The Butcher vs Key Debate

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Rachael

Pringle, in today's Torygraph, points out that Butcher has frequently looked appalling at the start of a tour and then gone on to confound his critics as tours have gone on: could suffer with the ridiculously short warm up programme here.. but still my first choice.

It is interesting that everybody pillories Pringle for his cricket and for his nonsensical jottings, until he finally makes a point they agree with.

Originally Posted by © 2003 Wisden Almanack

Derek Pringle, now with the Daily Telegraph, played for England between 1982 and 1992. He is unmarried

The subscript at the foot of an article about cricketers and marriage.

Go Pring!

[Goatman]

My dear departed Grandad would only refer to Derek Pringle as "The Prat".

Never sussed out quite why he disliked him so much....

Ho-hum - thats the old for you - unpredictable!

[flanflinger]

Originally Posted by Rachael

Collingwood would be my second choice though.. and for all the resons you give. It's worth bearing in mind that Tresco looked a complete joke of a selection to most onservers when Fletcher plucked him from obscurity... a.

Hardly a complete joke... Trescothick had been on several A Tours, had played at England at all levels. Had been playing for Somerset in his teens, I remeber picking him for my fantasy Cricket team years before he was selected by England as I had read that he was one of the best batsmen of his age group (very similar to Ian Bell) he probably had not really made a big impact on the County scene, but the talent was well documented.

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/PLAYERS/E...K_ME_01003865/

Originally Posted by Cricinfo

There is something biblical about Marcus Trescothick's career: seven years of plenty as a schoolboy, seven years of famine when he reached the Somerset 1st XI. And lo, it came to pass in 1999 that he batted on a pacy pitch at Taunton against Glamorgan while Duncan Fletcher was their coach, and made a storming 167, with five sixes, when the next-best score was 50. When England needed a stand-in one-day opener in 2000, Fletcher remembered Trescothick. He took to international cricket like a duck to a TV screen. A true opener, he formed a habit of starting a series well with a mixture of expert leaves, crisp cover-drives, spanking pulls and fearless slog-sweeps. Hefty, knock-kneed and genial, he is described by Nasser Hussain as a left-handed Gooch, but his ease on the big stage and his blazing one-day strokeplay are just as reminiscent of David Gower.

By Most Observers - I am assuming you mean people with little knowledge of Cricket outside of the current test team....

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by flanflinger

Hardly a complete joke... Trescothick had been on several A Tours

I rather agree with you there FF... I had been fully aware of Trescothick (and had him in my fantasy sides) in the early nineties when he was battering the West Indian U19s along with Mathew Dowman (formerly of Notts).

Both Dowman and Trescothick were rewarded for their U19 heroics by long spells in the county seconds.
Dowman has sunk without trace and Trescothick has risen to the surface again.

Though how damaging five or six years scraping along as a county also-ran was - instead of pushing him into the environs of the Test side - can be seen by his weaknesses against the swinging ball.

Whenever this subject arises, I mention Dowman's double century in the Caribbean, and then I go on to mention the U19 West Indian who also hit a double century in the same series... and the following season he was playing for the West Indies and he still is. In fact Chanderpaul was quite a thorn in England's side during all of the last two series.

I wonder if his career moved on substantially after his early elevation to the International scene. Why couldn't we do that with Trescothick? It's not as though we were chock full of glorious batsmen back then. We were still trying to get runs out of Hick and Ramprakash and Crawley... and we were very short on decent lefthanders.

[Richie Benauds Love Child]

Weird that we were short of lefties, we seem to have them coming out of ears now !

[freddie flintoff 142]

Originally Posted by Richie Benauds Love Child

Weird that we were short of lefties, we seem to have them coming out of ears now !

must be something in the water