« FIRST TEST: SOPHIA GARDENS | Main | SECOND TEST: LORDS »

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

The Mongrel

It has to be said:

These Aussies, they never miss!
Cam is Nosferatu

Saw his comment at the SMH:

I dont know what's worse. NSW's defence or Brad Haddin's wicket keeping.

CommenterStephenR Location Date and time July 09, 2015, 9:27AM

lou

They dropped a few in the West Indies. It was one of my worries. Haddin made a meal of that. He misjudged it pretty much.

lou

Have you added Voges to the list? Was difficult but most definitely a drop. Johnson has had little to no luck in this match.

Tony Tea

Do you mean the one which scuffed the ground?

Tony Tea

Not forgetting, of course, Australia's fiasco in the Middle East:

In the two Tests on the dun-coloured surfaces of the Gulf ten months ago, for example, Pakistan made eight centuries and one double century; Australia managed one hundred, took twenty-one wickets in four innings, and dropped eleven catches.
Big Ramifications

Josh Hazlewood from the link in the main post:

Those ones are always tough. More than often it actually is a catch, I think you can see by the way it flies off the bat. They're really tough those full ones.

Bunkum. If you're wearing the gloves then those catches from edged "full" deliveries are bread and butter. Sure, you wouldn't want to be day dreaming, the ball can indeed appear to "fly off the bat". But standing back to a quick bowler gave Haddin puh-lenty of time to track it into his glove[s].

Furthermore, edges like that are easier in a lot of respects. The ball flies fast and true, so the 'keeper doesn't have to consider whether it's going to carry or if he needs to move forward. And those edges don't ever get late swing thru the air or dip or any other confounding factors. Just going by my experience, happy to be corrected [I did play one season of cricket as full time 'keeper].

That sort of nick should be anything but "always tough" for a professional wicket-keeper to catch. An unusual edge? Yes. Tough for the crowd to work out if it was a catch or bump ball? Yes. Umpire requires slightly more think music? Yes. But it wasn't a tough catch. I'm with you, lou. The ball hit near the heel of Haddin's hand. A total clanger.

The Josh-speak was yet another example of Aussie Test squad mutual ass covering when a player is seriously out of form or makes a big stuff up. Christ it ANNOYS me. They sound about as believable as politicians. I'm not saying they should bag their team mates, but please stop it with the puff and the make believe [ps: team balance ].

lou

TT, this latest test match second innings is one for the List I believe. Not looking forward to more.

Tony Tea

The simple, unalloyed, raw fact is that Haddin should have swallowed that chance without even having to dive. (And yes, List Time.)

Big Ramifications

Speaking of lists, I'm sure there must be a list floating about ranking batsmen and the %percentage of times they refer their own LBW decisions.

I think the coach or his team mates might have been forced to tell him to pull his head in, but when the new law was introduced it seemed like Shane Watson was in automatic referral mode, as if he thought he was entitled to use up a valuable referral every time. If there was a chance of saving his own ass then why not? It absolutely smacked of selfishness and ego.

Was I imagining that? There's no real way I can double check.

Big Ramifications

For your viewing pleasure, here is one of my favourite Sooky Watson moments. Check his body language in the replay at 0:38. He's too busy giving Haddin the hairy eyeball to keep an eye on the play. He's given up, basically.

Then when he wakes up, the dopey prick finds himself loitering in between Clarke and the wickets. And check his stupid-assed expression after he deservedly cops a nice whack on the knee. Pure Watto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVy924aahYo

nottrampis

I thought the BCC comentary was fantastic except for McGrath who is a boring as bat's p..s.

Who would have thought Boys is up there with the best of them. Always interesting and fantastic on batting technique!

The Mongrel

Please at least let this loss be the end of Watto.

How many times have I had the sinking feeling as he walks to the wicket. Please, this time have him concentrate. Let him go on and make a century. Let him not plonk his front leg down the wicket and be out LBW. Let him not rub salt in by wasting a referral.

