The Start Of The Turnaround?

 

 

Cricket 2014

 

What the doctor ordered

 

July 28^th 2014

  

Undoubtedly, the phrase of the night on social media will have been “one swallow does not a summer make”, usually delivered with the aplomb as if this is the wisdom of the gods being bestowed on ignorant mortals. Roughly translated, this means “I am using a cliché because I have no real arguments and am too lazy to think of any”. It will be applied both to Alistair Cook, who suffered an unlucky dismissal when just a single boundary hit from his first century in some sixteen months and to England, who have had arguably their best day with the bat since the tour of India in 2012. It is a pity, but some people will dismiss the day as if it never happened, because it does not fit into their neat plans and say that the fact that both the captain and his team made runs changes nothing.

In a sense, they may be right. One decent score does not mean that Alistair Cook and England are back at the pinnacle of the game, but then no one is claiming that. What the fans want to see is an end to the crash dive and this performance is an indication that things are turning around. That does not mean that England will not collapse horribly in their second innings and lose: it could still happen, but the right statement of intent has been made. If Alistair Cook can follow up with second innings runs, preferably in a win, we will start to think of a corner being turned.

England showed some pragmatism and made two changes: Jordan and Woakes for Plunkett and Stokes and batted on winning the toss. Not only did they resign India to a long day chasing leather, but have given the new ball bowlers extra rest by winning by batting. There already seemed to be some weary Indian legs by the Close and, the hope must be that an increasingly tired bowling attack and fielding side will leak some easy runs tomorrow. Ideally, England would like to declare late tomorrow with somewhere around 600 on the board and a few overs at the Indian openers to come before the Close.

There will be some criticism of England’s slow progress, but this was a “grind the opposition down” day. It will play dividends tomorrow morning if England get a solid start, with the scoring rate likely to increase as the attacking middle order get to work on tiring bowlers. There is no guarantee that India will fail to save the follow-on and England probably would not enforce it even if they did, but they will look for scoreboard pressure to work on the batsmen.

However, it is rarely a good idea to make snap judgements so early in a match. India have got very little out of the pitch and have looked a little flat, not making England play enough. Things may look different – or not – after England have bowled on the pitch. We have seen so often how one team does not use the pitch particularly well, but it suddenly looks like a minefield when they bat.  India though have picked an extra batsman for this game and bowling them out twice on a friendly pitch – which is what it appears to be at present – may simply be mission impossible.

For England the day was satisfactory. It would have been even more satisfactory if the captain had made five more runs and the side had finished 280-2, but let’s not be greedy. It is the first 50 opening partnership for England since Melbourne (6 Tests ago), which is a pretty damning indictment of England’s starts and a partnership of 55 is hardly an excuse to celebrate. Only four times since the start of 2013 and only once in 2014 have England got past 200 in an innings with 2 or fewer wickets down (i.e. a really solid start) and even then have only twice gone on from there to a 400+ total (just one of those four matches was won), so there is still plenty of work to be done in this match.

However, despite the fact that the game has started well, the rest of the batting needs to kick on and a big 50 for Ian Bell is another priority for the day. England should not be satisfied with anything less than being able to declare with 500+ on the scoreboard.