// And does anyone else use crikinfo?

desktop scorebox is my constant friend during the summer months.

// So is Australia just REALLY good or what?

they're that good, and sri lanka is that under-prepared.

yeah cricinfo rocks haha

the gap between Aussie and the rest of the world is about as big as the gap between the blakc caps and our provincial championship (state shield and what not) ie its fucken huge

yes i believe aussie are that good, but its fucken easy to perform when you are consistantly NEVER under any sort of pressure

once during the chappel hadlee cup the game we wont were they under pressure and once duing the VB series where W.Indies had them 5/ 45 which was rained out, they crack just like any other team does its just that not many other teams have had the ability to put them under that kind of pressure reguarly

but yes aussie are fucken miles ahead of the rst of the cricketing world, and any team who plays them whether it be tests or ODIs need their full 11 to play at 200% for the duration of the game otherwise you dont have a shit show to put it bluntly

yeah poor mccullum poor bastard he fucken deserved 100 aswell

and whats up with that guys bowling action? i forget his name but it is fucken terrible his action i mean not his name

hell yeah man if we had won that first ODI i believe it would have been a different series too,

but i guess thats the difference, Aussie stayed calm and we choked i guess

that sri lakan dude is gona take the umpires head off sooner or later hahaha i wouldnt wanna be the ump when he does, holy shit is it a awkward action

he wont be around for long i dont think, he'll throw his shoulder out and/or waste his elbow

///First you say the aussies are never put under pressure, then you give examples of them being under pressure...

NO i said "consistanly never under pressure"

do you call 2 games in the space of months and however many other games in between being "consistantly under pressure"?

I don't

Consistanly put under pressure is what the aussies do to every team they play every single game and every single minute of the game,
there is a difference,
if i had said never under pressure sure then I'd be wrong but i didnt say that
Jon Jr read what i put there NOT what you think i have put there

//So is Australia just REALLY good or what?

lets face it - Australia are the worlds biggest cheats but that dont stop in cricket - they cheat in The Olympics, Commonmwealth games by christ they cheat in everything - my supervisor reckons they bribe the judging panel/referee/umpires in order for aust. to "win".

///I'm sorry dan, I shouldn't be quibling with you over word use ;)
I know what you mean...
Good on you for sticking to your guns ;)

well if you knwo what i mean you wouldnt have said " sort yourself out dan rah rah rah" you would have well known what i meant

im not quibling with you over word use, im backing myself up and saying that you were wrong, its funny how some people on here are very quick to try and burn someone but no so eager to fight it out when they know they are wrong,

but this thread is about cricket not Jon Jrs reading apprehension

///There's also the possibility that all that training, attitude and government support have something to do with it.

yeah and those fucken huge feet of his

no i just defend myself when people like you attack without actaully reading what i have written first,

another assumption you made jon " i am easily rarked up" couldnt be further from the truth but if i dont defend myself against people like you who else will????

but enough of the negative

James marshell- 52
Hamish Marshell- 160
Mccullum -99
Astle -114
all it takes a a few guys to perform and you have a fairly decent targer
im glad to see its the younger (excluding Nathen astle) that are sticking their hands up, it shows there is some hope for us yet

id rather see England smash Cheaterland oops Australia - they did in the RWC lets hope they do in cricket.

and twice he has been out in the 90's the first time he got 90 i think third times a charm hopefully

//remember kids, its not how you play the game its whether you win or lose that counts

dantheman's reasons for not joining the debating team #1

Consider: if you only care about winning and you lose, then you're pissed off about losing. If you only care about winning and you win but you don't play fair then everyone else hates you for playing dirty. Why should you care if you don't win if you don't care about winning?

End of story.

everyone else hates you for playing dirty???

its only dirty if you get caught, and if the ref doesnt see it then its legal,
Rucking some would cansider dirty, i consider it a fact of life in my many years of playing open and blind side flankers and i for am am disappointed that its pretty much been outlawed, theres nothing better comming off the field compareing ruck marks knowing you put your body on the line for your team to win the game

yes its a given teams dont go out there to lose, but in NZ the emphasis is put on the playing fair bullshit rather than the winning

yeah i couldnt remember the ohter good fast West indian bowlers haha i got mixed up made a mistake sorry

all those IF's NZ havent really had a great bowling attack since hadlee and now that Bond hasnt played in ages, you gota wonder IF he will be back... another IF, we dont have any sort of a pace attack and consistancy with lines and lengths arent great either, which to take wickets you need to get right

Hindsight is a wonderful thing - ifs only! But the fact remains we do not have bowlers that bowl consistent lenths and put pressure on batsmen. We do not have an opening batting combination that can protect our middle order.
Bond is not the answer, one more injury and it could be all over - we need to get some other talents who wants to bowl quick and scare the opposition. Franklin and Martin as a new ball attack wouldn't frighten the Stewart Island XI, let alone Australia.

why???

Breakers, Soccer Kings, warriors - someone please describe their performances since their enduction to these competitions

why would you want to do that to our NZ cricket???

hahaha you guys have no idea how long i have been waiting for someone to say " we need a team in the Pura cup"

////The Warriors were grand finalists a couple of years back after plugging away for a few years, surely that's an advertisement for including NZ teams in Aussie competitions?

yes ONE time out of 10 is a great considering they have almost been the whipping boys of the NRL for ther other 9 years or how ever many they have been in the league

///And these things take time.

how much time do you supose its gona take the breakers who are currently at the bottom of the table, and the Kings who celebrate every game they win like its a final because its that rare, dont give me taht good thigns take time bullshit

///If you go into a professional competition expecting to be seriously competitive within a year or two, you're dreaming.

correct, but once again how many fucken years are you gona wait for the kinds to be able to compete as with the breakers who lets not forget where the wonder story at the World champs just a few years ago

The soccer and basketball teams are still getting things into shape (soccer admin in general is in a woeful state in NZ, so will probably take forever to come right, if at all).

