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Steve Harmison 6 out 10 for 25 overs 0/139? A bit generous don't you think?

This summer really is last chance saloon for Harmison.

I think harmison,pietersen and shah all got generous marks. a 6 for harmsion without a wicket implies he was economical which he wasnt, kp got one score of 40+ and gets a 6?, the same goes for shah aswell. The rest are all pretty much spot on i know the windies arnt the greatest of opposition but there much better at odi cricket and i think we showed some good fight and also had that big chunk of luck what we needed.

Does Harmison have incriminating photos of someone at the ECB?

If not, how on earth has he managed to get a game (ODI, Test or Twenty20) for England in the last couple of years.
Wake up everyone, when he was No.1 in the world, that was an exception to his normal, mediocre at best performances (just look at his year on year stats if you don't believe me ;)).
He has not been fit to wear an England shirt for a while now.

As for the rest of the squad, we have around half a team of high quality players, mixed in with some very average ones and even a couple who have no place at international level at all(Batty + Harmison).
When will Rashid be given a chance?

Can people stop acting like the Windies deserved to win the 1st match! They didn't! The match was finley poised when they decided to take the light despite it easily being light enough to continue batting (which they would have done had they been up on their maths) While they may have won it, another wicket would have all but killed that off, so to say Windies deserve to win is to show a crass misunderstanding of the game of cricket of the type that pundits should not be making!

On the actual rating I think Flintoff would be my star man, we'd have lost the final game without him, and we lost every game he didn't play!

Well batty was only called up as emergency and will certainly not feature in future plans.
Swanny would have played if was fit and is a definite for all forms from now on.

My initial comment is that laughingdevil was correct, the Windies would have been hard pressed to win the game that certain pundits say they only lost through an arithmetic error. My main comment as a Yorkshireman is thank god we have now got a captain whose own form rises to match his position instead of deteriorating, although the latter situation does give certain writers the excuse to pontificate about the great burden of captaincy. Finally, yes I agree that Rashid should be given a chance but the English selectors are notoriously bad at giving young talent a chance. The only exceptions to this being Botham and Gower but these two only got their chance because of rebels who went to South Africa.

Kevin Howells gives Stuart Broad just ONE more than Steve Harmison for the series. This is a joke, right??

I think Kevin needs to check out this statistics page next time:

A tad too generous to Pietersen who disrupted and destabilised the team and to Harmison who contributed precious little.

As to Oliver Brett's comment - well whom are we looking forward to and who's to say that looking forward always means progress? The ECB is very good at commissioning reports which produce a step back rather than a step forward, hidden under the name of progress. I think of the sacking of Duncan Fletcher and the appointment of Peter Moores - a disaster in every respect. So going 'forward' (as they saw it) turned out to be a big mistake. The England football team have gone backwards in appointing an old-style disciplinarian in Fabio Capello - and it's proving to be the best thing they ever did.

Kevin Howells CAN'T have watched any of the cricket.

Harmison and Shah have been TOTALLY out of their depth at international level, as has Batty, and he gives the first two 6 out of ten, Batty 5, and Broad just 7 ???

Trying watching it first Kevin, then you might be able to make serious comments rather than laughable ones!!

A bit confused laughingdevil? You make a very valid point about England possibly deserving to win the first game more than most people have made out, but then go on to say that England lost every game that Flintoff didn't play in - as far as I can remember he didn't play in that first game that you refer to?
Ultimately as Kevin says, whatever our perceptions of relative strength in various forms of the game, results are what history uses to judge. A win's a win and I'm just happy to see Flintoff overcoming the "doesn't get as many wickets as his bowling deserves" tag with a class fivefor.
Excepting Batty, who'll never be in with a sniff if Swann's fit or Patel can manage to walk past a Greggs without stopping for a pastie, there's not much to argue about in this side - apart from the glaringly obvious nonsense over the gloveman. What does James Foster have to do? - a proper eccentric in the mould of Jack Russell, Alan Knott et al who ticks all the batting boxes as well as keeping to Kaneria without fault. Answers on a postcard please............?

Let us face facts, England won two games which were drastically shortened and one because John Dyson lost his marbles. To give any England player more than 7 out of 10 is laughable when it is so platantly obvious that were are no more than a very ordinary side. Shah, Batty & Harmison would be lucky to get 3 out of 10. Most of the rest would hover around the 5 mark and I'd give Strauss & Anderson a 7 as the top performers. How you can give Flintoff 8 out of 10 for one decent performance is beyond me.
And finally, you must be the only person, with half an inetrest, in world cricket that thinks Harmison is going to fire again. How many chances do you want to give him? He's well & truly finished and surely the selectors will not be considering him for anymore ODIs or the Ashes.

On the contrary, I think Kevin's marks for Harmison show that he did watch the series, rather than just picking up the papers and looking at the figures, as most posters on here seem to have done.

