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[Redback Cricket]

Nah, not one of mine - his bats were delayed in customs!  Pads and gloves were sent well before.

[400notout]

So Gary is that your pads and gloves? Or am I nae paying enough attention.

[Cover_Drive]

Yes they are

[lazza32]

If you talk about pro's and there size think back to warne, boon, mark taylor, allan lamb, botham(beefy). All legends

[Wilko]

Yea but they are nothing like cozzy, not even close to his size. Some selectors seen him at a training session and asked if he was injured because he moved so slowly.

[roco]

Inzaman was never quick but a quality player too much is made of size if you are good enough you are good enough I would rather have an outstanding bat who can get me 100's and overweight than a fit person who gets me 40/50

[lazza32]

ha, ha , ha....fair enough wilko. I would also like to add ratutunga.

[Talisman]

Surely as a professional you would expect him to be making the very best use of all his talents and if he is a good batsman whilst overweight he would be better fit as he would be quicker between the wickets and in the outfield.

[Colesy]

Dwayne Leverock!!!!

[steelcouch]

I have to disgree
if you are not going to ever play for the national team and are a fat lad anyway, then way restrict yourself the things you like? Cossie probably has a very nice life chasing the sun and being paid for it. He knows he has an increadable eye and that is not going to change if he is 14 stone or... welll looking at him 18 stone. Never going to be pcked for his fielding weather he can get to level 11 on the bleep test or not

Merv Hughes and Mike Gatting are another two ( and to a MUCH lesser extent myself)

[Talisman]

As long as he is in someone's employ as a Professional cricketer he is obliged to follow their instructions, if you say he can be fat and unfit as he has a good eye does that not send out a message to all the players and academy players that fitness is optional. Presumably you would be happy to pay to watch cricketers performing below their potential as long as they had ability?

[steelcouch]

Huh, what like english professional cricekt where all players permanatly play below their full potential as there are too many fixtures in the calender.

If all players playes 100% all the time then there woud be a lot more injuries.
who is to say a specialist batsmen woudl perform any better if he was "fitter". As much as we liek to think sport is 100% science , it isn't. I studied it at university for 3 years and it is a very new science comparitively.
One comon trnd that comes out of all coaching mantras in cricket , at the very top level and Cosgrove has played international cricket is that you should do what works for yourself, especially in batting.

Dont get me wrong i love that fielding is much better, but this professionalism certainly has not improved the standard on International fast bowlers. The bowlers of thw 1970s, 1980s, 1990s were undoubtably much better than they are today where ordinary batsmen are averaging over fifty.

[steelcouch]

Picking up on another point of yours i thnk it sends out amessage that if you are brilliant, Cosgrove being probably the best talent in most of the teams he plays for you can do what you want.

The expression sometimes used is " different gravy"

[Talisman]

I would point to the host of quality fast bowlers in the 70's and 80's being due to the lack of better paying rival sports. The great West Indies bowlers grew up with cricket and all had aspired to play the game, thanks to satellite TV the majority of potential tall athletic youths chose Basketball and are lost to the cricketing world. If you had a choice as to which sport to play as a youth then you would be advised to maximise your earnings. I know people playing professional football who would be able to play rugby or cricket but would not contemplate it with the very limited number of professional spaces and low earnings.

Pitches have been tweaked to offer the all powerful TV audience more runs, the epitome being the IPL where everything within their power has been put into place to allow huge rapid scores. And if players are suffering from too much Cricket then perhaps they will be not available for the IPL auctions, no I thought not....

If Cosgrove was the best talent then he might not have been dropped and also if he had any desire he might push for more international cricket.   

I'm playing devils advocate here, I think you can allow some slack to a person, but how much is subjective.

[steelcouch]

yeah of course.
The west indies thing i agree with. I think that the increase of satelite TV and the proximity to the US and more importantly US College scholrships have taken some of these players out of world cricket, but in reality again this only refers to one test nation with a total population of a couple of million.

A lot of the Professionalism of sport has made really orthadox bowling actions particulary in the UK and bio machanical robots that did not have the skill and art f the old bowlers.

I was reading something the other day by Michell, the australian bowler wh says he doesnt know how to bowl away swing!!!

Pitches aside there are not many bowlers around today ( that arent currently banned)  that cold hold a candle to the guys from the 90's, who in turn were not as good at the 80's etc etc.

I dont agree with players over here chasing football contracts over here i am afraid. Other than the odd example i dont believe that there are many 6 foot 4 footballers that could move it both ways at pace.

Good discussion though!
Were are the 2lb 8 newbery pro bats by the way?