Niigata Jack said:
exiledclaseboy said:
You just hit upon the reason he doesn’t understand. :lol:
Oi Oi mush I've been watching test Cricket for over 42 yrs, mostly highlights through the week due to work and weekends if I'm at home, I understand it well enough, I used to sit through Boycott scoring 10 runs over 3 days ffs :lol: :lol:
Never mind Geoffrey Boycott, he was Stokes like compared to this legend
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CELEBRATING SLOW INNINGS WITH CHRIS TAVARÉ – WHO WANTS TO SCORE RUNS ANYWAY?
In the pantheon of English cricket, it is Geoffrey Boycott who springs most readily to mind when thinking of heroic blockers and leavers. Our own favourite is Chris Tavaré – the tall, moustachioed Kent and England opener who blocked and blocked and blocked like his life depended on it. He would bat for literally days on end, giving the distinct impression that he thought scoring runs was all rather vulgar and distasteful.
Tavaré burst onto the Test scene at Lord’s in 1980 when he made 42 in five hours against a fearsome West Indies pace attack. Imagine exposing yourself to such terror for so long and for such a paltry score. It can surely only be admired.
Tavaré’s dig-ins are the stuff of legend. His five-and-a-half hour fifty against Pakistan in 1982 – off 236 balls – is the second slowest half-century in the history of the game. Yet that knock is positively T20 compared to Tavaré’s 35 off 240 balls in India. Of those 240 balls, Tavaré despatched three to the boundary. He batted for six-and-a-half hours for his 35 – a scoring rate of 14 runs per hundred balls – and the match, unsurprisingly, petered out into a draw
The match situation was never of any concern to a narcissistic blocker like Tavaré. He was a top order batsman, incumbent upon him to score runs – but bar the odd aberration he always blocked. Of course, a tail-ender digging in to save his team from defeat is an entirely different thing, but we can still laugh. Who could ever forget New Zealand’s Geoff Allott when, in 1999 versus South Africa, he was dismissed for 0 off 77 balls in 101 minutes. It remains the longest duck in the history of Test cricket.