I watched almost the entire ODI series and thought Harmison bowled much better than his figures suggest. The guts he showed to come back from THAT over was great to see - I think we all expected him to fold after that but he didn't. Apart from that over, he went at less than 5 an over, which is pretty good in ODI cricket these days. He certainly deserved a few wickets as well, but those eager to criticise will of coure refuse to look further than the stats.

Bit generous giving Batty a 5? He only played a couple of games and bowled rubbish in them.

If we take it as given that 5 is average, 10 is outstanding and 0 is appalling how is it justified to give performers such as Harmison and Pieterson a 'better than average' score? Pieterson played a decent innings in the final match and is generally a fantastic player, but overall his series was not even average for a standard player let alone him.

I just think that a lot of the marks are either too generous or too short-sighted. Even Strauss, a fair but not outstanding series as captain and 2 very good performances with the bat - out of five. To me, to give a player a 9 suggests sustained and consistent fantastic performance. Although he fully deserves his player of the series title, and was undoubtedly our finest player, to me that was only due to a lack of viable alternatives rather than an absoutely brilliant performance. If, for example, Bopara had scored 3 centuries (with 2 moderate failures) and had deserved an overall score of 9 would Strauss still have yielded a 9? Or would his performance have been put into context and given an 8?

I just think that each performance should be rated on its merits and given an appropriate score, to which all of these are too high and makes England out to be a better team than they actually are. Apart from Flintoff in St. Lucia and Strauss in Guyana there were no brilliant performances and I don't think any other player would suggest he had performed any better than average - certaintly not Pieterson or Harmison by their own or anyone else's standards.

I apologise for waffling.

Mr Howells. you are a very generous man

take 1 point maybe 2 off 'everybody' and it looks a bit more realistic.

We made the West Indies look really good - a lot of focus when under pressure needed.

looking foward to the summer, if the balance is right, its going to be close.

flintoff cannot merit that high a score. he left a sweet taste in the mouth at the end of the final match and it lingers.

if his batting is too be improved perhaps pressure should be removed. move him down the order because then it frankly doesn't matter if he scores low. get steve harmison out and push flintoff down, creating a middle order spot for samit patel. who cares if he's a bit tubby (look at ul Haq) as long as he produces the goods.

1.Strauss
2.Bopara
3.Shah
4.Pietersen
5.Collingwood
6.Patel
7.Prior
8.Flintoff
9.Mascharenas
10.Broad
11.Anderson

That bats deep, bowls a lot with good fielders and order can be tinkered with to suit tempo required.

How can Harmison be given a 6 and yet Prior only a 6 !! - Prior should be a 7 or even an 8 but at least more than Harmison who also dropped catches !

Prior gives the team so much more - check the averages - 2nd in the Test matches and 2nd in the ODI's !

ps - all the other wicket keepers have been tried and failed - Prior is a mile high better for England - simply look at the stats.

Yes, maybe a couple of the player ratings were a little inflated and some were spot on. Strauss and Anderson, for example, definitely deserve their rating.
However, I feel too much fuss is made about 50 over cricket and the fact the England have won very few of their Twenty20 matches. While Twenty20 is great for a crowd puller and is great to watch, it doesn't really offer anything to the game itself other than a bit more cash and getting the kids a little more interested and 50 over 1-dayers should be used as an arena for blooding younger players into international cricket to give them experience and a taste of what it's all about.
My point is that it's Test cricket that really matters here and for me the other forms of cricket just don't matter as much. Yes, they can be good to watch and it's nice when we win but results and performances have no real bearing on the 5-day form and most effort should be put into getting to the top of the test rankings.

Stuart Broad: "As well as talent, his maturity and responsibility have always stood out ... he's crossing the temper line too often." A bit of a contradiction there, Kevin, the mature and responsible keep their temper in check.

"Anger is good ..." Wrong again, anger is always negative, and is never helpful in a sporting contest. Broad is talented and appealing, anger will weaken both aspects.

I personally don't feel that there is too much wrong with our one day team. Perhaps Key in to open, moving Bopara to 4? & a more consistant quick than Harmison.

How does a competent and talented batsmen like Matt Prior stand a chance when he doesn't know where he is going to bat? How should he prepare for a game when his position in the batting lineup is comprimised by the fitness of other players.
He is a fantastic batsmen who should open the batting in ODI and T20 cricket, and should be batting at number 7 in Test Cricket. Cement his place in the side for years to come. ( so why call up Foster when Ambrose and Mustard are proven to be ample replacement ).

In my humble opinion our teams should be:
ODI:
1. Strauss
2. Prior
3. Bopara
4. Shah
5. Pietersen
6. Flintoff
7. Collingwood
8. Swann
9. Broad
10.Anderson
11.Harmison

TEST:
1. Strauss
2. Cook
3. Shah
4. Pietersen
5. Collingwood
6. Flintoff
7. Prior
8. Broad
9. Anderson
10.Harmison
11.Panesar


ALL CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS WELCOME

Seriously, Stuart Broad who is Englands MVP at 7???

I wouldn't rate Flntorf at 8/10 i would put him as 5/10 because he is alright but his has lack 50's and 100's to me and he needs to score somer qouick both in IPL and International.