England v Pakistan, ODIs: Arise Sir Donald Hales

 

England v Pakistan

ODIs

Arise Sir Donald Hales

August 31^st  2016

A summer that threatened to end as a damp squib from England’s point of view, has re-ignited after guttering and fading. Three years ago England took a 3-1 Ashes lead against Australia: they lost the Final Test, the ODI series that followed, the five Tests in Australia, all but one of the ODIs, the series to Sri Lanka and went down in the series against India before finally reviving. A sad, dispirited defeat in the Final Test to a suddenly revived Pakistan, led by a suddenly revived Yasir Shah, raised at least the spectre of that scenario. Yasir Shah, who had spent two and a half Tests looking totally inoffensive and seeming the least of England’s worries, thundered back with 5-71 and made England look clueless again. A drawn series was a tribute to Pakistan’s capacity to come back from the abyss and England’s incapacity to close out series. On the balance of play, it was deserved, with each side totally dominating two Tests. As a spectacle though, it was dispiriting.

At the end of the Test series most fans looked at the England side and called time on James Vince’s career. A large majority felt that Gary Ballance had not justified his recall – to be fair, his county form did not justify it. And an increasing number of fans thought that the faith that the selectors had shown in Alex Hales had not been justified.

Poor Alex Hales. Equalled the England record with five consecutive 50s in the ODIs in South Africa after being written-off. Came back with three scores in the 80s and 90s in the Tests against Sri Lanka without making those last few runs that would have silenced the doubters. And has had three consecutive low scores in his last three ODIs. One feed-backer put it succinctly: “he’s shown that he is not good enough in any format”.

Cricket fans are a fickle lot. Their memories are short. Their gratitude is parsimonious. And a player is only as good as his last match. In T20 Hales was ranked as the #1 batsman in the world for a time and has top scores of 94, 99 and 116* - the first English T20 century. A relatively lean run in T20 (no 50 since 2014) has seen his contributions forgotten.

Three low scores in his last three ODIs have seen calls for him to be dropped in all formats. The suggestion is utterly bizarre. You do not become a poor player overnight and Alex Hales had, in his eight ODIs of the year up to the end of June, scored 520 runs in 8 innings with 4x50 and 2x100.

The nature of limited-overs cricket is that you will sometimes have failures and runs of low scores. And sometimes you will just have a brainstorm and do something really stupid. To come back though from being pilloried, from looking totally out of sorts and make a murderous 171 in 122 balls at very least shows character.

Hales’s sequence in ODIs in 2016 is something that even Sir Donald Bradman would be proud of:

57, 99, 65, 50, 112, 4, 133*, 0, 7, 14, 171

That is a small matter of 712 runs in 10 completed innings at a strike rate of 101.7. If that is not good enough, long live mediocrity!

When a player such as Joe Root has to act as sheet anchor because he is only scoring at a run-a-ball you know that great things are possible. We wanted to know what England could do batting first and now we know. The highest score in an ODI and some fairly eye-watering bowling figures. Only the fact that the last two overs unaccountably brought just 15 runs when the previous five had gone for 77 saved Pakistan from being the first side to concede 450 and 460 was definitely on with two overs to go.

The headline figure was the10-0-110-0 of Wahab Riaz, but Pakistan’s combined fifth bowler (Yasir Shah, Azhar Ali and Shoaib Malik) was actually more expensive (10-0-112-0).

Jos Buttler, who has looked short of match practice in the first two games, came good with the fastest 50 for England in ODIs and could have reached a century. What no one noticed is that Eoin Morgan was close to equalling the record: he was 42* from 20 balls and just two hits away from equalling Jos Buttler’s 22-ball 50. 33*, 68 & 57* is a big revival of fortunes for him.

If Pakistan had been sensible they could have at very least scared the target. Until the end of the 20^th over they had only once, very briefly at the start of the chase been behind and had been as much as 21 runs ahead of England at the same stage. The difference was that Pakistan panicked and, instead of accepting the odd over with only 3 or 4 runs scored, lost wickets regularly trying to force the scoring. At 106-3 after 15 overs they were 20 ahead of England at the same stage; within eight balls though that had become 108-5… game over!

England’s extraordinary ODI revival continues despite the ICC table saying that they are still only a mid-table team. The sceptics, who say that England have not yet beaten anyone of any quality must, at very least, be getting nervous. The suggestions that England are no different to the sad side of the last World Cup are getting harder and harder to justify. And, for Pakistan, the danger of having to qualify for the next World Cup is getting greater with every defeat.

