Ashes Bowling attack

[Beny]

Originally Posted by Ern

LOL Seamer you had better wrap Warne up in cotton wool, he is the only real threat you have got, I would not want to gloat about England beating an under strength Australia, whats the fun in that?.

Well, I guess I don't need to reply to this as most people would already know that I think Australia's seamers are England's greatest threat.

[Ernest]

I have always thought Warne the best Australian bowler, even when the Australian seamers where at their prime, which they arn't no more.
England have never really played Warne well, neither has any countries batsmen really, at best the Australian seamers are good to very good, Warne is great.
England seem to prefare the ball coming on to the bat.

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Ernest

I have always thought Warne the best Australian bowler

Well, to quote The Sun.. Warney's Back

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,3-2005162771,00.html

[Beny]

Ern, Statisticly this Aussie bowling outfit is the best ever. I read in Mark Richardson's article in 'inside cricket' this month that he thinks McGrath is now better than Haddle ever was. In fact every pundit writing for the magazine says rougly the same thing.. These guys are the Ian Chapples, Riche Benauds and Shaun Pollock's of this world. When, if ever, do you think that the Aussie attack was ever better? You'd have a hard time proving it...

[cantplaycantalk]

England know that they can't match or even come close to Warne in the spin department, so I am expecting wickets with a bit of life for the pace bowlers, bounce carry, a bit up and down later. The one area that England do have a bowling advantage in the 1st choice attack.
The English bowlers are faster than the Aussies. They don't have the subtlety, accuracy and experience of McGrath and Gillespie but they are significantly faster.

Harmison, Jones and Flintoff are all above 90mph, Hoggard is low 80's.

Of course we may find that the groundsmen refuse to produce pitches to fit the home attack...

Now under those conditions would australia change a "winning" team?

[Beny]

The English bowlers are faster than the Aussies.

So what? That doesent make Harmison any where near as good as McGrath or even Gillespie for that matter.

[Leafy Seadragon]

Agree that McGrath isn't exactly the quickest, but would suggest you recheck the pace of Gillespie - he's consistently at the 90mph mark. Lee and Tait would probably chew up the English attack for speed, but as you would no doubt remind me, speed isn't everything... My money's on McGrath, Kaspa & Gillespie on seaming wickets. Oh and there's the added bonus that the bounce would favour Warne as well. Why would Australia want to change a winning team with seaming wickets so ideally suited?

[cantplaycantalk]

I agree, the point was that preparing a pitch for extreme pace is Englands best chance.
If that causes the Australians to bring in Lee and Tait then Australia are having to change a winning team. Would they do that?
Neither Tait nor Lee could really be regarded as any better than the England attack. Gillespie is one of the best bowlers in the world but at present he is the only genuinely quick bowler in the Australian 1st choice attack.
That being the case I would suggest that it is in Englands interest to produce fast bouncy tracks, which would to some extent mitigate the Australian strong advantage in the spin department, and work to the strengths of the England bowling attack. 3 out of 4 of the English bowlers are without question faster than any of the Australian 1st choice attack and appreciably faster than all but Gillespie. On traditional English seamer friendly wickets McGrath could be virtually unplayable while Gillespie and Kasper would also be well suited.

If this happens then it would be the Australian seam bowling attack as a unit rather than either Shane Warne or McGrath as individuals who would be the main Australian threat.
As my response to the survey was to suggest that the Australian main threat would be the seam attack in general my suggestion is that this will be the case due to the way that England NEED the pitches to play in order to stand any chance.
I am not suggesting that the Australian bowlers are not extremely good, only that the English need to use any advantage they can find. The English bowlers it must be noted are significantly younger than the Australian couterparts and do not as a result have the wealth of experience.
If Australia were to drop McGrath and Kasper to bring in Lee and Tait to suit a fast bouncy wicket then McGrath is by default not the deciding factor in that particular match. I very much doubt that whatever the condition of the pitch Australia would change the balance and structure of a team that is so successful.

[AussieCricketLover]

Thing is mate, you could bring in another XI players, and you'd still be outgunned by the likes of McGrath, Warne, Gillespie and Kasprowicz, and I sincerly mean this I'm not trying to be a smartarse or anything, I genuinely believe these bowlers have never had an equal, I'm sorry to say the likes of Harmison and Hoggard are beginners next to McGrath and Gillespie.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by cantplaycantalk

I agree, the point was that preparing a pitch for extreme pace is Englands best chance.

How, exactly, do you prepare a pitch for pace? I see two routes:

{i} Make it hard and fast.. so that even a second rate speedster like Lee or Tait can be a real hadful and so Harmison in particular can get balls of a fullish length lifting sharply into the batsmen.

{ii} Make is slow and low.. so that even an excellent bowler like McGrath can be handled... ensuring that only the really, REALLY fast bowlers stand a chance of delivering an unplayable delivery.

Option {i} sounds like the perfect pitch for Shane Warne (whose balls will turn on any surface and who does best when the "kick" of the fast and bouncy track is high and fast) and for McGrath / Gillespie / Kasprowicz (whose lively pace is more than adequate on such a lively surface).

Option (ii) would limit Warne and McGrath's aggressive options.. but of course... those two can make scoring almost impossible even on slow and low tracks.. and both McGrath and Kasprowicz have a great record of finding swing / seam movement when othersr can't... and Gillespie's Gough-like in his ability to trouble with variations in delivery even when conditions are against him.

The other point is that the majority of the Aussies prefer the sort of back-foot shots that tend to dominate on fast and bouncy tracks.

The way to deal with the Aussies has to be forgetting pace and preparing a damp minefield. Give conditions in which Flintoff's normally very ordinary deliveries are jumping and keeping low... where Hoggard is odds-on to swing the ball all over the shop... where Harmison's full length deliveries are seaming so wildly as to be virtually unplayable... and where batsman are basically not going to middle a ball in an entire session.

Then you need batsmen who can do what the Aussies can't, and thrive in such conditions: forget the strokeplayers and get Butcher and Thorpe crawling to half centuries off thick edges and leg byes.

Easy in theory.. but we've no longer got Hussain to grit it out.. and I'd not back the likes of Tresco, Strauss, Flintoff and Jones to do any better than the Aussies on such a track.