God help me - the Test Cricket thread

[ElwoodBlues1]

Agree 100% EB, other than Marnus our batting is technically awful and decent bowling - spin or pace - shows it up very quickly.  The art of batting has been lost - playing yourself in, batting to the flow of the game etc. 

And I agree the pitch was bowler friendly, but the batting was awful. Simply awful. If Australia had of bowled well on day one instead of tolerably SA could have been for far, far fewer.  I don't think either side played well - batting ineptitude was the main thing I took from the test.

Agree...Marnus is probably the best technically but I thought he too looked rattled when it was quick and lifting, techniques are a long way off what they were in the eighties and it was an era dominated by quick bowling and you had to get in behind the ball, get your head in the right position and watch the ball while getting your bat out the road at times and all without the luxury of a helmet in the early part of that era.
The pitch was bowler friendly but had even bounce and the sideways movement was acceptable and not extreme.
Not sure what Elgar was on about with is unsafe criticism, no one got hit and it was his bowlers dealing out the short stuff in the main anyway. Their batting is horrible and with no one averaging over 40 in the team its not hard to figure out why they got rolled so cheaply twice and it wasnt the pitch. As you say building an innings and grinding your way through seems old school now and bazball has given an excuse for poor techniques and poor shot selection to be tolerated under the guise of entertainment.
Test cricket being turned into short format cricket doesnt do much for me and it wont be long before 5 day games become 3 day games if the present standards continue.
South Africa are planning on playing less test cricket and having their own IPL style league because they need the money which is coming from Indian IPL owners and its hard to see them being competitive in test cricket looking into the future.
Only Australia, India and England will be able to afford and provide a proper test format in terms of competitive cricket played in the traditional way and cricket purists who see test cricket as the ultimate level of the game are going to get robbed of that pleasure.