How many times have I been disappointed.

Watching Watto crash and burn reminds me of the Royal Commission into the Westgate Bridge collapse:

‘Error begat error … and the events which led to the disaster moved with the inevitability of a Greek Tragedy.’

Carrot

Well, it looks like Haddin won't play the next Test anyway. I would have much preferred him to have been dropped rather than given compassionate leave (or whatever it ends up being), but I think that's at least 50% of our biggest problem out of the way, for one Test at least. Hopefully when they make the inevitable decision about Watson, we'll have actually have our best side on the park at Lord's.

lou

Big Rammers, that youtube vid is very funny. Clarke looks so utterly unapologetic about smacking Watson in the knee. As indeed he should be.

Big Ramifications

lou, it was replayed one year at the Alan Border Medal count, that's where I first saw it. Haddin seemed to enjoy watching the replay and all the trouble he caused to poor Watto. I made this triptych at the time which I just found deep in the bowels of my Pictures folders.

Big Ramifications
The simple, unalloyed, raw fact is that Haddin should have swallowed that chance without even having to dive.
My long-winded analysis fills me with much shame. I was overthinking a plate of beans because I hadn't been watching the game live [not one ball in 5 days]. All those missed balls of cricket viewing got focused onto one dropped catch from a video highlights package.

Along a similar vein of overthinking, Alastair Cook's "super juggling tumbling" catch to dismiss Haddin in the first Test was anything but....

After the initial missed attempt, Cook was diving backwards, falling downwards [gravity], his right hand was shooting upwards grabbing at the loose ball, his body began rotating so his left hand could help clutch the ball.... culminating in a most ungraceful elbow-first landing, the jolt clearly travelling thru his shoulder and neck.

Cook possessed enough catching skill for his plan B to work, enough strength for his lummox landing not to jar the ball loose. But jeez, I cringed. A Mark Waugh type taking a similar catch would have been half as busy, with a landing twice as smooth.

[To use primary school parlance, first impressions.... did that entire catch look rather unco to you guys? My mind flashed back to biomechanics lectures and one of its core tenets: any sporting skill or action should be performed as simply as possible, and its component actions should complement each other.]

Tony Tea

I'm not a bio-machinist, but I am a genie's arse:

Far be it for me to "do a Brew" and tell the Australian skipper what to do, but were I to crash a Ponting press conference I would instruct him to ditch the crouch. My immaculately crunched numbers (based on seconds of slap-dash research) reveal that since Ponting started crouching for catches he has dropped a shed load of chances and broken a finger. Trying to get under slips catches so that your fingers point upwards introduces an extra layer of complexity to the catching architecture (to apply traditional sporting nomenclature, which I just invented). Just stand there and catch it, Skip.
Big Ramifications

On a positive note, this game was probably my favourite Watto moment. An ODI in 2011.... it had it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKY91kK6l3k

** a day/night game at biggest cricket stadium in the world against the old enemy
** Watto opens and gets a BIG ton – carrying his bat for 161 not out
** anchoring Australia's biggest ever run chase at the MCG
** it goes down to the wire
** Watto finishes it in style with a six

Ahh, what could have been. Where did it all go wrong, Shane?

2BarRiff

Votes. Sigh.

2BarRiff

*Voges. Though the commentators are blaming Nevill.

The Mongrel

Well I'll say this for the Aussies-

They've managed to make the drops irrelevant.

Their batting in the first innings of the 3rd and 4th Tests has been so diabolical that they've been stuffed whether or not they hold their catches.

Tony Tea

Haddin dropped the Ashes in the First Test.

philsgone

No truer words typed TT

The Mongrel

Haddin dropped the Ashes in the First Test.

Assuming that Australia won in Cardiff (still a stretch)-

We would be 2-2 now.

Hard to see us winning or even drawing the fifth test on current form.

Even if we do win at The Oval, it's a dead rubber now. A different ball game had it been 2-2.

The comments to this entry are closed.