England v Pakistan 4th Test, Day 3: Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

 

England v Pakistan

4^th Test, Day 3

Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

August 14^th  2016

Some time on Day 4 Pakistan will win this Test and continue England’s bizarre run of failing to win final Tests. This has cost them time and time again: series wins became shared series and narrow series defeats have turned into heavy ones. This time it will cost England the chance to become #1 in the ICC Test table, but the points lost over the last three years through lost Final Tests are so many that England would have been runaway leaders in the table now if each of those defeats had been a draw instead.

It has been a wonderful series of twists and turns. A shared series is probably no less than Pakistan deserve.

Previous series going back as long as I can remember – and that goes back to series in the 1970s – have often been bad-tempered. The rights and wrongs of the different incidents are now lost in the mists of time, but they have summed over the years to produce a bad blood that has almost invariably been carried-over to the next series. Some incidents were seemingly trivial at the time: the bat-pad catch that David Constant turned down, the five penalty runs for ball tampering, but exploded when the players reached the dressing-room and thought about what had happened. Others were seemingly down mainly to cultural and linguistic difficulties, but had no place on a cricket field at all. No England captain should abuse an umpire; however, to have done something that was perfectly legitimate within the laws and to be called a cheat, by the umpire of all people, in a series where the umpiring was a little erratic, to put it kindly, was a fairly substantial and unnecessary provocation – what is worse, neither player nor umpire were sanctioned!

Pakistani players have often felt slighted in the past and, in hindsight, with good reason. When you develop a new method of bowling – reverse swing in this case – that no one understands, or can cope with, the temptation to cry foul is huge, but the consequences dire when you cannot demonstrate foul play and the bowlers know that they have done nothing wrong. You then go for the return series determined to get some of your own back, pushing the limits of fair play in a sense of righteous indignation and the cycle goes on.

Misbah-ul-Haq has managed to break with the cycle. Although there have been some wobbles – the Alex Hales dismissal in the first innings did stress things a little – the spirit has been good. Neutral umpires and DRS ensure that neither side can feel credibly that the umpiring has been biased one way or the other and when an injustice is done, it can usually be rectified. No system is perfect and no system can ever be made perfect [sorry, if you do not want DRS until it is perfect, you will never get it], but DRS massively reduces the uncertainties.

Much is made of the ways that DRS can be spoofed, or is terribly unreliable. You can make a lot of the fact that the DRS system that you are using was not made by you, or in your country and thus must be biased against you. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to think of ways to reduce the heat signal from an edge for HotSpot, or the acoustic signal for Snicko, but that same edge that you are hiding, will save you from being given LBW: by trying to avoid being given out caught when you edged, you are increasing your chances of being given out LBW when that same edge will fail to be detected (think “bat-pad” chances, or LBWs with bat and pad close together) – in other words, your net gain is likely to be small. DRS giveth and DRS taketh away! And if the umpires are allowed to inspect the bat as they inspect the ball, even such options for cheating the system will be largely eliminated. The fact remains though that to it is now almost impossible to accuse the umpiring of being biased without looking a bit of an idiot. When neither side can feel legitimately aggrieved, it does help to diffuse tensions!

Both sides have made a big effort to play in the right spirit and Misbah should take great credit for the way that he has ensured that his side has been a band of happy warriors. The press-up celebrations have been great PR, if a little galling at times to the opposition and such is the atmosphere created, that even Jimmy Anderson who, like many medium-pacers, is inclined to get a little worked up when the adrenaline flows, has felt obliged to apologise spontaneously to the umpires for his behaviour and not before time.

The legacy of the 2006 and 2010 series in England was shameful. The 2016 series will be remembered instead for some amazing twists and turns and some quite wonderful cricket between two well-matched teams that played in the spirit of cricket.

England v Pakistan, 3rd Test, Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

 

England v Pakistan

3^rd Test

Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

August 9^th  2016

After the great Follow-On Cop-Out, we have had the Declaration Debacle. Both times the usual suspects accused Alistair Cook of everything from the most pusillanimous cowardice, to playing Father Christmas to Misbah’s team of happy warriors. Again, he was accused of throwing away the series by not knowing how to attack. And, again, events proved the critics completely wrong and Alistair Cook totally correct.

