England made Putrid pitches for Ashes: Michael Holding

He is hurt and bitter by the diffrent yardstick ICC uses to punish some and let others go scot free.
Interesting perspective from one from the SKY panel.

ICC condemned the Galle pitch but said nothing about the slower Oval
and Cook got away bowling 11 overs an hour...while many otehr captains have been banned



http://www.wisdenindia.com/cricket-article/putrid-pitches-quality-ashes/73602

Putrid pitches make for low quality Ashes

Michael Holding
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28 August 2013
Australia were a much better side than many expected and 3-0 is not a fair reflection of how the teams played. © Getty Images

At the start of the summer, a 3-0 scoreline wouldn’t have surprised too many. I certainly didn’t expect Australia to win a Test match. But when you look back at the series, and see how each game went, I don’t think 3-0 – and it could easily have finished 4-0 at The Oval – is a true reflection of how the teams played. I think Australia played a lot better than many expected and England, in my view, were below par. To be honest, both teams were brought closer together by putrid pitches. For the most part, they were pathetic. Only Lord’s and Old Trafford could be considered good cricket pitches.

A couple of years ago, the ICC condemned a pitch in Galle, saying it was too slow and the bounce too low. Well, we at Sky, during the broadcast, did a Hawk-Eye comparison between Sydney, Adelaide, The Oval and Galle. And The Oval was the slowest of them all. But you will see and hear nothing about that fact. To me, that is just plain wrong. People talk about home-team advantage, and being entitled to do whatever suits you. But it doesn’t permit you to spoil a game of cricket by preparing sub-standard pitches. Home advantage means you have your home crowd, you have conditions you’re familiar with. It doesn’t mean you alter the state of pitches to make the game ridiculous. I know England are not the only ones to do it, but it’s time to call a halt.

England didn’t look anything like as good as they seemed when they won the Ashes in Australia in 2010-11. The series too lacked genuine quality. I wouldn’t even bother to compare this Ashes to what took place in 2005. As far as I’m concerned, that was the best Test series I’ve ever watched. When I was part of a series, I wouldn’t really watch, because I was emotionally involved. But watching that 2005 series, without having a preference for any team or any emotional involvement in the series … I don’t think I’ve seen better. But compared to what they were in Australia, this England team was way below par. I think they’re a lot better than what they produced and, again, I put that down to playing conditions.

One can only hope the over-rates improve as well. I was part of a team that was criticised for being tardy, but in our defence, we had four guys with really long run-ups. There was also no stipulation at the time that you had to bowl 90 overs in a day, and we very rarely, if at all, sold the spectators short. Most Test matches didn’t last the full five days anyway. England, even with Graeme Swann bowling so many overs, dawdled along at 11.5 or 12 overs an hour. Yet, we’ve heard nothing about anybody being fined or suspended. It seems these regulations and conditions only apply to certain teams. I’m dying for the day when we’ll see a level playing field. I don’t know when that will happen, maybe when my grandchildren grow up.

The regulations are in place. It’s a matter of umpires applying them, it’s a matter of umpires dealing with what they have to deal with. You see the same foolishness with all these players leaving the field every five minutes. The regulations and the laws are there, we need umpires to apply them, around the world, and not according to which team or country is playing.

It’s sad that the last few headlines about the Test series will focus on the way the English players behaved afterwards. It was totally out of order, and juvenile. They need to look at themselves when they start behaving like that. They’ve made the news, and you don’t want kids hearing things like that. Kids tend to copy what they read, and what they hear about their so-called idols and heroes.

Ideally, children shouldn’t have sportsmen as their role models. It’s great to look up to them and admire them for what they’ve achieved, and try to emulate what they did as far as working hard and maximising whatever skill sets you were given. But I don’t think you should have them as role models. Kids could do better by looking a bit closer to home. Their parents and teachers wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

At the same time, sportsmen, like others in the public eye, have a responsibility to behave accordingly and set the right example. You’re not just blokes on the road that nobody knows and nobody’s ever heard about. You are someone that people look up to, whether they should or not, and you need to set an example.

