CATCH SCRATCH FEVER

That heading doesn't make any sense. Anyway... you reckon the AGB is setting the agenda?

First we drive Gilly into retirement:

Sydney Day Two

Wee Wee wouldn't have got to 100 if Gilly had his sh1t together. After performances like yesterday, he's running the risk of being compared with The Grates: Party Patel, Geraint Jones and the down-and-going (as opposed to up-and-coming) Matt Prior. Lucky Wee Wee didn't make 200 or you'd be comparing Gilly to Courtney Browne who once dropped a sitter off Steve Waugh, or the bloke who dropped Brian Lara when Lara made 500.

Gilly is at an awkward stage of his career. Apparently he wants to go to England in 2009, but is that feasible? Well, if he scores big in the near future, and doesn't drop any more sitters (don't bank on it) he'll hold his place. But at 36 going on 38 by 2009 he isn't getting any younger, or more importantly, better.

The selectors need to ask themselves whether Gilly will be better in 2009 than, say, Brad Haddin? That's unlikely, both for batting and keeping. Gilly's career path is on the way down, while Braddin's is on the way up. Have those career trajectories crossed yet? I suggest they have. They certainly will have by 2009.

There is nothing worse - apart from lots of other bad things in the world: drought, flood, bushfire, Silverchair - than sports people hanging on too long. Does Gilly want to hang on too long? Will the selectors allow him to hang on too long? He has a few credits in the bank, although he cashed a few in yesterday, but not that many that the selectors can afford to have him clogging up the chain of succession. At some point soon they will have to make the big call: "Mate, we need to have a chat."

Unless Gilly the famous walker, walks.

Then there was this:

DOWN SYNDROME

Did you know our drops against India in the Tests cost us 569 runs?

Now Peter Lalor - who is starring lately - takes up the cause:

Fielding dominance slips away

THE standard of fielding is said to be one of the barometers of a player or a team in decline. Michael Hussey

If it is true, Australia's dominance is slipping away at an alarming rate.

Comments

[Bruce]

AGB continues to set the agenda for deeper cricket thinking. Lalor ticks off my previous points on this matter nicely.

1. Cordon is a shambles
2. Tubby and Junior were awesome (although misses my attribution to Bobby Simpson in making them so good)
3. No Warne and McGrath means less chances being generated and thus drops hurt more.

Peter - I know you are reading this so please make sure Tone gets his due for your ripping off our stuff.

[Scott Wickstein]

Just wait till the footy starts, then you'll see the real agenda-setting powers of the AGB.

[nick]

Is it the standard of fielding or the standard of catching that marks a team in decline. Our ground fielding is good, it's just the catching that is lacking. With Haydos nearer to the end than the beginning, and Punter's back playing up, and Jaques being an adequate fielder at best, I don't see any improvement coming soon.

[nick]

Shrees vs Shrills - Sangers celebrating before the decision has been given, Sharma refuses to walk, and waits after the decision has been given, and Murali threw the ball in the first place. Let's see Spanky pick the bones out of that.

[nick]

Hang on - it was given out caught and the batsman didn't touch it - it's the white maggots fault. (referring to his garb, of course)

[Russ]

Funny things slips catches. They are really quite easy (off the quicks anyway). Provided you are positioned right (though only Gilchrist might know why our positioning was so shite this summer), and they'll come through at a nice arc and pace. But consider the best catchers at slip we can recall: Simpson and Taylor. Now consider the players with the longest individual innings. Can't be a coincidence. Nor can it be a coincidence that Dravid is India's best slip fieldsman. Slips isn't about catching. It's about concentration. Maybe Warne and Waugh.M weren't known for their concentration, but the former was always in the game, and in the latter we have have confused complacency with laziness.

Of the current side then, who do you bet on to be concentrating when the chance comes? Punter is a quality slip, but I wonder if the captaincy detracts from his catching. Jacques has made big tons before, but his tendency to get out at inopportune times and dashing nature doesn't inspire confidence. On the other hand, Rogers is a slip, so it is hard to understand why he wasn't used there in Perth (team seniority?). Hussey (and Hussey Jr.) should be handy in the slips, and would seem to be good bets. And while no doubt at practise Clarke and Symonds swallow everything in sight, they've been disastrous to date. Despite being the two most athletic and brilliant fieldsmen in the side, both are temperamentally wayward and tend towards middling, not big, hundreds, which should rule them out.

The point of this being that I don't think we are bereft of options. Ponting has just been choosing the wrong people (ie. Clarke). But also, if we don't have enough players capable of concentrating for a day in the slips, what does this say about our batting?

[Yobbo]

The thing about slips catching is that you are depending on the 1st slip fieldsman to set the rest of the cordon in place. Having an inexperienced slipper at 1st means that all the slips could be too far back, which makes it harder for everyone.

Apart from Clarke's last drop which hit him in the guts, a lot of our cordon has been standing too far back lately and that's why they are dropping them.

[Scott Wickstein]

And it can't be helping that none of the wickets that the team has been playing on this summer could be called 'fast'- the MCG in particular is disgracefully slow, but the WACA, SACA and SCG wickets haven't been much better.