England v India: 5th Test, Day 5 and Aftermath - Just When You Thought That It Could Not Get Worse…

 

England v India: 5^th Test, Day 5 and Aftermath

Just When You Thought That It Could Not Get Worse…

December 20^th 2016

Another day. Another extraordinary collapse. Another innings defeat. And made worse by another embarrassing cover-up. The sudden revelation that Jack Leach was ruled out of a call-up for India due to a suspect bowling action was suspiciously convenient in its timing.

You have to survive around 95 overs on a pitch so flat that 1248 runs have been scored for 17 wickets on the first four days, at a cost of 73 runs per wicket.

At Lunch, after 37 overs, almost 40% of the time that you need to survive to obtain what should be a simple draw, the score is 97-0 with both openers a boundary from their respective fifties. Jennings is batting sensibly and save from one missed chance and a handful of occasions when he was beaten, Cook was looking solid and unmoveable.

Up comes the century opening partnership, only the seventh that England have enjoyed in the last three years (each of the seven has been Alistair Cook with a different partner, showing just how much the job has passed from hand to hand like a grenade with a dodgy pin), although, surprisingly, it was the third of the winter tour.

Surely, not even England can make a mess of this?

Oh yes they can!

Once Cook fell, the team dutifully followed him to the dressing room. We have often begged Cook to show some leadership on this tour, but this was not what we meant by it.

103-0 to 129-4 on such an easy surface was shocking by any standards. Jennings was unlucky – he used his feet and skipped out, the ball hit his boot, lobbed up and popped off his bat back to the bowler – Cook, Root and Bairstow though simply played poor shots. Just when calm was needed after three quick wickets, Bairstow launched a leg side heave into orbit.

When you look for sensible, calm batting, Moeen Ali and Ben Stokes are probably not the first two names on your list. Moeen has produced some spectacular innings this year and has had some spectacular brain fades. He has also shown himself to be the winner of the prize for the most nervous starter in the side: and even if he is not as nervous as he looks, a lot of England supporters most definitely are, watching him batting with the haunted look of a dedicated kamikaze on his second mission. However, you know that if he can get past those first  few overs and reach 20, there is a good chance of a decent score: during 2016 he has averaged a fifty every three innings and averages 46.9. Let’s put that in context: Alistair Cook averages 42.3 in 2016; Joe Root, 49.2; Jonny Bairstow, 58.8; and Ben Stokes, 45.2.

Looking at those numbers, you do wonder how England have lost a match this year and then you remember that Hales, Duckett, Hameed, Root and Jennings have all opened this year. Moeen Ali has batted at every position from #1 to #10 in just 3 years of Test cricket and, in the last 12 months, has batted once at #3, three times at #4, four times at #5, once at #6 (DNB), five times at #7, seven times at #8 and once at #9. It is hardly a show of stability. Joe Root is undoubtedly best at #4, but has opened once (in an injury crisis), played at #3 twelve times and at #4, just seven times. Poor form and injuries have not helped, but the constantly shifting batting order has left players unable to settle into a steady role and has caused at least some of the uncertainty that has led to players not knowing clearly enough what to do when there is a crisis.

Of course, you expect to have the occasional player dreadfully out of form and to lose a player or two but, finishing the tour with three players sent home injured and having four more that were essentially unselectable is a new low.

The decision to take Ballance was, on reflection, a dreadful error. It was fair enough to show faith in him, but now he averages 18.8 over his last 11 Tests, having averaged 62.4 for his first 11. He has been thoroughly rumbled by the bowlers and his confidence must be at rock bottom. Ben Duckett will also reflect that scoring easy runs against pop-gun Second Division attacks is no preparation for facing Test attacks, particularly attacks with skilful spinners. He passed 15 just once in his seven innings. Ravi Ashwin is unlikely to feature on his Christmas card list as he faced just 40 balls from him, scored 16 runs and was dismissed three times, each innings shorter than the one before. Duckett also fell to the spinners (Mehedi or Shakib) in all four innings in Bangladesh. By the time that he was dropped, the opposition knew that as soon as he faced a spinner, Duckett’s goose was well and truly cooked.

At different stages of the India series England lost the services of Broad, Anderson and Woakes, their three most effective bowlers over the last year. It meant Jake Ball, who had bowled so well in the Bangladesh ODIs, but seemed to have been lost by the baggage handlers at the airport after that last ODI, suddenly getting to play the final two Tests after weeks of inaction. However, even with such limited options available, there is no evidence that Steve Finn was ever in contention. Steve Finn ends the winter with the unenviable distinction of having played three times (including the Bangladesh warm-ups) and not taken a wicket in four innings with the ball. It is hard to see him playing Tests again in the near future.

