Re: God help me - the Test Cricket thread
Reply #803 –
The dropped catch was ordinary, the NSWelshmen will hang Boland high for that one to cover up the other dropped catches by Smith, Labuschagne and Khawaja.
But in regards to Boland and bowling in India, let's not forget they had already put down two certain(90/10) chances off his bowling and another one that probably should have been been 60/40 but they didn't even get a hand to it. He actually generated more chances than Cummins!
Add those drops to the ones of Murphy and they cost Australia about 200 runs! Catching close in can be tough in Inda, the ball stays low, Smith has a flaw in his technique he keeps standing up. It's great in Australia because he can dive left and right and take the spectacular catches on pitches where the ball carries 40m, but in India where the ball comes to at ankle height 10m from the stumps his technique is a problem, a huge negative.
But the catching that isn't the big problem, the big problem is the batting is not technically sound for Indian conditions. They needed guys with sound basic defence who can and will sweep from ball one, and they hand none!
It almost looked to me like the players don't care about India, and they are tuning up BazBall style batting for The Ashes!