***SA v NZ 2nd Test Weds 14th @ Hamilton***

Saffers price about to take a walk shirley?  scared to lay tho.

kiwis maybe getting a bit carried away here.

there we go. GSM

loving the talk of brittle saffer batting line up from the britishers. couldn't make 100 against the paki mugs but the saffers are brittle. have folks not be watching cricket the last year? everybody's been getting shot out sub 300

Lol bit of a difference between Pakistan and New Zealand's attacks Rolo. Saffers been shot out twice on decent decks by a workmanlike like Kiwi attack.

Nice try rollers. Pak have the 2nd best bowler in the world according to the rankings + 2 more in the worlds top 20. NZ have Vettori and he's only there cos he doesnt go for many runs.

BRITTLE Likely to break, snap, or crack, as when subjected to pressure

Sounds about right

24 wickets in 2 days surely tells us that it's not the easiest of batting conditions out there.

anyways, its all building up nicely to the eng/saf showdown, all will be revealed, who are the most brittle, who are the biggest chokers, who have the best looking WAGS, who have the best attack, etc ......

Part of my tongue in cheek comments were in response to all the sh*t that has been written in the last month particularly by missinfo about how the saffers are 'deserving number ones' when they cannot even beat anyone half decent in their own back yard.

Problem with technology is they use that stupid c*nting eagle eye, so much less reliable than hawkeye.

A tweet as soon as play finished.

Ross Taylor ‏ @RossLTaylor
Yeah right

Ball may have swung away down leg if it hadnt hit Rosco on the full but since it had the ball
must be assumed to go straight which means clipping at least leg stump for me.

saffers would deserve number 1 if they had won this series 3-0

ok home form not been great but dont lose anywhere

You could say Englands away form pretty poor for a so called number 1 side as much as south africas home form.

they win fair share of series but just dont lose test series

Eng drew 1-1 in SA, Win 2-0 in Bangladesh, Win 3-1 in Australia, Lose 3-0 in Pakistan. Pretty solid away form in addition to dominating at home.

South Africa haven't beaten one of the other top 4 sides in a series for over 3 years. Played Aus twice at home England at home and India home and away in that period. 4 home series against other sides in the top and they didn't win one. How can they deserve to be number 1?

throwing in a 2-0 bangladesh win

naughty

Why they are the last 4 away series since the sides last met.

You get my point though 4 home series in the last few years v against the other big three and they haven't won one of them.

barring the ashes win weve struggled away from home

ok saffers didnt finish us off and that is an issue for them but england were easily 2nd best in that series

If they get back to number 1, which is by no means assured it will be 100% deserved

theyve also won in eng,oz,drawn in pak and india

far better than weve done

I think very little in it between sides, hence why fancy a drawn series this summer

fair enough nuggs what matter is the series result, but you gotta admit that the saffers were a tad unlucky. they defo had the upper hand over england at home, came very very close to beating india away, and played a 2 test series against aussies which should have been 3, and the aussies pulled off a great escape in 2nd test.

wont debate england's number 1 ranking, they had some brilliant victories, but you gotta admit that sides have not found it easy beating the saffers in recent years.

Yes if they get there it will be deserved Steps as that is the system we play under. My original point is that many journalists and cricket writers had been saying they were already deserving number ones before this series.

Pretty sure India have only lost 3 series in the last 6 years are the deserving number two behind the saffers who have lost 2?

Not disputing any of your points Rolo.

SY i think the away victory in England is pretty irrelevant now. Poor poor England side with a joke coach. Team has changed a fair bit from then and it was 3 and a half years ago. Not taking anything away from the saffers achievement there either. They rightly found their way to number one at the end of 2008 as they had been winning series home and away.

One thing that we can all agree on is that New Zealands batting is bloody awful

saffers batting first innings were'nt too clever either

philander has made the difference for saffers over the past few months 35 wkts from 5 tests

we'll stuff this saffer team in england this summer, weather permitting we'll win the series 2-0, been saying it for months and nothing SA have doe this winter has changed my mind on that one.

They have an outstanding set of individuals the Saffers but they still mange to play to a level that is bellow the sum of their parts.

England have faced their toughest test this year and came up well short, beatin SL and India away and improving their battin in those conditions is what England need to do to take them to the next level. Beating saffers at home wont convince me that we're some kind of super team, which will almost certainly be the reaction when we do.

lads this is starting at 10:00 right? nothing going on on cricinfo

1015

ah thanks!

fox sports is just brilliant, zero to no ads, always intrigues me how they can run a station with no ads and the likes of sky have 3 or 4 times more ads

*zero to one ad between overs i mean

any good stream for this??

fox: http://www.hitsports.net/01.html
sky: http://mypremium.tv/stream/?id=277&1318710695

txn

time for some jacques i would have thought

and here he is

NZ aiming for around 175 lead minimum to cause south africa some trouble here

wonder if morne morkel was borne with his arms up in the air

well played Williamson 50

yes well played a real gritty determines knock so far

partnership 30 off 103 balls, just what NZ needed here

tahir's gotta feel a bit of pressure, hasnt really lived up to expectations so far, though had limited opportunities.

another instance of eagle fecking up, hotspot showed his the impact occured before his leg was bent, yet hawkeye shows the impact at a point after his leg is bent. Their technology is not good enough on the point of impact which is a huge issue for LBW's, everyone needs to use hawkeye.

