Asia vs Rest Of The World (cricket)

[J@3]

The difference between the West Indies and Australia is that the Aussie junior development system is second to none. If you want to see up and coming Aussie players, don't look at Australia A, check out the state competitions

[Ataraxia]

ok I will .......and yeah I do agree that the Aussie system is well planned out....unfortunately if only the asian teams could organise so well we too could be kickin ass....no offense but asian youngster have more raw talent...its just that they have to play with broken bats and terracota pitches and withering leather balls ......
but anyway, lets see what happens

[Ataraxia]

oh yeah and Warne said he might return for the World Cup..... ....Cambyman will be happy
http://sl.cricinfo.com/link_to_database ... N2005.html

and good news for us, Murali agrees to tour the Aussies after this....I just hope Emerson or Hair isnt around

[J@3]

I found this article, thought it was quite interesting...

By Malcolm Conn of The Australian

15 September 2001

Rarely has Australian cricket been more exciting or more popular. With the help of modern communications the best Test and one-day team in the world has never been so widely exposed or followed.

There has never been more international cricket and the players have never been paid better. Surely the only conclusion which can be reached then is that cricket’s future has never been brighter...

However, as Australia sets itself an unprecedented place in cricket’s history the domination of this mighty side across the globe raises some uncomfortable questions.

Indeed, if there was one tiny microcosm which opened a window to the game’s direction it was not Australia’s demolition of the West Indies last summer by Australia A’s 216-run slaughter of Zimbabwe at the Gabba in the opening match of the Africans’ one-day campaign.

In the wider context of world sport it highlighted the profound anachronism that cricket has become.

What other major world sport competing in the multi-million dollar entertainment industry would allow such a disparity of players amongst its showcase sides?

How can the second group of players from one team be so much better than the leading competitors from another?

Zimbabwe came to Australia to play in front of several hundred thousand people around the country paying millions of dollars to watch some of the best cricket can offer yet many of their players would not get a game for a state side.

Murray Goodwin, recently one of Zimbabwe’s finest batsmen, proves this point. He has thrown in his lot with Western Australia but has found games and runs have not come easily.

Conversely, most players in the Australia A side would walk into Zimbabwe’s team, and so they should. The level of coaching right through to the cricket academy, the standard of competition and the vast exposure of many at international level means that Australia has the best prepared and developed players in the world.

Can cricket sustain itself in such an unequal environment? Is the cherished tradition of country versus country which has been the very foundation of the game for 124 years the best way to see this olde worlde game through a new century of even greater pressures and demands?

Should the best players be competing against each other regardless of where they come from?

Most major sport around the world is played at club level, where almost all of the good players are well paid to match their skills against each other constantly at an elite level.

A player representing his country is still held up as the ideal but in many cases this defies reality. Clubs now invest so much in their stars that in many cases a player’s first and, in some cases, only loyalty lies with the organisation that pays him, not the locality listed in his passport.

Recent history is littered with examples of this. Where was Luc Longley during the 1996 Olympics when the Chicago Bulls were in the middle of winning three successive championships? Having maintenance surgery under the club’s instruction during the NBA off-season. Bad luck for Australia that it coincided with the Olympics.

And how many games of soccer has Harry Kewell played for Australia? Hardly any as Leeds United attempt to protect an investment now valued at 50 million pounds - almost double the total income of Australian cricket in any given year.

While cricket’s values and heritage are being reinforced by Steve Waugh through his broad and dynamic leadership, playing cricket for their country is not what most of Australia’s elite young athletes end up striving towards.

Most pursue one of the football codes, just as Kewell did through the New South Wales soccer academy. He now earns more than the entire Australian cricket team.

There are 352 AFL players going around in any given week but only 66 places available at state level and 11 in the national team.

AFL football is an exciting option for many of the same young men who could also become this nation’s finest cricketers and it is a sport which has managed to sustain itself for 130 years despite no real international competition. The pinnacle is an AFL premiership.

For all cricket’s purity and popularity as Australia’s major national and international sport, more people watch a month of AFL football than an entire international summer of Test and one-day matches.

Yet in just about every sense Australia is cricket’s lucky country given the sport’s success, resources and infrastructure.

South Africa runs a strong second to Australia yet many of their brightest young sports stars want to play soccer if they’re black and rugby if they’re white. In Zimbabwe and Kenya there is no contest. Soccer is the overwhelming game of choice.

So it is in England also, where narrow cricket officials and mean-spirited governments have done an amazing job in recent decades to take a national past time and turn it into an increasingly obscure curiosity which is not played or watched by most children in the country.

At varying stages over the last decade or so England’s cricket team has contained more players who were born or the learnt the game outside England, than those who could be considered truly native in every sense.

There are more West Indian soccer players competing through the divisions in England than there are West Indian cricketers and Dwight Yorke, who is with Manchester United, gets paid more in a month than the entire West Indian cricket team could hope to earn in a year.

Only on the Indian sub-continent is cricket number one and there shameless administrators have sold out to the one-day game, prompting some of the biggest names to in turn sell out completely.

Cricket must begin to think outside the square, or country, if it is to survive and thrive as a global game. Institutions which have sustained it through the last century may not be able to carry it through the next.

It is no longer good enough to simply assume that international competition will be enough.

Ask this simple question. Which would have been the best, most exciting and most eagerly anticipated one-day clash last summer?

1 - Australia v West Indies.

2 - Australia v Zimbabwe.

3 - Australia v Australia A.

There is no contest. Australia v Australia A because it would include almost all the best players going around this summer. MacGill versus Warne on its own would draw a crowd.