In fact, Alistair Cook is just one Test away from taking England to #1 in the ICC Test rankings: avoiding defeat may be enough to go top, winning guarantees it. Yet, despite results, it seems that Alistair Cook’s captaincy is fair game and vilified by (almost) everyone.

In contrast, the Pakistan team and their fans have been a happy bunch and, even as most people were reading the last rites, were convinced that their team could pull off an incredible win in both Tests that they have lost.

There is something very British about talking down your team, about being senselessly critical. We saw it before the 2012 Olympics too, where every story seemed to be a negative one, where the media gave acres of space to anyone who wanted to say that the Games would be an expensive disaster and that no one would turn up. Of course, although the Games had their faults (it is impossible to produce a perfect games), no one who was there can doubt that they were a great success perhaps, for a cricket fan, slightly tempered by the failure to include T20 cricket as a demonstration sport.

However, the vilification that has been poured on Alistair Cook’s handling of the side at times has gone past the reasonable. Like Andrew Strauss before him, he has received the labels “defensive” and “cautious” and nothing that he can do can change that. Even when proved to be absolutely correct in his decisions the pat answer is shot straight back “well he got lucky and did not deserve to get away with it”. When England almost pulled off an astonishing heist in the Oval Test of 2013, the plaudits were all for Michael Clarke for his attacking (read “totally mis-judged”) declaration, despite the fact that England scored more runs, far faster than Australia on that last day and it was not Alistair Cook who was time-wasting desperately at the end).

Alistair Cook belongs to the Clive Lloyd/Viv Richards school of captaincy. He knows that he has the weapons to win and backs his side to do it more often than not. Cook, like Clive Lloyd, does not take unnecessary risks. He likes to grind down his opponent, break his spirit. That much was shown by the way that in the 2^nd Test Pakistan were set a target that went far beyond anything reasonable. It was a West Indian trademark in the great years: even if the opposition was bowled out for 150 in the first innings, rarely enforce the Follow-On; bat again and toy with them – set them 450, 500, a target that they know that they have no hope of getting anywhere near.

Like those great West Indian teams, Alistair Cook was ruthless. He knew that the chances in the 2^nd Test of Pakistan surviving five sessions, or smashing the world record chase were just about zero. He backed his rested bowlers to do the job and they rewarded him by winning the match with a day to spare, despite a session being lost to rain.

At Edgbaston, in the 3^rd Test, the problem was a radically different one. For two days Pakistan had dominated totally on a surface so dead that it should have struggled to produce a result in six days, let alone five. Having been put in and batted at the one point in the match where there was significant help for the bowlers – and even then, it was not a great deal – and failed to get to 300, at the end of Day 2, England were on their backs and desperately trying to protect their collective throat from a mortal blow. At 257-2, with one ball of the day left, in reply to England’s 297, you could see a Pakistan lead of at least 150, probably 200, possibly even 250. England should have been batted out of the game and would have been likely to need to bat two days to save it. With Azhar Ali 139* and Younis settling-in nicely, it should have been curtains.

From that ball on though, just about everything went England’s way. Why did Azhar Ali guide an fairly inoffensive ball outside off straight to Alistair Cook from the last ball of the day? It confirmed the increasing suspicion that Chris Woakes has more than a touch of Ian Botham about him: things just happen around him, with no reasonable explanation. Those fans with longer memories will remember that Ian Botham’s introduction to Test cricket was fairly chastening: although he came back to take five wickets, his first spell was very roughly dealt with and his batting showed very little initially. Botham had the luck that the selectors stuck with him and repaid their faith once he started to believe in his own ability. In contrast, Chris Woakes has just had the odd Test over the last three years to make a case until finally given a run in the side: now it is hard to imagine the side without him.

The only moment when you could just imagine things going wrong was during the sixth wicket stand of 62: once it was broken, Pakistan seemed broken too. Only an annoying last-wicket stand got the lead over 100, but it was evident that the momentum had shifted.

When England’s first wicket pair got England in the black without great scares, the unthinkable started to become thinkable: might there be time for England to get far enough ahead and declare?

What was good to see was the way that Geoff Boycott purred over Alex Hales’s innings. Hales was patient. He started slowly, he avoided mistakes and he accelerated, giving England just the start that they needed. Hales is another player who is coming in for unfair opprobrium from the fans, who forget that he has had golden form in Tests and ODIs over the last few months, marred only by the lack of a maiden Test century. His first fifty of the series will not have silenced the doubters, but it at least eases the pressure on him and on the selectors.

