Talk:West Indian cricket team in England in 1988

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Assessment comments

Contents

[edit] Good Article Candidate

I think that this is on the road to good article status. The formatting is a bit wonky, and it would be nice to have a picture from the series. The picture of Walsh seems misplaced to me. If more text were added to the sections on each captain and test, it would help the formatting. Other than those things, I think that the article is good, and it certainly has the interest of being the summer of the four captains.--Eva bd 14:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Evadb, thanks for your comments and interest. I've searched high and low for useable images of the series, the characters etc but to no avail. Can you be more specific on the 'wonky' formatting please? The Rambling Man 14:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
<edit conflict>Thanks very much for the feedback. More specifics on the formatting would be very helpful. We've tried (and failed) even to find simple portrait photos, let alone action from the series - help would be most welcome (though I note that the GA criteria don't demand images). I'll take another look at the placement of Walsh's pic and beef up the details of the tests. Thanks. --Dweller 14:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
The "wonkyness" of the formatting seems to stem from having so many subheadings (with one for each captain and subheadings for the Tests. Each of those headings is mostly filled by the box with the Test scores. On my computer (with Netscape), it comes out looking choppy. Keep up the great work.--Eva bd 14:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I am failing this article fo GA for now. The choppiness of the article is certainly a distraction, but the two primary reasons are:
  1. The article seems to be written for an expert in the field and is not very accessible to a general audiance. As an example, the article does not seem to have a wikilink to cricket. It is is there it is certainly not linked on first usage, which is the standard. Other terms like bowler and batsmen and Test need to be (prefereably) briefly explained in the article or (at least) wikilinked.
  2. There are major tone problems. It is not up to us to determine if something was humiliating or embarrasing. That is injecting our POV into the article. Instead, you could find a notable person in the field and quote them, or you can just simply present the facts and let the reader decide if it was humiliating or not. Some examples:
    1. "...enjoyed tremendous success, somewhat overshadowed by the increasingly chaotic state of their hosts." - who said the hosts were in a chaotic state? Who said this overshadowed the game results?
    2. Who determines who is the "Old Guard"?
    3. "...England were dominated by the West Indians in an increasingly humiliating manner (match details below)." - who said it was humilating? If the West Indes team was the best in the world and England had been playing poorly, then perhaps this was just an expected result and not a humiliation.
These problems need to be fixed before a more detailed examination of the article can take place. Please re-submit when you feel you have made good progress here. Good luck and best wishes, Johntex\talk 16:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Some excellent feedback, thank you. Will take a detailed look at all of these issues. --Dweller 17:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, this is exactly the kind of feedback we're after to get this article to where it should be. Cheers! The Rambling Man 18:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Since you say in the very first sentence "...played a number of first-class cricket matches...", the reader is going to expect to find some reference further on in the article to the f-c matches other than the Tests. The minimum would be a summary of the number of wins, losses and draws in all f-c matches. Alternatively you could reword the first sentence to say something like:

The West Indian cricket team in England in 1988 were captained by Viv Richards.

JH 19:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

This may be a British/American usage question, but wouldn't it be The West Indian cricket team in England in 1988 was captained by Viv Richards?--Eva bd 19:35, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that for a team, which can be considered as either an entity or a collection of people, either is acceptable. On reflection, possibly "was" does sound a little better. JH 19:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Problem solved by rewording intro anyway! The Rambling Man 12:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Context Question?

In section two the article notes that "the captain has a crucial role in on-field tactics and may also have an important say in team selection and other off-the-field issues, such as Mike Gatting's ill-fated support of the 1990 tour of South Africa." I'm relatively new to cricket and don't know what this is talking about. Some context might be helpful for folks like me.--Eva bd 14:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - nice spot. --Dweller 15:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I think this was a relic of previous versions. This should be clear now. --Dweller 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency

I've made the usage of "First" (etc) Test consistent (ie not "1st"). Ditto for One-Day International. Waiting to edit for man of the match, per this diff ([1]) --Dweller 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automated peer review

Can be found at Wikipedia:Peer_review/Automated/February_2007#West_Indian_cricket_team_in_England_in_1988 --Dweller 09:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On Main Page

Just a note that this article will appear on Main Page from midnight tonight. --Dweller (talk) 14:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Squads

Shouldn't the squad section be one of the first things you read? Certainly before the tests I would have thought... SGGH speak! 07:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The squads are incidental to the main body, and it is not required to know the squad before reading about the tour itself. They are supplementary material, as it were. Andrew nixon (talk) 08:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm in two minds. The England players' list is not a "squad" in its normal sense - it's a listing of all the poor fools who had the chance of having their heads knocked off that summer. The WI tour party might be worth listing higher, but hopefully the prose makes it less necessary. What do others think? --Dweller (talk) 13:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] indiscretion