Michael Holding played 60 Tests for West Indies between 1975 and 1987, and was part of the team that won the World Cup in 1979. He was an integral part of a team that lost just one series in nearly two decades, and is now a popular TV commentator

Is there anything that Holding doesn't have a moan about? Its called home advantage FFS...  

ShankyCricket wrote:Is there anything that Holding doesn't have a moan about? Its called home advantage FFS...  

I see his question is why was SL warned / condemned by ICC for the Galle pitch being slow and low if home advantage is allowed
I also see his question is how bolwing 11.5 overs and hour gets away ?

Fair questions those

Aww come on KP_Fan, how long have India been preparing dead as dodo pitches? They are the kings at it so you being India fan are in no position to crow.

Anyway I go along with what Sir Ian Botham said. The pitches did NOT suit England's batsmen hence their largely below average displays and he feels they thrive better on pacier and bouncy wickets like will be prepared in Australia. That is a big worry for Australia that even though the pitches weren't to England batsmen's liking they still trounced Australia.

Holding is so bitter. Not sure who's more bitter, him or Warne.

I can't wait till we smash West Indies next year

I wonder how much the state of the pitches was "designed" and how much just down to the weather conditions...I recall Mike did quite a detailed assessment early in the summer pointing out why there were going to be generally slow pitches throughout the series whatever the groundsmen tried...
As a matter of fact , I suspect the pitches actually produced , apart from perhaps not suiting England's batsmen , also rather handicapped Anderson and Broad. Going by what those two did on particular occasions anyway , it is quite likely they would have made something of a mess of the Australian batting in more helpful bowling conditions.
To be honest , I would have preferred more "traditional English" pitches , if it were possible , but I don't believe the results would have changed much. Perhaps 4-0...

Re the over rates : this 11.5 per hour surely isn't the rate for the series , is it ? Otherwise there would certainly be fines if not suspensions... Without checking , I would have thought both teams bowled their overs a little slower than we'd all like ,(all those DRS interludes don't help !) but only
occasionally slowed right down for tactical purposes ...and I do disapprove of that , but agree it is up to the umpires to move things
along.

I love Holding , but fear he is getting a bit grumpy lately...

there was a Simon someone writing for Telegraph after the urination culprits got away summing up the popular feeling:

"this Eng team may have a win at any cost attitude but is neither loved nor respected anywhere like the team of 2005"


People like Holding employed by SKY risk their employment to convey their deep disappointment.
It's easy...sack him and send him back.... Warne too..and Agnew and Boycott and Vaughan.......and others in english media ?
Shutting up the popular sentiment. Does it work ?

Unfortunately by doing nothing special or extraordinary and purely by relative comparisons  Aussies walked away with their head and popularity held high.

Slowing down over rates in particular is a distasteful thing and it should be strongly dealt with. SAs far as pitches go, lifeless tracks harm the game of cricket. But if the home team sense advantage in spinning tracks, then go for it, if they are better at playing on green tops, then go for it by all means. There is nothing whatsoever wrong in that. Result oriented tracks, spinning or seaming, make for good cricket.
But Holding has a different point here that we have to see. That is about consistency. If Sri Lanka could be warned for a slowish track, if conditions where similar, then England too should be warned. Same holds for over rate or any other offense. Think Holding is still seething at the ICC for the Ramdin issue. I thought that was way, way over the top from Chris Broad at that point of time, and we are still feeling the ripples in a sense.

ICC has turned into a pseudo body like United Nations  

can't say or do anything against ECB, BCCI, ACB type powerful boards or their players......

and use their pseudo muscle against poor and weaker Pak, Lanka and WI

I personally think Holding asked fair enough questions. Was he right in all of them? I dont know, but that shouldnt mean his statements are invalid. If the HE is correct, than I agree with that point. Why does Galle deserve to be scolded, while the Oval was just a matter of conditions? Unlike Holding, I have no issue with teams creating Dodo pitches at home, when India come to South Africa in December, I fully expect us to create seaming bumpers for them. But, whats good for the goose etc.