////The basketball team stand a good chance of competing in the Aussie league - they've got the players, they just need a decent coach

firstly nozi at some stage during a professional career a player must stand up and say my coach cant win a game for me, " a decent coach" you say, the breakers are basically the NZ tall blacks so why arent they competing??? this coach is bullshit i love it how when a team doesnt perform its the coachs fault what a load of crap, a coach cant score points, a coach cant make that 3 point basket, a coach cant score that try OR kick that conversion or take that final wicket, they get paid to do it you can only blame so much on the coach, its the players that need to pull finger and stop writing abusive text messages about their current coach and start fucken playing Cough Dillon Boucher couch

////
(after all, last year, they had most of the NZ squad that finished fourth in the world champs, plus a couple of decent US and Aussie imports). Personally, I can't believe they didn't give the job to Tab Baldwin.
do you know why the aussie and USA imports came over???? because they were good enough to get into their own regions teams, its the same with soccer and cricket and rugby imports, you arent good enough to make your own side so you change teams

I'd think that if you put the Warriors in the Batercard cup, they'd thrash any and all. Whens the last time you saw two centuries, a 90 and two 50's in the NZ team. You've mentioned the old ways of being hard and tough using Buck Shelford, Colin Meads etc. Surely the hard and tough answer is to get our cricketers playing the best? Get Brett Lee attacking them every week? Harden them up? What you're saying is that they can't handle the best. Then how the hell are they going to be the best if they can't handle it? So mollycoddle our cricketers? Is that the answer?
Also with the Warriors, they lost their key senior players two seasons ago, due to the salary cap. It's a mine field to argue, but they had to do away with the most experienced/highest salaried players. They beat Brisbane at Brisbane this year, surely that counts for something?

////so, by your reasoning, provinces like Waikato and Otago and countries like Italy and Scotland should give up playing rugby because they're not successful enough? There should only be six clubs playing soccer in England, and two in Scotland. Bangladesh should give cricket the heave-ho. etc.

not at all, because on one hand you are talking about provincial and mational comps and on the other you are talking international,

waikato are a very successful Rugby union, held the shield fora number of years and have produced a number of quality national and internation players, like wise with Otago, but then again thats provincial, but yes if any team was going to be axed frrom the Super 12 it would be either the bulls cats, cheifs or highlanders because they are not performming exculding the higlanders this year and the cheifs last year,

Scotland and Italy- italy dont play enough quality sides to become good, and because soccer is their more prodominat sports rugby will always be weak over there, scots well they are just shit nothign you can do about it,

talk about sticking a team in the Pura cup why not stick bangladesh there???? or will getting beaten by state sides ruin a teams confidence and destroy their belief in each other, thats the reason id pick

///Ben Pepper won a gold medal with the Australian under 22 team at the World Championships. He was selected by the Boston Celtics in the 1997 NBA Draft. He's hardly second rate.

Mike Chappell, likewise, is one of the best individual players in the NBL, and played in the All Star end-of-year game. He was part of the Michigan State team which won the NCAA title in 2000 and made the Final Four the following year. Again, hardly a mug.

Frank Arsego, basically, is a dick, and one suspects Boucher was dead right with his assessment's of his coaching style.

and yet all those players are playing for a second rate NZ basketball team? Why? because they arent good enough to play and get consistant game time in their own teams, why else would you leave??? the money cant be great, all those achievements you listed there were all what between 5 and 10 years ago, so really they mean jack shit

so what if the coach is a dick, how can you expect you team to perform when you ahve guys like boucher, stabbing you in the back and not having confidence in your coaching???? boucher should have been the one to go in my eyes

///Basketball, more than any other team ball sport, is massively dependent on the coach. You can have the best players in the world (see USA men's team), and still not compete if you the team doesn't click with the coach.

so basically the same team who played so well in the world champs and played so shit in the olympics with the same coach was the coaches fault??? get your hand off it, the coach cant sink baskets, he can stratagise but the players need to make them happen.

///Again, discarding soccer, which is a joke in Australasia in general (all the best NZ and Aus players are playing offshore anyway), both basketball and league have benefited from their involvments in the Aussie leagues. I can't see how having a NZ cricket side in the Australian competition would hurt.

NO dont discard soccer just because it works against you argument, because its a very valid point, aussie seem to have strong enough teams why cant we?? the kings have been there for what 5 or so years now probly longer and they are still as shit as they were on day one, how do you explain that??? and if it is shit in australias in general then we should all be on an even par, and you cant say that soccer is anywhere near the top sport in Aussie

///it's about exposting NZ players to a higher quality of competition, which will lift the level of the game across the board and (hopefully) improve the national squad in the long run.

yes and I agree with the theory behind this, BUT and as Murry Deaker pointed out, It hasnt worked yet, the kings are shit, the breakers hardly ever perform and the warriors are hot and cold but more often cold, why would you want to send a team of young guys to aussie on fast and hard pitches, to get slaughtered

theres a thing called confidence and sending a team to play in the Pura Cup would surely destroy this,
producing a NZ a team is the way to solve this have them playing regualry against other countires A teams thats how you deepen your talent pool