Howzat - The Cricket Forum

Bit of trivia...a total of 867,002 people attended the five tests.

More trivia

- England have not won a Test in three of the last four Ashes Series held in Australia.
- England are now winless in their last 11 Tests away from home, losing nine and managing a draw on the other two occasions

Smith scored an impressive 687 runs in this seasons Ashes (7 innings, 3 hundreds and an average of 137.40). But he still fell well short of the record set by The Don back in 1930. In just 7 innings he scored an amazing 974 runs with 4 centuries and a top score of 334 at an average of 139.14

In the 2nd ODI btw RSA and India the tourists needed just TWO runs to win - with nine wickets and 31 overs to spare - when the umpires decided to break for lunch. Now to be fair the umpires were following the letter of the law but fair dinkum, surely there is some room for common sense.

Afghanistan have thumped Zimbabwe in their 3rd ODI

Not a lot of cricket chat from the Aussies on the site at the moment.

I can't think why.

Tell us Steve.... what was that you said about how Stuart Broad would start crying and run home to mummy...?

Steve Smith-Cheat Blubs For The Cameras

Love the hypocrisy of the poms. How quick they are to forget Atherton's ball tampering that only resulted in a fine. Apparently the ECB don't mind cheats. Then there has been Marcus Trescothick who openly admitted to changing the condition of the ball during the famous Ashes of 2005, where Simon Jones, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison delivered one of the most devastating, and sustained, spells of reverse swing ever executed at international level.

Trescothick’s open admission to using an English sweet — one that had been put through a scientific regime of performance certainty — all throughout that series came as no surprise to those involved directly in the game.

Infact listening to commentary during the first test at the Gabba Michael Vaughan went into some detail re the lengths england went to in order to change the condition of the ball in 2005. And it's not as if that series was a one off for england.

The reality is 'ball tampering' is a practise that has been going on for years and the ICC have failed to take it seriously. Under ICC rules artificial altering of the ball's state is strictly forbidden. Article 2.2.1 of the ICC's Code of Conduct for Players explicitly prohibits "applying any artificial substance to the ball; and applying any non-artificial substance for any purpose other than to polish the ball" as well as "scratching the surface of the ball with finger or thumb nails or any implement".

A key problem is that the ICC penalty for ball tampering is the same as a bowler deliberately running onto the protected area of the pitch or of someone intentionally stepping on the ball. This isn't good enough. At least CA took strong action and have set an example for others to follow. When blokes like Athers, Faf and Tendulkar have been found guilty of ball tampering they have either been given a small fine by their governing body (in the case of Athers) or the players actions have been defended to the hilt (in the cases of Faf and Sachin).

As for broad...well he may not have run home crying but he was certainly keen to play the same whinging record for the duration of the last Ashes series (4-0 to Australia) as he told everyone how unfair the Australians were for bowling short to england's tail. As an aside I would be interested to hear Broad explain how it is that england's bowlers consistently get the ball to reverse earlier and more dramatically in england than visiting teams.

Just a lot of people who live in glass houses throwing stones recently with the poms and indians being predictably the worst of the lot.

Interestingly Andrew Flintoff took issue with the convenient pot-shotting. “Although Smith and co are indefensible there’s plenty of hypocrisy knocking about on social media today,”

Missed you during the most recent Ashes series. You know the one that your mob lost 4-0.

Actually that wasn't Smith at all but Darren Lehmann.

I have also enjoyed Micheal Vaughan's tweets on the issue...seems he needs to reminded about 05.

Anyway come at us as much as you want. everyone in the world can...we took a stand at our players ball tampering. The first country to ever ban anyone for ball tampering...the ICC only gave Smith 1 Test (funnily enough no player has ever missed a Test for ball tampering).

Yeah. I was listening to Vaughan on the radio during the first test at the Gabba. He said that a plan to recapture the Ashes through reverse swing was first discussed in 2003 after their 4-1 defeat down under. Working with county sides a range of 'sweets' were trialled during the English summer of 2004 before settling on one specific brand that gave the best result. He even stated on air that the 'sweet' was the single biggest contributor to england's victory. Now what he was describing was a very well planned case of ball tampering and yet he seemed to think this was fine. Trescothick and KP have also spoken openly about the ball tampering by the english in 2005.

Flintoff came out and had a bit of a go at his former team-mates who seem to suffer from selective amnesia and told them ‘don’t be chucking your stones lads’.

When asked if he considered the punishments for the three Aussies were fair, Flintoff told the BBC: “No — I think the crime doesn’t warrant that".

He went on to say that “One of the things which has really annoyed me is that I’ve seen people raising their profile on the back of other people’s misery...I’ve seen people I’ve played with, who have been good to me; I have seen them change in the space of two seconds. All of a sudden (they say) ‘let’s call for their head, this is disgusting, this is disgraceful’. Some of them are in glass houses: don’t be chucking your stones lads. We’ve done a few things which aren’t particularly in the rules...Then I saw Steve Smith on TV crying his eyes out, so upset, and I put a tweet out saying: ‘Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted’?”

CA have laid down a marker the ICC and other cricket boards should follow. And punishments for ball tampering need to be clear and consistent. It shouldn't matter what method you use, if it's against the laws of the game the punishment should be the same.

PS - Bancroft made a shocking effort to change the condition of the ball. After he had been to work on it the umpires closely inspected it and couldn't detect any change.

ODI's and international t20 matches being placed behind the wall of pay tv is imo disgraceful. Someone's ability to watch the national team in action when playing in Australia should not be dependent upon their financial situation. To me that's unAustralian. If that wasnt bad enough we had people on seven figure salaries telling us how we would have more choices, and the ability to watch more elite cricket, than ever before. BS. As for 7 broadcasting test cricket...time will tell but I'm not optimistic.