had some tough pitches to bowl on as leggie though rolo

kallis bowling a stellar spell here

Am I alone in thinking Barry Richards is a twonk
In his world everything SA do is the best in the game of cricket, everything kiwis well do is just lucky

The way he goes on you would think he invented cricket

he's certainly a little one eyed

pretty impressive for an overweightish 36/37 year old to still get it up to 140 at will, takes a lot of effort to get a cricket ball to move that fast

yes dougy hasnt been ideal for tahir, but does seem like the kind of bowler who can destroy an average line-up but find it much harder against a bit of class. let's see early days, could still run through the tail quickly here

Smithy and Macmillan should get baiting Barry about why his team never win anything meaningful.

decent fight of it this morning

too little too late you would think though

going to need at least another 120 here

every now and then van wyk looks like a 7 year old

that was brilliant

philander is defo n1 bowler in world where has he been

let's not jump the gun. tremendous start to his test career but it's been on bowler friendly tracks against ropey batting line ups.

100 lead looking ropey now

kinda think 1/9 fair price now with martin n11

start the car

Chris Martin total run market for fun

1.5

Unders for me

another 5 for

philander came very close to breaking in the end to breaking Turner's 130 year old record - 6 tests to reach 50 wkts

what a match up we've got here, the worst statistical batsman in the game against statistical bowler in the game right now

amazing scenes

best statistical bowler*

That was a cruel mismatch

101 to win

New Zealand thrown away 2 or 3 really decent positions this game

133/2 - 133/7 and then 88/6 SA to 253 all out

could have a nice 1.01 to lay very soon here

1 down 9 to go......

1 more quick wkt game on

2-3 more quick wickets will send the market into a bit of panic

petersen still a weak link imo, i think we have better

will never understand folks backing 1.02/1.03 here, why would you want to put yourelf through all that stress

Worst averages in Tests minimum of 50 innings

CS Martin (NZ) 2.38 BS Chandrasekhar (India) 4.07 AL Valentine (WI) 4.70 PCR Tufnell (Eng) 5.10 MS Panesar (Eng) 5.41 DE Malcolm (Eng) 6.05 TM Alderman (Aus) 6.54 FH Edwards (WI) 6.55 LR Gibbs (WI) 6.97 Danish Kaneria (Pak)7.05

What a top 10 that is

saffer will win though rolo so i guess easy money folk think

yep pttt there will always be takers, but very silly imo when looking at innings scores of 185, 168 and 253 here. a 50/5 very possible and then its serious brown pants time

suprised kaneria on list he wasnt to bad a batsmen

PLEASE TELL THE TRUTH     16 Mar 12 23:29 
philander is defo n1 bowler in world where has he been
mafeking     16 Mar 12 23:36 
let's not jump the gun. tremendous start to his test career but it's been on bowler friendly tracks against ropey batting line ups.

That's a bit unfair, maf. I wouldn't call the Aus batting line-ups he destroyed ropey. And if they did look that way it's only because of what the ex-Devon and future-Somerset legend did to them.

philander has pace swings the ball both ways and metromonic lenght, similar to the great G Mcrath

few on twitter were suggesting that the pitches were helpful, which is true, but steyn and morkel have bowled on those same pitches in those 6 test matches and have 27 at 22 and 16 at 34 to the verns 45 at 13. So you can bash the batting line ups and you can bash the pitches but when judge him against the best on those same pitches against the same line ups, his record still stands up.

Can see some bloody low scores by england/south africa this summer

he has 300 1st class wkts at an average around 18, and can bat a bit, can see him running through england

mmm good point dougy

would love to see some of these 'local association' bowlers the kiwis use in the nets

not sure he'll run through england, he's the kind of bowler kp will bully if he gets in, he will cause all sorts of trouble for cook and probably nick bell off a few times. Be a good battle but still see england getting the job done this summer, honestly think it will be a convincing win in the end.

will be a great contest cant wait for it to begin

boundary for smiffy and a taxi for barry

very excited about it too, pttt - might even save up to go and see one of the games. holidays in the uk are pretty expensive though

best bat in the country

biff loves bullying down a small total

jesus christ bit of cleevage on offer there from smiths misses

what a fantastic pair

and i dont mean smith and amla

You can sleep in my guest room Rolo.

all i'm saying is his stats have been heavily distorted by the conditions so far. early season in safferland and it is a poor aussie batting line up certainly against a decent attack, woeful travellers sri lanka and plenty of county sides would field a better top 6 than new zealand.

a very small sample of games to be drawing huge conclusion. if he was a world beater why is making his debut at 25 ? let's see him when it's a lot tougher like late season on flat pitches like lords and the oval in england

Still coming to terms with the disappointment of only playing the Saffers thrice this summer

yep injera. farcical scheduling and it will be completely lost being in and the around the olympics.

anyone with any sense would have played the big series of the summer first in the may/june slot this year

5 April at taunton should be fun. Big Vern opening the bowling against the Middx batting line-up on a damp, gloomy morning in early April.

interesting stat - smiffy is 70 runs away from becoming the leading 4th innings run scorer of all time

UNFINNISH

good on ya lix, it takes a man ...

screaming, will make a change if it's the opposition losing 15 wickets before lunch at the start of the season.

in any event doubt many games will see day 4 at taunton in the first half of the season

Well, Zum can't blame lack of practice this year. I'll be popping into the County Ground at some point tomorrow to catch a bit of the pre-season friendly vs Glum. Cricket in England on 19 March