The Cricket Society III

Praveen kumar or Darren Sammy as a bowler? As the West Indies tour of England is coming up and i would say WI have a decent bowling line up. Sammy is like praveen kumar in terms of pace and swing and seeing as praveen kumar did alright in England do you think Sammy will have the same impact?

Praveen kumar or Darren Sammy as a bowler? As the West Indies tour of England is coming up and i would say WI have a decent bowling line up. Sammy is like praveen kumar in terms of pace and swing and seeing as praveen kumar did alright in England do you think Sammy will have the same impact?

That's a bit harsh on Sammy. Kumar is more of a medium pace bowler whilst Sammy is a fast medium.

Darren Sammy, but then again I'm West Indian.

I think he'll do pretty well in England, medium pacers seem to be able to generate quite a bit of swing in the English conditions, particularly if it cools down or is a bit dewy, as it often is.

Yeah and your bowling attack looks pretty good with Kemar Roach in good form and he should be able to get swing in english conditions and then Rampaul/Edwards with Sammy who is a good bowler and who people underestimate a lot. Would you take Shilingford or Bishoo? I would say Bishoo. Your batting is a worry though, especially top 3.

The slow bowling is always a difficult choice, because there's only really one place in the team, VERY RARELY two, and I would say that we have at least three GOOD spinners right now, in Bishoo, Narine, and Shillingford. There are also some ok spinners, such as Anthony Martin (played a few ODI's) and Suliemin Benn.
To be honest, its a pure toss up between the three spinners I first named, and the WI should take at least two of them. I would be leaning towards Narine and Bishoo though, as I'm not sure if Shillingford has the experience in overseas conditions.

However, I would more pick Rampaul over Edwards for England, as I think he has a bit more swing in his bowling, while Edwards has more of a skiddy action.

Yes, the top (and middle) order is always a concern for the WI, with the exception of course of Chanderpaul.

I would only play one spinner in England, i think that would work with the WI attack.
Are there any other batsmen coming up who you think will make it to the squad? You have a decent batting line up but the problem is they are too inexperienced and against a team like England who have a better bowling attack than Australia your youngsters could be exposed even worse than they have been so far.

To be honest, I don't really see any up and coming players, just mainly players who have been on the periphery for a while - e.g. Sarwan, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons, etc who will be able to fit into the side.

And whether or not to play 2 spinners depends on the conditions. I certainly wouldn't recommend it in every match, was just thinking that they should take two spinners in case the situation suits them, that they have good frontline spinners available

Yeah you should always take a back up, in case someone gets injured, like for India when Zaheer Khan got injured in the first test match we didnt have any able back up which was a fault.

Your batting line up obviously has talent as they showed in India last year, but they just need to learn to apply them everywhere.

Think you can win the test at the moment chasing 370?

Honestly? Not a chance. It will be a moral victory if they can make it to 300 IMHO

To be honest, I don't really see any up and coming players, just mainly players who have been on the periphery for a while - e.g. Sarwan, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons, etc who will be able to fit into the side.

And whether or not to play 2 spinners depends on the conditions. I certainly wouldn't recommend it in every match, was just thinking that they should take two spinners in case the situation suits them, that they have good frontline spinners available

Think the problem of WI batting has got a lot to do with the batting they pick.

We all know Gayle should be in the team. But I don't see any justification of picking such an inexperienced top 3. Barath, and especially Braithwate (who doesn't seem to have any shots) and powell. The only real experienced/good guys are chanderpaul and to some extent Bravo. And these two are scoring it's the rest letting them down. Pick one or two youngsters and groom them with experienced players. In fact they've already got one in Bravo. So what they're lacking is experience. The problem is they keep chopping and changing the squad. No one settles. Seems only a little while ago llendell simmons, Devon smith, marlon samuels were in the side. And now all of a sudden we've got Braithwate, Powell etc. Guys who haven't even done anything of note in domestic.

What WI need is to be realistic. Sarwan is a 40 average player. And brings experience to the side. He needs to be back in the side. Good thing they brought back Chanderpaul. Gayle needs to be back as an opener. When kirk comes back it'll be stronger, this guy unlike many of others actually has been dominating the domestic circuits and grits it out there in internationals.

A batting order of:
1. Gayle
2. Barath
3. DM Bravo
4. Kirk Edwards
5. Chanderpaul
6. Sarwan

Looks pretty good really. Bar maybe Barath, but the guy's got talent and he might come good.

Always feels as if the West indies are feeling a team of half strength. It's never their best team they send out. In limited overs it's the same.

I have to respectfully disagree. There is a difference between a great player "on paper" and one with the team.

While I agree that Gayle SHOULD be brought back, I disagree that he NEEDS to be brought back. From 1999-2011 even while he was in the team, we were drubbed several times 3-0, 4-0 etc all over the world. The same goes for Sarwan.

The West Indies issue is not one of ability/experience, but mentality. We've had almost the same batting lineup for the past 10 years - Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, and to lesser extent Lara (for 7 years) and it simply hasn't worked! I'd rather fail TRYING to do something new to kick start winning ways than going back to the old days and continue losing

I have to respectfully disagree. There is a difference between a great player "on paper" and one with the team.

While I agree that Gayle SHOULD be brought back, I disagree that he NEEDS to be brought back. From 1999-2011 even while he was in the team, we were drubbed several times 3-0, 4-0 etc all over the world. The same goes for Sarwan.

The West Indies issue is not one of ability/experience, but mentality. We've had almost the same batting lineup for the past 10 years - Gayle, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, and to lesser extent Lara (for 7 years) and it simply hasn't worked! I'd rather fail TRYING to do something new to kick start winning ways than going back to the old days and continue losing

I think he does need to be brought back. There's no experience at the top of the order. It's gonna collapse 9 out of 10 times.

I think the past drubbing is more to do with captaincy. Gayle was a terrible captain. Chanderpaul wasn't great either. Doubt neither was Lara. Sammy's a great leader and that's part of the reason of greater success. He isn't afraid to go for the win. Under Gayle things never seemed competitive, always too laid back.

Now West Indies have a good captain to lead them. And he's an underrated test bowler too. West Indies have had good enough players, it's about grooming them and playing them all together under a good leader.

It's very unrealistic guys like braithwate and Powell are suddenly going to turn good. And it's younger guys who haven't developed their game fully yet, not even learnt enough from domestic or learnt to dominate there. Hence the chance of them failing in internationals is huge. Plus younger guys will develop better when playing with some experience. 2 youngsters is enough. At the moment WI are playing 5 youngsters out of the top 6 batsman. And even at a point they wanted to drop chanderpaul (whom without him in this series would have been a mauling). Eventually as your youngsters start getting good playing and using the experience of the more experienced batsmen, you can start to phase the experienced batsmen out.

Am I the only one who thinks the standard of bowling and fielding in the IPL is just woeful?
I've only been watching for 20 minutes and I've already seen two schoolboy misfields and the easier dropped catch.
I wouldn't expect to see such elementary errors in my village team.

Standard of the English T20 cup >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> IPL

Correct me if I got this wrong but currently West Indies 1,2,3,6 batsmen only have 1 test hundred between them in like 40 tests. I believe the best record of the 4 is Deonarine.

Gayle has TWO TEST TRIPLE CENTURIES! Are you MAD?