Blah

[chickenfeet]

Congratulations to the Sri Lankans. They deserve it. But honestly, England were rubbish. They showed all the fight of a wet paper bag. The only players who impressed were Collingwood for his grit and Panesar for his fine bowling and batting cameo. What odds that they will be the players dropped for the Pakistan series?

Comments

[coughingbear]

Panesar is a star, even if he needs to practice his fielding. Happy he got the TMS champagne moment for his six, though it seemed a rather wilful ignoring of the man who actually won the match. Everyone seems to assume he'll be dropped if Giles is fit, which I just don't understand. There was lots of discussion about it on the OBO this afternoon.
I rather like Giles, and he was brilliant last summer, but Panesar is surely where England should be looking.

[coughingbear]

Meant to write, the main justification for Giles appears to be that he can bat a bit (& that's what I mostly think of when I think of last summer), which does always strike me as a rather secondary consideration for a bowler.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Especially when batting-bowling average is in the minus 20 range

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I come back to my theory that a dressing room cabal is picking the team. Giles, like Jones, is one of the lads. Why else would one pick a player at the end of his career who has a bowling average of 39.8? Jones, of course, proved yet again that he is rubbish.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Happy he got the TMS champagne moment for his six, though it seemed a rather wilful ignoring of the man who actually won the match.

Oh, I thought it was one of the best decisions they'd had in ages - when they first thought up the champagne moment, it was supposed to be for a single moment of joie de vivre, whether it had any bearing on the result or not. And now it nearly always seems to go to "so and so reaching his hundred/taking a landmark wicket". Which can involve joie de vivre, but by attaching it to a moment of signficance it's drifting much closer to the man of the match award, which is a big prize already.

[coughingbear]

Yes, I take your point - and in the last match they gave it for KP's reverse-swept six, didn't they, which also was a crazy but great moment. I suppose I was just wondering what a Sri Lankan champagne moment would have been.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Well, as I recall, Aggers read out the nominations as "Monty's six, or Something by Murali", which tended to confirm my suspicion that they're now thinking "X ought to win, let's try to think of something X did that might fit the definition." Of course, not every Test features a moment like those two sixes, so sometimes they're struggling. But when something like that happens, you know it's right.

[coughingbear]

Yes he did, and as you say it otherwise gets too close to man of the match. Perhaps they shouldn't have to award it every Test, so they can just give it when the right things happen.