but to British parents who were temporarily resident overseas.
That would certainly be the case with Strauss, Prior and Compton.
would like to think that my little boy born in Alberta, Canada to English parents, would be accepted into an English/British team - we are looking at the 2034 Winter Olympics as he is a brilliant skier LOL
No way is Borthwick a Test quality spinner at the moment, he doesn't take enough wickets, and being a leggie can't do the Ashley Giles keep it tight option either. He only took 28 championship wickets last summer, but is potentially a good batsman, so perhaps more of a Steve Smith than a Shane Warne!
No way is Borthwick a Test quality spinner at the moment, he doesn't take enough wickets, and being a leggie can't do the Ashley Giles keep it tight option either. He only took 28 championship wickets last summer, but is potentially a good batsman, so perhaps more of a Steve Smith than a Shane Warne!
Indeed, which is why Cook will have to get over what ever problems he has with Monty as he is - quite clearly - our only spinner of anywhere near Test standard.
I am trying to work out who is worse, Borthwick or Kerrigan! It's a bloody tough call.
No way is Borthwick a Test quality spinner at the moment, he doesn't take enough wickets, and being a leggie can't do the Ashley Giles keep it tight option either. He only took 28 championship wickets last summer, but is potentially a good batsman, so perhaps more of a Steve Smith than a Shane Warne!
Indeed, which is why Cook will have to get over what ever problems he has with Monty as he is - quite clearly - our only spinner of anywhere near Test standard.
I am trying to work out who is worse, Borthwick or Kerrigan! It's a bloody tough call.
What is Cook's problem with Monty? Anyone know?
They're team-mates at Essex now although Cook doesn't play much county stuff these days like the rest of 'Team England'
No way is Borthwick a Test quality spinner at the moment, he doesn't take enough wickets, and being a leggie can't do the Ashley Giles keep it tight option either. He only took 28 championship wickets last summer, but is potentially a good batsman, so perhaps more of a Steve Smith than a Shane Warne!
Indeed, which is why Cook will have to get over what ever problems he has with Monty as he is - quite clearly - our only spinner of anywhere near Test standard.
I am trying to work out who is worse, Borthwick or Kerrigan! It's a bloody tough call.
What is Cook's problem with Monty? Anyone know?
They're team-mates at Essex now although Cook doesn't play much county stuff these days like the rest of 'Team England'
That's a great question, would love to know the answer myself.
In the last Test he even bowled Joe Root before Monty in the crucial second innings.
I heard Agnew banging on today about Monty's poor batting and fielding but that is simply bullshit, these did not seem a problem last year when he won us the series in India.
Panesar is no Shane Warne - or even Graeme Swann - (and he has not been at his best on this tour) but he has been a match winning spinner for England and we cannot afford to throw him under the bus.
It's all very well saying Borthwick isn't up to it - which he certainly isn't at this stage - but some of us seem to be ignoring the facts which are that our three previous spinners have recorded in this series the following figures:
Swann 7-560 Average 80.00 Panesar 3-257 Average 85.66 Root 0-98 Average ---
So that's a combined 10-915 at an average of 91.5!
It is also a fact that Borthwick is a batsman who bowls and it is that balance that got him into THIS side because our tail is bad enough without having three no.11s in the shape of Rankin, Anderson and Panesar. In dropping Root we also had no one in the side bar KP capable of even turning their arm over in this discipline.
Panesar will be back because we simply have no obvious candidate knocking on the door and the reason that is the case is because we are not producing spinners, mainly because our climate/wickets are geared to swing and seam bowling. And also because English batsman at county level are so poor that they can't play the moving ball. Hence the proliferation over the years of overseas batsmen topping our run scoring charts.
It's all very well saying Borthwick isn't up to it - which he certainly isn't at this stage - but some of us seem to be ignoring the facts which are that our three previous spinners have recorded in this series the following figures:
Swann 7-560 Average 80.00 Panesar 3-257 Average 85.66 Root 0-98 Average ---
So that's a combined 10-915 at an average of 91.5!