Hobart statistician Ric Finlay points out that only 34 of the 58 players who have represented Tasmania since 1990 were from the state.

Of the 334 Sheffield Shield/Pura Cup players in that time, 68 have sought their destinies in other states, which represents about 20%.

There is no argument that this movement of players has been part of the reason why Australia has the best domestic competition in the world - the best available talent is evenly spread.

Should this be considered for elite competition so that as many of the best players as possible are involved?

Is there a higher form of competition cricket can create to supplement and enhance its current traditions?

What is the point of having Zimbabwe as a major cricketing nation when most of its young players are being forced out of the country by its poor economic and political situation?

Why did the International Cricket Council ever bother to give Kenya one-day international status when this decaying African country has little more than a club system run by a small upper class Indian elite. The major cricketing countries who form the ICC have never followed their vote with their teams. No one wants to play Kenya, and with good reason.

The net benefit from Kenya hosting the ICC Knockout Championship in October was almost negligible. The pitch and ground at the Nairobi Gymkhana were specially prepared by South African curator Andy Atkinson and the event was run from the ground up by the ICC.

From next year development money from the ICC’s recent billion dollar World Cup television rights package will be available for struggling Test nations, as cricket attempts to sure up what it already has before looking further afield. But then cricket administrators have almost always been well off the pace and, in some cases, simply passed by.

World Series Cricket and the South African rebel tours have proved that many players found playing for their country simply did not offer enough.

Three years ago Australia’s national team almost went on strike over what this concept was actually worth. Handsome pay rises resulted across the board.

One of the great Test batsmen of all time, Graham Gooch, was clearly confused by his duty to Queen and country.

“There is no greater honour than playing for your country,” Gooch droned at just about every captain’s press conference during Australia’s triumphant 1993 Ashes tour as he did his best to avoid answering questions.

“Why then did you go on a rebel tour of South Africa?” I asked in frustration one day.

“Oh,” he replied. “I don’t have any regrets about going to South Africa. None at all.”

So is a cricketer simply an ambassador who represents his country or an entertainer who deserved to be well paid?

In the modern age he is a professional entertainer first and foremost.

How and where will he be entertaining at the end of this century?

[Ataraxia]

lol this looks like something outta ESPN......hes using West Indies and Zimbabwe as examples as to which match will be exciting ....everyone knows those two teams SUCK big time.....
oh well I think no sport has a bigger dominance than that of Formula 1...we all know who owns that sport......

but yeh, me n my bro have talked abt that club thing to...it'll be interesting if u have stuff like the Champions League(football) happenin....and that clubs are allowed to buy players and stuff....u'll see the cricket world come closer, because sri lankans will play with aussies, indians will play with paki's, poms will play with west indians etc.....but I dont think Cricket has the funding to have something like that.....

anyway interesting article although it truly belongs in ESPN

[Ataraxia]

btw check this out.....looks like theirs a series between a World XI team and the Kiwis starting Jan 22nd.....interesting.
articles abt Jeff Wilson

After ignoring Jeff Wilson, the double international, since his return to cricket in 2002-03, the selectors have suddenly named him in the New Zealand squad for their three-match series against the World XI. Wilson, who played four ODIs against Australia back in 1993, was forced to give international cricket away after receiving the first of his 60 caps for the rugby All Blacks, and nobody had tipped his shock return.



"I have been working towards Black Caps selection," said Wilson, who retired from all forms of rugby in May 2002. "Now that I have this chance I am looking forward to getting in there and making the most of it."

Comfortable taking the new ball, batting almost anywhere in the order and fielding in the slips or the outfield, Wilson is a true allrounder. His comeback season was ruined by injury, but last year he took 23 first-class wickets at 17 for Otago and averaged 52 with the bat in the domestic one-day competition.

"His match-turning ability is undoubted and we just need to see if he can step up to this level again and also see if he can perform in a travel-play-travel environment," said John Bracewell, the coach. "We are keen to explore another option for a bowler who can bat well in the closing overs. There is no guarantee that Jeff will be a regular feature in the team, but this is an opportunity for him to establish himself."

One can only speculate about how Wilson's cricket career could have panned out after his blazing 44 not out off 28 balls, which sealed an unlikely series-levelling victory at Hamilton in 1993, as a 19-year-old against Australia. Since returning from the All Blacks, Wilson's performances have failed to attract the selectors' interest and he was surprisingly left out of the A-team's tour of South Africa at the start of the season.

Wilson's returns this season have been useful rather than outstanding, and there has been an undercurrent of scepticism towards him, with some provincial players and selectors believing he is not up to international standard. Those people forget that Wilson possesses an X-factor and he makes things happen. His inclusion in the squad, which carried no other surprises, means New Zealand's bowling allrounders will need to be on top of their games. The series begins at Christchurch on January 22.

New Zealand Stephen Fleming (capt), Nathan Astle, Mathew Sinclair, Scott Styris, Hamish Marshall, Chris Cairns, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum (wk), Jeff Wilson, Daniel Vettori, Kyle Mills, Daryl Tuffey.

[The X]

at least Tuffey is back from injury....gives them another bowler....

and as for Jeff Wilson, he was a great winger who should have slid in for a try 10 years ago instead of being a hero and giving George Gregan a career....but I'm glad they dropped McMillan, Wilson can't be any worse, so may as well give him a go....

[MaD_hAND1e]

Did anyone see the USA team when they played? I saw something on the news about America starting a cricket league and they interviewed some american spectators and they said "I don't get this game" and then they interviewed some english people and they said "Americans won't get this game"