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Everyone knows my stance on Carl. A gross underachiever. However, carl's last two years as a test cricketer were very good. Averaging 41 and 48. Which led me to something. When he played for Kent, either in 96 , 97 or 98, his coach told him to use a longer bat, which i believe played a role in the better numbers seen in 2000-2002. Which brings me to another point. The inability of our caching system to use science to solve chinks in players.

Hooper hits most of his shots in the air, and there is nothing wrong with that. But a lot of his shots, if for example, hit to mid on, would end up falling to fielders. With a longer device, he could play the same shot and it would go over instead of to a fielder. And i ask myself, why didn't anybody in the WI figure that out? If you took away hooper's straight drive, or shots slightly wide of straight, you'd take away a great part of his run getting repertoire. You need to include science in coaching to produce a significant amount of players. Cricket is not a cottage industry, you're looking to produce as many players as possible who are competent enough to withstand the rigors of international sport

In reply to Jumpstart

Very interesting indeed. During the period of responsibility of captain his average was 46.

In reply to Jumpstart

Interesting observation. Even an amateur cricketer like me has wondered about bat length when watching the high scorers in bumper ball cricket.

WI coaches seem to he focused on the more obvious technique flaws.

In reply to Jumpstart

Thanks for this very interesting thread. Makes a change from the usual stuff.

With bat technology the stage it’s at now, with lower middles for early season in the UK and more conventional weightings later in summer, it’s almost obvious in the context of the modern player . In Hooper’s time the access to that tech and the access to coaches (ex players from the 70s and 80s) that knew or kept up with cricket tech was lacking. Heck, that even still happening in the WI today. We wait until England, Oz or India being in tech and we then try to adopt it. Shout out to Shiv for pioneering tech anti glare patches- they never did catch on

We had men saying if you don’t want to get Caught, hit the ball on the ground.
While some coach in England said hey why not use a bat with a lower middle in a longer blade.

In reply to Curtis

having played a ton of bumper ball i can tell you that because of the low trajectory of the ball short bats result in plenty misses and miss hits unless you crouch really low which few guys did

In reply to Halliwell

you need coaches who take an active interest in their players. You need guys who look at tapes and carefully deconstruct and reconstruct technique so as to identify weaknesses. So, for example, a player with an action as imitable as Jerome Taylor's will not be a flash in the pan......it can be reproduced

In reply to Jumpstart

In reply to camos

wasn't captain in the year 2000.....and a lot of those productive years you're talking about are are by captains with teams much better than the WI has been in the last 23 years. Hooper became cappo after walsh and ambrose retired, lara was either injured on on a break(i think he only reached full fitness again in 2003) and the vast majority of the sdewas new. I say 48 is very good for a capain carrying that level of responsibility. I mean lara used to average 50-70 as captain but even his stats faltered when the WI became really bad, like in 2004. Ask any one of the dudes now to do that and probably only kohli could thrive under that pressure. Steve Smith would fold like a baby, williamson would struggle and all.

Case in point, when india visited here in 2003, literally nobody expected us to beat them. but hooper and chanderpaul made boatloads of runs(lara was recovering from a broken hand so he had some troubles and Sarwan was still green). Hooper scored 3 hundreds in four tests, one of those hundreds was his only double century, finishing the tour with 579 runs in 4 tests. And that was a very good indian attack: srinath, kuble, zaheer khan, ashish nehra, harbajhan.....and i believe they all heaped praise on hooper and chanderpaul's batting

In reply to doosra