Bit rich coming from Holding, this over rate thing. Some may recall just how many overs the Windies bowled on the first day at The Oval in 1980 - just 72 in the six hours.
  There was no set amount of overs that had to be bowled in those days and the rules were totally slanted in Windies favour such as no limit to bouncers-per-over. No wonder they hardly ever lost at that time.

Holding's lack of love for England is not an anamoly....
they are unloved in Ireland also reports CI

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/current/story/667597.html


Warren Deutrom, Cricket Ireland's chief executive, politely insists that the ECB "does as much as they have the time, effort and resources to do" but many of we long-suffering aficionados of Irish cricket are not so sure.

Nor even that they have ridiculed Cricket Ireland's best efforts to create a national stadium in a village field and sell 10,000 tickets to watch the nations clash by sending a team devoid of any of its household names.

No, although all the above contribute to the throbbing ulcer, the real pain and anger is caused by the perception of an utter lack of support for Ireland's efforts to lift itself into the game's elite.

Perhaps Irish fans should be glad that the self-obsessed bunch that have just won the Ashes are not on their way. Certainly the manicured outfield in Malahide can do without the liquid deposits they left for the Oval groundstaff to mop up last Sunday. On their last visit here the response of one prominent player to a request for an autograph was to tell a nine-year-old to "f*** off".

The three-times Ashes-winners seem pretty unloved in their homeland too, and it clearly rankles with them. When they took a 3-0 lead in that series the public reaction was underwhelming and focused on the team's flaws - which moved spiky wicketkeeper Matt Prior to demand that supporters lay off the criticism and "show us some respect".

And last week, when England fans who had paid £110 to watch a display of time-killing batting responded with boos, Stuart Broad - whose £500,000-plus annual wedge is paid out of those same ticket receipts - tweeted that "true fans" wouldn't have done so.

The response of Independent columnist Michael Calvin last weekend was typical of the UK media which has fallen out of love with Andy Flower and Alastair Cook's team: "These have been the counterfeit Ashes… the contests have lacked authenticity. The approach of the England management has been myopic and mean-spirited. Cook's team have played in a vacuum of joylessness and indifference to their wider responsibilities.

"Matt Prior's demand for respect, a dressing-room buzzword without meaning or merit, sums up their isolationism. It is the product of an overwrought, self-regarding culture which has manifested itself most ominously at The Oval, where the attempt to kill the game degenerated into a parody of professionalism."

The England players talk of respect, without realising that the notion is one you command, not demand. And they are pretty slow to hand it out too, as one incident from the 2011 ICC World Cup illustrates. Ireland's stunned England - and the world - by chasing down 327 in Bangalore, a victory which was largely down to Kevin O'Brien's 50 ball century.

In his book Six After Six, O'Brien wrote about an incident during his innings.

". . . just after I got to 50, James Anderson bowled a ball at my feet. I got my bat down on it just in time. "'Good ball, Jimmy,' I said to him. "Anderson's face darkened and snapped back, 'What would you know what a good ball is?' "'Well, I mightn't know what a good ball is,' I came back with, 'but I know a bad one. I just hit your last one over there,' as I pointed my bat towards the grandstand."

In 2011, as he has this week, Flower sent over a second-string peppered with has-beens, would-bes and never-gonna-bes. They demanded a 10.15am start to facilitate an early exit, staying barely 30 hours in Dublin - in contrast to the Pakistan and Australia teams who came for a week and visited schools and clubs, giving a priceless boost to the development programme.

And the courtesy of negotiating dates doesn't come into it, with the setting of this week's game coming via a one-line email to CI saying "we will play you on September 3rd". An Autumn Tuesday during the week schools reopened after the summer holidays made CI's marketing campaign a far more difficult one.

