3Ashes 2013: Span van die reeks

One of the things that sur­prised me dur­ing the series was how the pun­dits com­pared the respect­ive wick­et keep­ers — with Brad Had­din get­ting a pretty good press, whilst Matt Pri­or got a slightly neg­at­ive over­all rat­ing. From what I saw I did­n’t think there was much to pick between them, so I thought I’d see how the num­bers stack up. I figured I might as well do the same for the rest of the sides and see if a team of the series emerges that reflects how well indi­vidu­als have played.

so, laat gaan met daardie 2 men behind the wick­et first

Over­all Had­din has the frac­tion­ally bet­ter bat­ting aver­age, and undeni­ably took a lot more catches behind the wick­et. How­ever, jy kan net vang wat oor jou pad kom, so a more telling num­ber would be the num­ber of missed oppor­tun­it­ies. Missed oppor­tun­it­ies are hard to quanti­fy of course. The bat­ting num­bers aren’t dif­fer­ent enough to jus­ti­fy pick­ing 1 play­er over the oth­er, and had Pri­or played 1 of 2 meer beurt, en het 'n 50, the aver­ages would be near enough equal.

Regard­less of the views of the pun­dits, on bal­ance I’d pick Pri­or. Firstly I have a sense that Had­din made more mis­takes behind the wick­et with a few missed chances. Secondly, I have a great­er faith that Pri­or would be the man in a pres­sure situ­ation — des­pite a good effort Had­din failed to see Aus­tralia through to vic­tory in the first test.

die boulers

I’ve only included play­ers who bowled at least 50 boulbeurte

The num­bers match up fairly well with who I’d pick for my team. Any­one who watched any of the series would be able to pick Graeme Swann, Ryan Har­ris & James Ander­son without a hes­it­a­tion, leav­ing the only ques­tion who the 4^ste bowl­er would be. As the 3^ST highest wick­et taker, en om mooi handig met die kolf, Stu­art Broad is the easy choice. He was also more eco­nom­ic­al than either Siddle or Starc. The final con­firm­a­tion of these 4 is dat hulle 4 van die 5 who had an aver­age under 30 — Tim Bresnan being the only oth­er bowl­er to achieve this.

Elke kant het 1 very good bowl­er who is unlucky to miss out — Tim Bresnan for Eng­land and Peter Siddle for Aus­tralia. Both play­ers are hard work­ing, ordentlike met die kolf, and con­trib­ute well in the field. Bresnan took his wick­ets slightly cheap­er, whilst Siddle was a bit more eco­nom­ic­al per over bowled and both picked up key wick­ets at key times. The choice between them would prob­ably come down to the flip of a coin if a 5^ste bowl­er was going to be picked.

The bal­ance of the bowl­ers for vary­ing con­di­tions also works out very well. Swann is the best spin­ner in the world at the moment and Ander­son is one of the top 2 bowl­ers out­right with won­der­ful con­trol and an abil­ity to find swing in any con­di­tions. Broad has the abil­ity to both move the ball and bowl genu­inely fast to pres­sure any bats­man who struggles with short pitched deliv­er­ies. Har­ris is con­sist­ently accur­ate and has a skiddy speed which will unsettle even qual­ity bats­men on good sur­faces. Neither side has a really top class genu­inely fast bowl­er which is the only chink in the qual­ity of the attack.

die kolwers

I’ve only included genu­ine bats­men, and have excluded a couple of the Aus­sie bats­men who only played in the first or second test (and did­n’t do well)

Pick­ing a bat­ting line up is far less straight-for­ward then a bowl­ing attack. Ian Bell is the only bats­man who can be picked without hav­ing to think. Michael Clarke also has a good aver­age but is helped by 2 nie-outs (as a res­ult of declar­a­tions).  That said, Clarke is a world-class bats­man and it would be pretty hard to jus­ti­fy leav­ing him out of the side.

The remain­ing 4 are trick­i­er to select. Shane Wat­son is use­ful with the ball and made the 3^ST highest aver­age, but he has a tend­ency to make runs when they don’t mat­ter, and get out when a score is needed. I also haven’t yet picked any open­ers, and Wat­son did­n’t play well as an open­er (and isn’t con­sist­ent enough) en die feit dat hy het net 2 wick­ets means he’s not going to make the team. Chris Rogers sur­prised me and had a much bet­ter series than I expec­ted him to. He improved as the series went on and he was a very calm and con­sist­ent play­er — ideal as an open­er. As a res­ult he makes the team.

Pieterson het 'n effens minder as die baansyfer reeks, how­ever he had to find form early on hav­ing just returned from an injury he was clearly still car­ry­ing through­out the last test. His abil­ity to make game chan­ging runs, en aan te teken wanneer lopies nodigste is (and his sheer enter­tain­ment value) def­in­itely gets him a place.

I still need anoth­er open­er and the remain­ing choice is between the “bar fight 2”. The num­bers make this easy, and Root’s reas­on­able aver­age is par­tic­u­larly impress­ive giv­en the pres­sure he was under mak­ing his open­ing debut in such a key series. He is also a much more care­ful play­er than Warner which is bet­ter suited to test crick­et, and he showed he is a quick learner by improv­ing his tech­nique as the series went on.

This leaves just a final bats­man to pick. The num­bers say Steve Smith but I was­n’t at all con­vinced that he was a test bats­man. Without his 1 high score and his “not out” innings enhan­cing it, his aver­age would be under 21 which is a more accur­ate reflec­tion of the series he had. Khawaja had a very poor series and is out of the pic­ture so that leaves the choice of Trott, Bair­stow and Cook. Des­pite his dis­ap­point­ing series with the bat it’s easy to pick the Ashes win­ning cap­tain as the cap­tain for the whole team, espe­cially if he were a touch down the order to relieve the pres­sure that open­ing and being cap­tain brings.

The num­bers and my line up aren’t quite a match, maar ek het opgetel 5 van die top 7 by num­bers and added in Alastair Cook, who des­pite his dis­ap­point­ing series would be hard to leave out. The 2 who miss out — Shane Wat­son and Steve Smith have both man­aged to pro­duce num­bers that very much flat­ter the real­ity of how well they played. This is doubly so when you con­sider that the 2 play­ers I have picked instead (kok & wortel) both had to face tough­er con­di­tions as open­ing bats­men.

Finale line-up

1. Chris Rogers
2. Joe Root
3. Alastair Cook (c)
   
4. Kev­in Pieterson
5. Michael Clarke
6. Ian Bell
7. Matt Pri­or (w)
   
8. Graeme Swann
9. Stu­art Broad
10. Ryan Har­ris
11. James Ander­son

This is a very strong but some­what unbal­anced side, met slegs 3 Aus­trali­ans com­pared to 8 Eng­lish­men. How­ever, Eng­land have just won 3–0 and were good money for that sco­reline. No-one would have blinked if a sim­il­ar “best of” team from the 90’s was largely Aus­trali­an, so laat ons geniet dit nou dat die bordjies verhang.

Het gevind dat hierdie nuttige? Moet asseblief laat ons weet deur die val onder 'n opmerking. As jy wil graag inteken gebruik asseblief die skryf skakel op die spyskaart by die top reg. Jy kan dit met jou vriende ook deel deur gebruik te maak van die sosiale skakels hier onder. Cheers.