With the end of the first test between West Indies vs South Africa followed by England vs New Zealand. In both the test matches, the visitors came out as victorious over hosts. Straight after the loss the former England captain Michael Vaughan believed, the time has come for the England team to think about their strategies and playing XI ahead of big series like the Ashes series.
“They now have just five chances to sort the batting out before the Ashes. They can’t arrive in Australia with a batting line-up this fragile.They’d have no chance. This batting line-up is fragile and we have to now start looking at players and wondering if they are good enough, because they keep getting out cheaply.”
Even a player like Nassier Hussain hasn’t taken long to question the strategy of England's batting line-up in the first test match.
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‘It was just an abject batting performance. It is like they are reinventing the wheel. They have all these odd techniques and idiosyncratic movements. In county cricket, they are all standing on off-stump and flashing at balls outside off. It’s like everyone else is wrong — all those great players of the past, people like Sir Viv Richards and Graham Gooch — and they are right.”
The visitors have clinched the victory by 8 wickets just the test championship final against team India from 18th June Onwards. Before the West Indies test match series against South Africa the former great fast bowler of his era curtly Ambrose has said,
“Most of the youngsters we have now probably don’t quite understand what cricket means to West Indians in the West Indies and abroad because cricket is the only sport that really unites Caribbean people.”
“This is no disrespect to the players we have now because we have a couple of guys who have some quality in them and can become great, but what we have to understand is that I don’t think we will ever see those great, exceptional glory days again.”
“It’s going to be difficult to find another Viv Richards or a Haynes and Greenidge, a Brian Lara, Richie Richardson, you know, a Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, and the list goes on and on, Clive Lloyd. It’s going to be extremely difficult to find those quality players again.”
“When we were the best team in the world, West Indians all over the globe could walk and boast about how good we were because we were the best, so it’s going to be difficult to see those glory days again. Yes, we can be competitive and climb up the ICC rankings and be a force to be reckoned with again, but those glory days, I don’t think we will see them again.”
Even the great batsman of his era Sunil Gavaskar has said that the current team India has not competitive enough like the best teams in the history,
“I’m not too sure they’ll be able to dominate as the West Indies did. They were winning all five Test matches. Even the Australians were winning four out of five. I’m not too sure if this Indian team can do that because of the fact that while they are actually a supremely talented team, there are at times inconsistencies that you see. That is the only thing that makes me hold my breath a little bit. But as far as the potential of this team is concerned, I think the sky's the limit.”
