Surely that is what the "Test" in Test Cricket is all about as it's a test of skill in all different conditions.

Great cricketers are great in whatever countries they play in. Batsmen like Tendulkar and Lara scored hundreds in every country they played in and the top quality bowlers took wickets everywhere too.

Going back a couple of decades it didn't matter what country Waqar and Wasim bowled in as they took wickets everywhere and more recently Mitchell Johnson, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee did the same (when in form)

The problem with our bowling is that "proper cricket" has been sidelined to the beginning and end of the season where conditions in England favour medium paced swing bowlers and we now play one day and 20/20 cricket in mid summer when the pitches are flatter

I think you are right about proper cricket but you mention exceptional players. How many exceptional players do England have?
If we dropped Cook and worked in a new opening batsman it might help.
We had Peterson, he upset the easily upset and got booted out and then we have arguably our best cricketer waiting to see if he is getting charged.
We like shooting ourselves in the foot.

Sure there is home advantage and it is real.... but it can be overestimated and I think you are perhaps doing that a little.

Teams do and have won aboard in the past....it's become less common in the modern era for different reasons.

Gower and Botham were never 'very inferior'.....we had quality players during both those eras....better than this shower anyway....the article linked to by Midland is highly accurate in my view.

Edited by Stirlingsays (19 Dec 2017 5.11pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

'this shower' weren't considered to be a shower about a month ago though plenty were fearful that what has happened would happen. Moheen has been a non-event, they said they'd end Cook's career and they have, Broad and Anderson are past their best etc etc Sure us and New Zealand have the greenest wickets out of all the test countries - I don't know enough about cricket, but I reckon the reason why we have consistently, apart from recently strangely, been second rate is the other side of the coin to why we are also second rate at football. Public schools in England play Rugby instead of football, and our cricketers are posh school educated way out of proportion to state funded plebs such as I. There's still a bit of 'gentleman and players' going on, it's the same with tennis - what is the class system doing f*cking up our sports? In America and Australia they have a 'can do' mentality and an 'everyman' culture - we don't, we have much more snobbery and glass ceilings than most people realise, it goes deep and I believe it inhibits progress in all sorts of areas, sport particularly strangely, but it's why we no longer have a car industry or make stuff - we have academic and vocational instead of technical education - if you want to be a formula one car mechanic you do your apprenticeship in Holland or Germany. Need a few more Ben Stokes types - as long as rugby and cricket are posh and football is plebby we'll be sh*te at all of them.

Check this out ... [Link]

There's a mix of private and state but the private dominates too much - the facilities and coaching in private would appear to be vastly superior, and our attitude to private education is culturally different here to other countries - we have a posh club, they ran tennis, players bowed to the Duchess of Kent, we produced terrible tennis players, the LTA, the MCC the FA, the Jockey Club - not as powerful as they were but a snob culture still persists, the same snob culture that chose Hodgson over Redknapp and Greenwood over Clough - Aussie sport is full of uppity talent, look at Eddie Jones and Michael Cheka, we seem unable to produce coaches like them, or players/coaches like Klinnsman, Klopp, Seedorf - with high intelligence. I'm not years out of date, we've moved on a bit but I genuinely reckon the posh person's fear of intelligence is imbued in the ways we organize things, and is the prime reason for our long term sporting failure. Why is Rugby middle class and football working class (not to mention League and Union - and the snobbery league players get when they transfer to union)? They aren't in other countries, only in the UK and it's why we're not good at either - cricket fits into this picture.

Charged with affray, along with the two dicks who started it all. 4 months to decide that!

If I were being cynical I'd guess that the court date is somehow going to be smack bang in the middle of the IPL window.

Optimistic as ever