England’s Nightmare Year Ends on a High

 

South Africa v England:

England’s Nightmare Year Ends on a High

 

December 31^st 2015

 

The year ends with England having played 14 Tests over five series: won 6, drawn 2, lost 6. On the face of it, it does not look like much of a record. One series won, two drawn, one lost and one still in progress.

Let’s put that record in some kind of context.

Back in March England supporters were looking with some trepidation at the year ahead. The World Cup had been a disaster and Test series loomed against the West Indies away, New Zealand and Australia at home and then Pakistan and South Africa, away. Even the most optimistic saw just one winnable series in that sequence and many fans predicted five straight losses, in some cases with a glee that revealed their own, personal agenda.

Most fans expected to lose 3-0 or 4-0 against Australia, 3-0 against Pakistan and feared cauliflower ears against South Africa and New Zealand. Not a few were expecting defeat in the Caribbean to add the icing to the cake of catastrophe.

However, the apocalypse has not happened. Just one series has been lost and that, one that was written-off as unwinnable and, even in that one, England were competitive and should have come out with a 1-1 result at worst, coming within minutes of winning one Test and saving another in extremis.

However, the year has also been marked with a sequence of “good Test/bad Test” performances that have been the despair of fans and the inspiration of the opposition. For each day of brilliant cricket – and there have been quite a few – there have been some desperate ones. It led to the usual calls from the Australian fans that their side was really the winner of the Ashes because they had the best batsmen, the best bowlers and the best performances.

Whereas, in the spring, we heard “I fear for England if Jimmy Anderson gets injured”, the reality has been that he has missed two Tests with injury and England have won both. Stuart Broad, written-off by many after the World Cup (when he was still feeling his way back from injury and surgery), has had an immense year, bowling with fire and venom and starting to show some of his old form with the bat. And Steve Finn has come back from injury, straight back into the Test team and, arguably, took the most important wicket of the match, just before the Close of Day 4.

Various players have been tried and discarded, temporarily or permanently (Lyth, Trott, Ballance, Buttler, Jordan, Adil Rashid), others have been recalled and done exceptionally (Finn, Compton, Taylor). There is enough competition for places that the management can say that it is not necessarily a foregone conclusion that a 100% fit Jimmy Anderson will return for the Capetown Test. Even among the “failures” there are some encouraging signs: Adil Rashid almost won one Test in the UAE with his legspin and then almost saved the second as a batsman. Chris Jordan won a T20 in the UAE with a brilliant super-over of Yorkers having struggled in the match itself and the howls of outrage at Liam Plunkett’s exclusion from the Test squad have shown what an impact he made in the limited overs games after the UAE Tests. So many players have made a case for inclusion in the World T20 squad that as many as half a dozen are going to feel desperately unlucky when the squad is picked.

However, good sides are consistent. Great sides win even from bad positions. Even there, there is some hope: from 49-3 on the first day, with the bowlers roaring in with conditions in their favour, England set up what proved to be a match-winning score. Nothing will show the team’s consistency like winning two or three consecutive Tests on this tour: we are, though, still some way from seeing that happen.