The CFC Cricket Thread

First player to hit 2 ODI double tons, and highest ever ODI score by an individual. Not a bad effort.

 

You watch the bowler's run and his arm at least as much as the ball - it was quite obvious as soon as he let the first one go that it was long and fairly direct, while the second one was very short, so you know to try and hit the first one straight while the second is going to need you to hit across it. Of course, the skill is making this judgement very fast and having the co-ordination to actually make a good hit.

 

It was a freak accident. Hopefully he fully recovers from the incident.

 

Hughes has died.

Black armbands forever.

 

And he shall remain 63 not out for the rest of time.

RIP Phillip Hughes

 

I was devastated when I saw the news. Hughes was one of the few cricketers I followed religiously (when not in front of a computer if he was batting I'd be refreshing the Cricket scores on my phone hoping he was still going) and I've never had a non-personal death impact me like this.

RIP Phil Hughes. Always 63 not out.

Also feel for Sean Abbott and hope he isn't too hard on himself.

 

Absolutely shocking what happened. But it goes to show there are still dangers when playing the game of cricket. Sad day overall.

 

This is awful. I really took to Phil Hughes.

 

Just days later, an umpire has died after being struck in the head by a ball:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30260842

2 freak accidents in an incredibly short period of time.

 

I never even realised that Israel had a Cricket Association until that news broke.

 

They're too lowly raked to even be in the competitive tiers with countries like Japan and Germany. Ranked 17 in Europe.

 

Alastair Cook has been removed as England ODI captain in favour of Eoin Morgan. Inevitable, perhaps? Nasser Hussein wrote on the BBC just yesterday urging that change. Although they are removing one left-handed batsman struggling with poor form in favour of... another left-handed batsman struggling with poor form. Perhaps the idea is to get Cook back to batting well more than to improve the captaincy?

 

Cook has been a lousy one day opener for some time. And his efforts to improve his own day batting appear to have impacted his test play. So the best (and kindest) thing to do is to remove him from the one day team and get him to focus just on test batting.

The timing is terrible (relative to the World Cup), but not terrible enough to make this the wrong decision. And I think his captaincy has also been poor, but surely it's his batting which has warranted him being dropped.

 

Perhaps a break for a while will do his batting good - there's no reason why he can't be a perfectly good ODI opener, as he proved himself to be to get the captaincy in the first place. I think concentrating on both jobs was too much: trying to be a good captain made him too fraught to be a good batsman, and he couldn't captain properly with the weight of failing to live up to the batting standards expected of him. Even his fielding's been dire lately.

 

How come an Irishman is English captain. That seems unfair to Ireland.

 

Yes, he's played for Ireland, so not sure how he managed to pull that one - I always thought KP was allowed to do it because he declared for England rather than SA. Looking it up Ireland is only an 'associate member' of the ICC whereas England is a 'full member', and only full members are entitled to play the full run of international cricket, so I suppose there's a rule whereby you can always choose to move up to a 'full member' country.

It's interesting because I coach young rifle shooters, and we have a real problem with some of them because England and Scotland are massively more competitive than Wales and Ireland. So you end up with a lot of young English people who have Welsh or Irish grandparents and are eligible for Wales or Ireland, and you have to choose between encouraging them to get that international exposure and potentially shooting for GB in the future or declaring for England and potentially not getting the boost they need. If you're only eligible because of your grandparents you can't shoot the Commonwealth Games, either, so you might be getting them a leg up into international shooting but losing them a Commonwealth place. Once you've declared you're stuck with it with us.

 

Same reason Dirk Nannes played for both Netherlands and Australia. Playing internationals for Associate Members doesn't lock you out of playing for a full member if you'd qualify for both.

 

Not sure how people expect Ireland or the Netherlands to get more competitive and expand the cricket world when ICC full members can take their good players. Morgan lining up for England and not Ireland in the World Cup will be just extremely disappointing.

 

Ireland is often called 'England's 19th first-class county', and the Irish are about as happy with it as you'd expect. They're pushing for full Test status by 2020, though.