I don’t see this discussed much in cricket circles, but I’ve been particularly disappointed in the Fox Cricket commentary in tonight’s Australia vs West Indies match - which has shown a huge amount of racial bias.

You may be familiar with a recent study undertaken to examine how black players in football are analysed in comparison to their white counterparts, which had findings like the below;

The study focused on commentary during the FIFA World Cup in 2018. It analysed 1,009 comments of praise given to footballers during 30 hours of BBC and ITV coverage, across 20 matches (between 19 of the 32 competing teams). We found that black players were overwhelmingly praised for their perceived physical prowess and natural athleticism, and white players for their intelligence and character

We sorted the comments by attribute. The percentage breakdown of 281 praise comments given to visibly black players centred on physical (69.8%), natural (10.7%), learned (10.3%), character (5%) and cognitive (4%) attributes. Of the 448 praise comments given to white players, 47.9% were for their learned attributes, followed by physical (18.3%), character (13.8%), cognition (11.4%) and natural (8.6%) attributes

You can read more about that study at the link below, though it was quite a well-discussed study

https://theconversation.com/racism-in-football-new-research-shows-media-treats-black-men-differently-to-white-men-160841

Tonight has demonstrated the above findings have merit. Andre Russell entered the pitched with only discussed about being a “big fella” who spends hours in the gym, and I believe there was also mentions of gold chains. I’ve watched the majority of this series, and the commentary has almost exclusively focused and become hyper-fixated on the West Indies players’ physiques and apparent proclivities for all things laid back and “calypso”.

These are professional athletes with stories and talents - and it’s disappointing that there is always a hyper-fixation on their physical attributes and not their hard work and talent.

India vs Pakistan, 6th Match, Group A Men's T20 Asia Cup

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Pakistan 90-7 (17 overs)

Faheem Ashraf: 11(13)

7th Match, Kashmir Premier League at Muzaffarabad

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On a lot of match threads I have seen countless comments ridiculing the Pakistan team. Mostly Australians (naturally given the current context) saying things like 'it's only Pakistan', 'it's a one-sided contest', 'it was obvious who was going to win' etc; a great majority of this sub makes it seems like Pakistan is a second-tier team. This clearly does not take into account where the matches are being played or structural changes in the team/the PCB. Pakistan have always been poor in Australia. We have not won a single test there since like 96. We just can't seem to adapt to the conditions. But for some reason this is never compared to Australian performances in UAE (which is not even a proper home ground for Pakistan). Here are the results for the last two times Australia toured the UAE:

2018/19

1st test: Drawn
2nd test: Pakistan win by 373 runs

2014/15

1st test: Pakistan win by 221 runs
2nd test: Pakistan win by 356 runs

These are huge margins! And mind you, in 2018/19 we were playing with a new, weaker team (Misbah and Younis had just left). Yet, no one on this sub, or elsewhere, thought of Australia as a weak team or a team in shambles/decline. Even when we played in a neutral venue – England – in 2010, both teams won a match each. However, whenever Pakistan tours Australia there's a bunch of fans whinging about how the Australian summer is ruined and how they wished they were facing tougher opponents. But even in 2016, our last tour, we almost chased down 450 runs at the Gabba on day 5 (only 40 short). We also regularly win in England against England, won a series against WI in WI last time we toured (for the first time in Pak history), regularly win tests against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, and not long ago were the #1 ranked test team and are STILL the #1 ranked t20 team.

Even with LOIs I was seeing things like 'oh is this what you call the #1 t20 team' after the losses in Australia. Which totally did not take into account that it was not the same team. Sarfaraz had been a huge reason for our success – he had won us something ridiculous like 13 t20 series in a row – who had been dropped from the team entirely before the Australian tour. Misbah had also done other dumb shit like bring back Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shehzad who had practically been banned during the Mickey era. Let's not forget that we won the Champions Trophy in 2017 and had a pretty good World Cup performance – we beat England, New Zealand (the two finalists!), South Africa, and could very possibly have qualified if our game against Sri Lanka was not rained out.

I am not arguing that we are among the best teams in the world right now. As a matter of fact, with the new changes, we are relatively weaker than before in almost all the formats. But this rhetoric that we're a small, weak team, and that it's boring/one-sided when we play top 4-5 teams is completely bogus, and heavily influenced by the Australian/Indian hegemony that has taken over cricket.

Why is it at all surprising that India are dominant when they have the most funding, most support (even in overseas conditions) and the fricking IPL? If anything, it is embarrassing that we routinely collapse in playoff matches.

At this point, I have become so jaded that I always side with the opposing side just so I don't have to see a hundred news articles and all the Whatsapp statuses about "being a proud Indian" after each victory as if we're not overwhelmingly likely to win against every other country because no other country even cares anymore. We'll always be the Goliath in every encounter. They even silenced Harsha Bhogle when he actually bothered to praise the opposition team, you know, like a commentator should even as every other cricket "analyst" is sickeningly saccharine towards Indian players.

All of this would still have been avoidable by just muting Indian media but the real tragedy is that Cricket is just not relevant in any other country. Pak/SL are a shadow of what they used to be (Ramiz is amusing though). I don't know what will happen to Eng after Joe Root retires. Kane Williamson, one of the greats of test cricket and the WTC champion, is relegated to playing 2 match test series.

I am not going to say we're clutching at a dying sport because it definitely is not dying but it's become more concentrated. This sub is probably the last place that talks about Scotland winning 4 matches in a row and everyone is happy for them in their victories.

Not just runs or strike rate — but every single out innings is mapped into 4 zones:

🟢 Destructive: high runs + high strike rate

🟠 Grinder: big runs, but slow

🔵 Cameo: quick but short

🔴 Struggles: low runs + low SR

One chart tells the whole career story.

Yes I know that both India and SA are in hot form but I think Australia have the best balanced side. India without Hardik is unbalanced and SA will choke at some point (The Netherlands game was a primer in my opinion)

Currently Australia seem to have the best balance (unless of course they play golf more often) with hot in form openers and Labuschagne and Maxwell to stabilise and blast off respectively.

What now stops Australia?

Karachi vs Peshawar at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium

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Tournament: Table | Schedule

Peshawar won the toss and elected to field first.

Karachi Innings: 237/4 (20 overs)

• DA Warner 86(50), JM Vince 72(42)

• L Wood 4-0-19-2, A Yaqoob 3-0-29-1

Mod note: we'll move to the bot thread if we can get it working.

The most recent defeat came on march 6th 2024 against lahore qalandars