But the most damage the ECB has inflicted on Ireland has been its grooming of our best players. Back in 2001 when Ed Joyce began his quest for Test cricket, few begrudged him his desire to push himself to the limit of his ambitions. One of his first games for England, a floodlit T20 in Southampton in 2006, gave him a good idea about how he was valued.

A nasty ankle injury saw him taken by ambulance from the field to hospital, some miles away. When he got the all-clear, after midnight, he limped outside in his full England kit where he realised he hadn't a penny on him. His new masters hadn't bothered to send an escort, or even organise his transport back. A Southampton taxi-driver took pity and returned him to his hotel, bruised inside and out.

Eoin Morgan was next, a brilliant limited-overs batsman but one whose Test career could well be over after 16 games, doomed to the same one-day limbo of his former comrades.

Boyd Rankin was coerced by his county to ditch his country, but now he lines up against them with just a faint hope of forcing his way into Test cricket and no way back to Ireland before the 2015 World Cup, when he will be 31. There are real fears that belligerent one-day specialist Paul Stirling could be next

How did Warwickshire coerce Rankin to ditch his country?

Oh, and KP_fan, why did you leave out the last part of that article, where it talks about the Irish women's involvement in the County Championship, the offer for the Irish men's team to play in the YB40, coaching etc.
Really, it's a pretty one-sided article, picking out every incident it can (implying that Ed Joyce wasn't picked up from hospital because he's Irish, rather than simply because of a mistake, for example), to bash England while largely ignoring the fact that, without the County Championship, it is doubtful that Ireland would have reached the standard that it has.

" On their last visit here the response of one prominent player to a request for an autograph was to tell a nine-year-old to "f*** off"."

If the writer is so confident that this took place in exactly the way he describes, then why not name the player? Its a pretty serious allegation to make.

KP_fan wrote:The England players talk of respect, without realising that the notion is one you command, not demand. And they are pretty slow to hand it out too, as one incident from the 2011 ICC World Cup illustrates. Ireland's stunned England - and the world - by chasing down 327 in Bangalore, a victory which was largely down to Kevin O'Brien's 50 ball century.

In his book Six After Six, O'Brien wrote about an incident during his innings.

". . . just after I got to 50, James Anderson bowled a ball at my feet. I got my bat down on it just in time. "'Good ball, Jimmy,' I said to him. "Anderson's face darkened and snapped back, 'What would you know what a good ball is?' "'Well, I mightn't know what a good ball is,' I came back with, 'but I know a bad one. I just hit your last one over there,' as I pointed my bat towards the grandstand."

Right so this article is using a bit of sledging and chat between bowler and batsman to show that the England team are monsters  

Olly wrote:

KP_fan wrote:The England players talk of respect, without realising that the notion is one you command, not demand. And they are pretty slow to hand it out too, as one incident from the 2011 ICC World Cup illustrates. Ireland's stunned England - and the world - by chasing down 327 in Bangalore, a victory which was largely down to Kevin O'Brien's 50 ball century.

In his book Six After Six, O'Brien wrote about an incident during his innings.

". . . just after I got to 50, James Anderson bowled a ball at my feet. I got my bat down on it just in time. "'Good ball, Jimmy,' I said to him. "Anderson's face darkened and snapped back, 'What would you know what a good ball is?' "'Well, I mightn't know what a good ball is,' I came back with, 'but I know a bad one. I just hit your last one over there,' as I pointed my bat towards the grandstand."

Right so this article is using a bit of sledging and chat between bowler and batsman to show that the England team are monsters  

But not so bad that they won't invite England over for a massive money spinning match!

I really wish that when I choose to ignore a poster it would not even show their articles.

LondonTiger wrote:I really wish that when I choose to ignore a poster it would not even show their articles.

+1000. Sick to my back teeth of these articles

VTR wrote:

LondonTiger wrote:I really wish that when I choose to ignore a poster it would not even show their articles.

+1000. Sick to my back teeth of these articles