It may be me but I read the phrase "an alleged off-field indiscretion with a barmaid" as being irritatingly imprecise. What was the "indiscretion" (alleged or otherwise)? Andeggs (talk) 18:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I'll see what I can do to fix informatively, but appropriately. --Dweller (talk) 19:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
The cited source had useful additional information without descending into being scurrilous. Hope that does the trick. --Dweller (talk) 19:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Summer of continuous change

while England endured a "disastrous summer" of continuous change.[1] did not really make sence to me, as someone who knows very little about cricket and cricketing history. I edited england to become 'the englnd cricket team' because it sounded to me like the west indies team were winning criket matches while the english nation was experiencing a "disasterous summer of continuous change". Sort of like "the winter of discontent" or something. Edit was undone anyway, so maybe its just be who thinks its ambiguous. Person642 (talk) 20:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I'm struggling to get what you think is unclear. Help me out, because I'm happy for things to be amended if they're unclear. The full sentence is:

The West Indies enjoyed tremendous success during the tour, while England endured a "disastrous summer" of continuous change.

Disastrous summer is in quotes because it's a quote from the source referenced at the end of the sentence. Is that what confused you? --Dweller (talk) 21:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it was more the confusion between England and the England cricket team that caused the problem. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 21:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's both really. maybe it's just me, so don't be too concerned. I understood the quote was from a reference somewhere but I still dont understand how a team can experience a disasterous summer of "continuous change". is it cricketing jargon? Person642 (talk) 21:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope. The series took place during the summer. It was a disastrous series. And a time of continuous change, most notably the 4 captains, but also look at the squad section at the foot and see just how many more players represented Eng than WI - and the WI played many more matches (as they played games against other opponents, not just England) --Dweller (talk) 22:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sence now you have explained about the player changes, but initialy it baffled me. As i said, don't be too concerned, im easily confused :P Person642 (talk) 22:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool. --Dweller (talk) 22:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The story, possibly apocryphal, is told of visitors to England from abroad being alarmed on seeing newspaper placards reading: "England Collapse!" Whilst in the UK that's readily understood as referring to the England cricket team, it's not so obvious to foreigners. JH (talk page) 09:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I suppose the "disastrous summer" quote might have caused confusion because Person642, unlike regular cricket followers, didn't realise that cricket is played in the summer and that "summer" is basically the equivalent to "season" in this context (although "disastrous season of continuous change" wouldn't fit nearly as well). I should note that in the relevant sentence, if "England" was taken to mean the country rather than the cricket team then "the West Indies" could just as well refer to a group of countries in the Caribbean. In any case, "England" is linked to "England cricket team", and the rest of the introduction (hopefully) clears up any confusion as to what was meant.
Juwe (talk) 10:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A snag with the infobox

The template "Infobox cricket series" has headings "Most runs" and "Most wickets", but it's not clear what those refer to, as much of the other information is for the whole tour (eg the start and finish dates). It would be much better if those headings could be amended to "Most Test runs" and "Most Test wickets". JH (talk page) 09:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Happy to fix, but difficult to achieve it. Template:Infobox cricket series is also used for series that are not Tests (eg ODIs). --Dweller (talk) 10:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Well spotted JH. Is it possible to make a new, more comprehensive infobox that deals with entire tours such as this one (in addition to the existing infobox, that is)? The current infobox is only supposed to deal with one aspect of a tour, ie only the test series or only the ODI series. It would be good to have an infobox that had (in order after the 2 teams were listed):
  • "Captains" (if captains the same for all parts of series...not the case here)
  • "Test captains"
  • "Most Test runs"
  • "Most Test wickets"
  • "One Day International Captains"
  • "Most ODI runs"
  • "Most ODI wickets"
  • (and I suppose for the future) "Twenty20 Captains"
  • "Most Twenty20 runs"
  • "Most Twenty20 wickets"
It would also be useful to have "Player of the Series" listed for each different series.
All of these parameters would have to be optional, to take into account the particular itinerary of a tour (eg if there was a 5 ODI and 3 Twenty20 match tour, the Test match lines could be omitted). The current infobox also has capabilities for a 3 team series, but the template I am proposing would only deal with 2 team scenarios (such as the WI 1988 tour of England). BTW, I would have no idea how to code up such a template, so I'm afraid someone else would have to make such a template it it was to be made.
Juwe (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
This is a significant matter and should be discussed at WT:CRIC, with an "advert" left at the template's talk page. --Dweller (talk) 10:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Done and done. Juwe (talk) 13:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)