It is also a fact that Borthwick is a batsman who bowls and it is that balance that got him into THIS side because our tail is bad enough without having three no.11s in the shape of Rankin, Anderson and Panesar. In dropping Root we also had no one in the side bar KP capable of even turning their arm over in this discipline.
Panesar will be back because we simply have no obvious candidate knocking on the door and the reason that is the case is because we are not producing spinners, mainly because our climate/wickets are geared to swing and seam bowling. And also because English batsman at county level are so poor that they can't play the moving ball. Hence the proliferation over the years of overseas batsmen topping our run scoring charts.
That is a reasonable point but Borthwick was going at 7 an over and dishing up that many full tosses he looked like a baseball pitcher, at least Monty might have tied an end up.
Quite frankly having seen Borthwick bowl we may as well have played Root at number 6 anyway and used his occasional off-spin as the 5th bowler.
Ormy - I can't disagree with anything you say but until you give a lad a chance you simply don't know. And if you call a "spinner" up what is the point of not playing him when on all known form your existing bunch are going at more than 90.
I recognise that we don't want to lose 5-0 but this is a "dead rubber" and for that reason I pleaded the case for Borthwick to come on after lunch. We might still have got the wicket at the other end in any event and as the Aussies have found bringing on someone like Smith might just "buy" you a wicket. But not so likely when the batsmen are set.
Control is the hardest thing for a leg spinner and the best in our lifetime didn't develop it overnight as evidenced by his appalling stats for his first few Test matches. But the Aussies stuck with him and whilst I'm not for one minute suggesting on what I've seen Borthwick is ever going to make it, we really are in "land of the blind" territory so far as spinners are concerned.
Ormy - I can't disagree with anything you say but until you give a lad a chance you simply don't know. And if you call a "spinner" up what is the point of not playing him when on all known form your existing bunch are going at more than 90.
I recognise that we don't want to lose 5-0 but this is a "dead rubber" and for that reason I pleaded the case for Borthwick to come on after lunch. We might still have got the wicket at the other end in any event and as the Aussies have found bringing on someone like Smith might just "buy" you a wicket. But not so likely when the batsmen are set.
Control is the hardest thing for a leg spinner and the best in our lifetime didn't develop it overnight as evidenced by his appalling stats for his first few Test matches. But the Aussies stuck with him and whilst I'm not for one minute suggesting on what I've seen Borthwick is ever going to make it, we really are in "land of the blind" territory so far as spinners are concerned.
The thing is that leg-spin is such an incredibly complex and difficult art, unless you can bowl wicket-taking deliveries which create doubt for the batsmen then you will get smashed because your stock ball has the potential to turn into a rank long hop - something Salisbury found all too often.
No real harm in giving Borthwick a game but I think we can see now that as a bowler the kid is a long way from being ready.
It is true that Warne had a poor start against India but his first-class record suggested that he would at least be competitive at Test level, as things turned out he did a bit better than that!
As Riviera has indicated (and it is on the Kent thread) my youngest son is a leg spinner. He is 10 and currently in the Kent U11 squad. However, he is a bit of an enigma insofar as he does not have a traditional "cocked wrist" action and actually "flicks" the ball out of the back of his hand using his fingers. And he turns it square which makes it all the more bizarre.
Min Patel is his coach but he has never sought to coach young AA as to how to spin the ball because, as far as he's concerned, he is turning it doing it his own way. What he has done, however, is over the course of the last year, changed his action from one where he was throwing his head to one side to propel the ball down the other end to one where he is now more up and over - so much so that he almost has an "off spinners" action but actually "finger spins" out of the back of the hand. He has more control as a result of the change in action and doesn't bowl so many "hand grenades" as he used to.
The problem my son will face is that, at the moment, the boys that he is at the moment in a false sense of security - the boys that face him (and this is admittedly not yet at County but up to District level) are like "rabbits in head lights" simply because they are frightened to use their feet against him and do tend to hit against the spin. Where that will change is when those boys have the courage to come down the track and hit him on the "full" but I am hoping that by that time he will have enough variations to counter that. And that his "unusual" method of spinning the ball will give him that much more control than a traditional leg spinner might have.