Misbah seemed to get it all wrong. When Cook and Hales fell in three balls, early in Day 4, he switched quickly to all-out defence to stop England scoring. Perhaps he reasoned that it was the way to provoke a collapse, but it seemed to be more a fear of letting England set a target and thus exposing Pakistan to defeat. However, with fears about the ability of Vince and Ballance to perform at this level, a period of all-out attack might have let some runs flow, but could have also led to three or four wickets falling quickly. A century partnership steadied nerves and allowed James Vince another opportunity to count past 42 (an opportunity that, of course, he spurned): 9, 35, 10, 0, 16, 42, 18, 39 & 42 – in six of his nine Test innings he has got in, got set, looked good… and got out. Time is running out for him and the calls for Adil Rashid to replace him at The Oval are only getting louder, with even the England management publicly considering this option.

However, with every one of the top five making a contribution and the bowlers tiring, Pakistan were left incredibly vulnerable to a counter-attack. Once Bairstow and Moeen Ali had played themselves in, the bowlers were ripe for taking. After a relatively sedate start of a 50 partnership off 69 balls, the next hundred runs took 101 balls. It was Operation Annihilation again and, again, Yasir Shah was left to take the heat. 43-4-172-2. Seventy overs in the match for a return of 3-236: he might have won Pakistan the 1^st Test, but the contest has got more and more uneven since: match figures of 10-141 in that match, have been followed by combined figures of 4-502 in the 2^nd and 3^rd Tests. He has bowled 70 overs more than any other bowler in the series, averaging 32 per innings and is looking less and less effective. As the strike and stock bowler in a 4-man attack, he has been bowled into the ground and, more than anything, that mis-handling has turned the series. From a Pakistan point of view, their hopes of levelling the series and becoming the ICC’s #1 Test side depend on whether or not he can recover from such mega-abuse in time for the Final Test. If England bat and Yasir Shah is sent straight back into the attack, his stamina will be sorely tried.

The ultimate humiliation was for Yasir Shah to be given the first over in the morning, with a declaration in the offing and Alistair Cook being condemned for batting on, only to see twenty runs come off it: singles for Moeen and Bairstow, followed by 6 6 4 2 for Moeen. It was tantamount to a Pakistani declaration of surrender. Instead of taking 40 minutes out of the game, batting on in the morning cost just four overs, plus two for the change of innings.

Even after England had pulverised the Pakistani bowlers and allowed themselves almost a full day to bowl, there was no excuse for what followed.

At Lunch, Pakistan needed 264 to win from 62 overs, with nine wickets in hand and the ball was doing absolutely nothing for the bowlers. It was most definitely on. There was plenty of good bowling (Stuart Broad finished his second spell with the remarkable figures of 10-5-9-1). Plenty of pressure. Just nothing to suggest that wickets would fall. Not even Chris Woakes was making things happen.

And your spinner, your main hope of taking wickets, is short on confidence and many fans – and even some pundits – are asking why he is even in the side.

Cue Moeen Ali. A magic ball. An edge to slip. Thanks skipper! And the floodgates opened. 79-1 becomes a barely credible 151-9.

Why? There is no reasonable explanation. Collective panic?

The fact that the Pakistani last-wicket pair could put on 50 together with some comfort and, briefly, raise hopes that Pakistan could save the match, should put some of their colleagues to shame. There was nothing wrong with the pitch.

From 257-2 with one ball left of Day 2, Pakistan somehow contrived to lose their next 17 wickets for 294 runs. After the hammering at Old Trafford, to pass from the point of dominating the Test, to a humiliating defeat must hit Pakistani morale hard.

From being reviled after two, poor dismissals in the 2^nd Test and an anaemic bowling display, Moeen Ali has picked up another Man of the Match award and averages 58.7 with the bat and has 9 wickets at 39.3 with the ball in this series, at a strike rate of 54: better than Stuart Broad and only marginally inferior to Jimmy Anderson. It almost makes you wonder of he is strategically ineffective for a time to make batsmen take him too lightly and surrender their wickets to him!

The scene now shifts to The Oval, with the #1 ranking in Tests up for grabs. There are so many scenarios that they would take up a couple of pages of A4 but, a summary is this:

·        If England win the Test, they are guaranteed to go top of the ICC Test table.

o   Unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka, England will top the table if they avoid defeat at The Oval.

o   If Pakistan win the Test, they go top unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka and England will stay fourth in the table.