sussexpob wrote:alfie wrote:With all due respect , Sussex , I think you're having a shot at a straw man there...
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But that has nothing to do with my suggestion that there have been a few good signs for England along the way. You can only play against the opponent you have ; and it seems unfair to dismiss a really fine innings by a young player , for example , with faint praise because that opponent was a bit off the boil for whatever reason
Its hardly a distortion of any argument to suggest that the "the fine moments" you refer to have to be judged for what they are before you make an assessment of how likely they can be replicated in the future, replication being the actual point in discussion. Elite sporting performance is built on a complex patchwork of factors, and many of them have changed, no longer have an impact, or have been added to temporarily. So if this was a scientific experiment, from a very simply level you cant change the parameters of the test and expect to replicate the same results. How someone performs in a very unique situation means very little to how they will perform in normality.
As an example, British Athletics just a couple of days ago recruited a new performance director; a disciple of the marginal gains doctrine for sporting performance. The top person in British sport will happily tell you that elite sport is won on fractional margins, and that the difference between winning and losing can be based around such minute factors like using the same pillow all the way through a sporting contest, and using a particular colour bottle to drink out of. This is no exaggeration, these are actual scientific examples of how this doctrine views sporting performance. All these factors add a fraction of a percent to how someone performs, and if you breakdown a sportspersons life, training regime and preparation to a forensic level, they have massive differences at the end.
If this is therefore true, then the counter is obviously true too; differences to optimal preparations have a negative impact. And right now in cricket we have a situation where both teams are preparing in totally alien conditions, and the games are played in an unprecedented environment. It is therefore likely that the maximum threshold of quality is somewhat reduced, and that the results we are seeing are coming from a lower intensity of games. Its not at all a controversial point, any scientific analysis of this situation would surely have to conclude that this is the case.
So you are left with asking the question, if both teams are only capable of playing to 75% percent of their actual capacity, is this representative of elite sport, or is it something else? And we do know that certain quality players struggle with additional intensity; maybe Mark Ramprakash would have scored 700 runs in this series with no crowd and the bowlers maybe not full up to speed, but crank it up a little higher and he didnt have the capability to live in that world, regardless of his talent.
Take a very specific example, the Crawley and Buttler partnership. It occured on the 12th day of test cricket in 16 days, against a bowling attack that had been forced through 3 straight games with hardly a break, and who had zero preparations. These factors are obviously going to affect the energy levels of a side. You would expect the pace to be a bit low, the longevity to be a bit lower, the mental intensity and concentration to be lower. They couldnt shine the ball, so after the new ball wears off, there is no reverse swing. There is no support in the crowd cheering you on when you get the better of a batsman, each edge that misses doesnt have that crowd response to boost. All these on their own make the situation harder, taken together they create such a different environment to normality that its hard for them to represent anything approaching normality.
Would Crawley have scored 267 if the bowlers didnt tire quicker. Would he have scored 267 if after 20 overs when he came in, the ball was starting to reverse? Would Buttler have hit a few boundaries, had the crowd roar and lost concentration trying some ridiculous dilscoop like hes been prone to do? These are all factors that are usually played in.
And all these have had effects in other sport. You think Barcelona lose 8-2 vs Bayern Munich in another era, or is this the type of ridiculous results that come when you lock a team in a hotel, give them a different preparation and put them in a certain circumstance they arent used to? Because look through a 100 years of Barcelona footballing history, it never happened before. It seems an obvious conclusion that these situations are going to throw up crazy results.
And stats coming out of football suggest quite noticeable differences in the way the game is played. Less intense pressing, better results for worse performing teams with no fans, better performance metrics for worse players, younger and inexperienced players performing better. The nature of the game has changed a lot.
Hey I'm not really disagreeing with your point that we can't read too much into some of these performances , due to the unusual conditions. Though I do believe that Crawley's innings showed a lot more than you are seemingly ready to allow (not sure how much of it you actually watched ?). But of course if it turns out to be a one off , then yes , it didn't mean much. I do not think that will be the case ; but time will tell. I am no more convinced than you that Buttler has suddenly morphed into The New Gilchrist - or even the New Prior; but I will concede that he has played well in these last three games , and if he continues this way I will have to revise my opinion of him.
Those are just examples . Overall I suggest that there have been some good signs for England , even if they are as yet in need of future validation. You don't seem to agree which is fair enough - each to his own.
I guess it is more a matter of how you want to look at things. Am I being unfair to suggest that you sometimes have a bit of a tendency to seek the negative aspect of any event ( perhaps as a sort of devil's advocate? ) rather than embracing what positives one might choose to focus on ? Or , more briefly : glass half full or half empty ? Just an impression...