Time will tell but it's a discipline that is more "risk/reward" than any other method of bowling and very very few (and no English players in recent times) actually master. Fortunately for young AA he can bat too ;-)
Comments
The wheels are coming off - yet again!
And as I said earlier the time to bring him on was straight after lunch before Haddin had faced a ball. We still had an opportunity to get a wicket the other end with seam and it couldn't have been a worse time to bowl Borthwick than when both batsmen are in.
225-6. Should be more fireworks now with Johnson coming in.
He and Broad are the only ones who can hold their heads up.
With a potentially stronger batting line up than the last 4 tests we still have a good opportunity to win this.
If that doesn't get me a LOL I don't know what will...
I am trying to work out who is worse, Borthwick or Kerrigan! It's a bloody tough call.
They're team-mates at Essex now although Cook doesn't play much county stuff these days like the rest of 'Team England'
In the last Test he even bowled Joe Root before Monty in the crucial second innings.
I heard Agnew banging on today about Monty's poor batting and fielding but that is simply bullshit, these did not seem a problem last year when he won us the series in India.
Panesar is no Shane Warne - or even Graeme Swann - (and he has not been at his best on this tour) but he has been a match winning spinner for England and we cannot afford to throw him under the bus.
Swann 7-560 Average 80.00
Panesar 3-257 Average 85.66
Root 0-98 Average ---
So that's a combined 10-915 at an average of 91.5!
It is also a fact that Borthwick is a batsman who bowls and it is that balance that got him into THIS side because our tail is bad enough without having three no.11s in the shape of Rankin, Anderson and Panesar. In dropping Root we also had no one in the side bar KP capable of even turning their arm over in this discipline.
Panesar will be back because we simply have no obvious candidate knocking on the door and the reason that is the case is because we are not producing spinners, mainly because our climate/wickets are geared to swing and seam bowling. And also because English batsman at county level are so poor that they can't play the moving ball. Hence the proliferation over the years of overseas batsmen topping our run scoring charts.
Quite frankly having seen Borthwick bowl we may as well have played Root at number 6 anyway and used his occasional off-spin as the 5th bowler.
I recognise that we don't want to lose 5-0 but this is a "dead rubber" and for that reason I pleaded the case for Borthwick to come on after lunch. We might still have got the wicket at the other end in any event and as the Aussies have found bringing on someone like Smith might just "buy" you a wicket. But not so likely when the batsmen are set.
Control is the hardest thing for a leg spinner and the best in our lifetime didn't develop it overnight as evidenced by his appalling stats for his first few Test matches. But the Aussies stuck with him and whilst I'm not for one minute suggesting on what I've seen Borthwick is ever going to make it, we really are in "land of the blind" territory so far as spinners are concerned.
No real harm in giving Borthwick a game but I think we can see now that as a bowler the kid is a long way from being ready.
It is true that Warne had a poor start against India but his first-class record suggested that he would at least be competitive at Test level, as things turned out he did a bit better than that!
Min Patel is his coach but he has never sought to coach young AA as to how to spin the ball because, as far as he's concerned, he is turning it doing it his own way. What he has done, however, is over the course of the last year, changed his action from one where he was throwing his head to one side to propel the ball down the other end to one where he is now more up and over - so much so that he almost has an "off spinners" action but actually "finger spins" out of the back of the hand. He has more control as a result of the change in action and doesn't bowl so many "hand grenades" as he used to.
The problem my son will face is that, at the moment, the boys that he is at the moment in a false sense of security - the boys that face him (and this is admittedly not yet at County but up to District level) are like "rabbits in head lights" simply because they are frightened to use their feet against him and do tend to hit against the spin. Where that will change is when those boys have the courage to come down the track and hit him on the "full" but I am hoping that by that time he will have enough variations to counter that. And that his "unusual" method of spinning the ball will give him that much more control than a traditional leg spinner might have.
Time will tell but it's a discipline that is more "risk/reward" than any other method of bowling and very very few (and no English players in recent times) actually master. Fortunately for young AA he can bat too ;-)