The worst of the winter though was the chaotic handling of the spin bowlers. England knew that their spinners would be outbowled – the 1^st Test v India where Moeen and Adil Rashid instead out-bowled the Indian attack, proved to be just a mirage.

After the Bangladesh Tests, the report on the spinners would have read “#1, Moeen Ali; the rest, nowhere”. For three and a half Tests it seemed that “the Beard that is feared” was back with a vengeance. 17 wickets in 7 innings at 22.6. Then, suddenly, Alistair Cook stopped bowling him. Just 3 overs in the 2^nd innings at Visakhapatnam: when he finally got a bowl he broke the partnership that had finally taken the match away from England. He had the fewest overs of the six bowlers used at Mohali. When Alistair Cook remembered him again, he was not the same bowler, producing 3-410 in the last three Tests.

By the same token, Adil Rashid, who Cook evidently did not trust with the ball at all in Bangladesh, suddenly became the bowler of choice. He was, as a result, over-bowled and, in consequence, lost his surprise effect: his economy rate soared, his strike rate sky-rocketed and his average with it. Adil Rashid was lost as an effective strike bowler by the end of the series and could no longer maintain his economy.

Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid might have done better with better support. Gareth Batty was picked mainly, it seemed, as a steady and reliable bowler to block up an end. However, with the Indian side full of right-handers, having two off-spinners was always likely to be a luxury and, in the end, he played just three of the seven Tests. The fact that, by the end of the series, an inexperienced debutant with a very modest red-ball record, who was not even the first-choice spinner for his county in 2016, was picked ahead of Gareth Batty when earlier in the series another debutant had been preferred to him, was an indication of his limitations. After a very weak last third of the county season, when his rivals for a tour spot comprehensively out-bowled him, his final Test record will stand at 9 Tests, 15 wickets @ 61.

Zafar Ansari  played three Tests and, after a nervous start, had his moments. His county form had probably not justified a call-up, but the selectors had picked him the previous winter only for a serious injury to rule him out of the tour. The suspicion was that he was taken to learn and to bring back his confidence after two major injuries that had seen him for the best part of eight months out of action, but he had to be press-ganged into action ahead of time due to the failings of others.

However, fans who  do follow the county game closely might just wonder: two spinners from Surrey in the Test squad? Surely their spin attack must be lethal? The truth is that Surrey have what is far from the most testing spin attack in county cricket and neither of the two most successful English-qualified spinners of 2016 were even on the tour.

Of course, that leads to the question that most fans had, which was “where was the stand-out spinner of 2016?” Middlesex fans would also point out that Ollie Rayner, who had been on the England radar a couple of years earlier, had a very fine season too, playing on much less friendly tracks than many of his rivals. Rayner had a particularly fine second half of the season and watchers marvelled at how he was thriving under the new Toss rule. It is at least arguable that, debutant or not, if a second off-spinner were needed in the squad, Rayner should have gone instead of Batty. What though of Jack Leach, who had almost single-handedly taken Somerset to the verge of the Championship title?

Leach went to the UAE with the Lions, played just one of the unofficial ODIs, but with lethal results and then was only very lightly bowled in the unofficial Test v Afghanistan. There was utter bewilderment that Dawson was preferred to him as a replacement for Ansari. Today though, it was announced that in post-season tests in the UK his action was found to be suspect and had had to be re-modelled and, because of that, he could not be considered for the Tests.

There are so many questions raised by this episode that suspicions have been raised. Why the suspiciously convenient timing? Why give the Press a good story about spin bowlers just as the series ends when the spinners taken on tour were being so criticised? Why was the fact that he was re-modelling his action kept quiet? Why could he play an unofficial Test, but not be considered as an injury replacement for England? Why is it that no questions had been raised about is action during the season? Why is the programme of testing of actions kept quiet if the ECB want to have the moral high ground in ensuring that bowling actions around the world are legal? Was this leak just to ensure that selectorial or management backs were covered in the light of the series defeat? Was Leach deliberately kept from bowling more with the Lions as he worked on his new action? (In which case, surely getting as much match practice as possible was desirable to iron-out any remaining kinks)

Some good judges have expressed their amazement at the results of the tests. Of course, one assumes that they are accurate but, usually, when an action is found to be out of limits, people have questioned it previously. Is it every delivery? Or is it just the occasional ball when he tried to do something different? Jack Leach himself has said that it was just a tiny change in his action. It smacks of some kind of bizarre cover-up when the logical thing was just to release the details when it happened and get on with playing.

Speaking of spin bowlers they, like any bowler, need to feel that they have the confidence of the captain to perform at their best. The suspicion must be that Alistair Cook’s lack of intuitive feel how to use his spinners best, how to balance attack and defence and how to coax the best out of them was a major factor in the decline in their performances towards the end of the India series.

What of Cook? Twist or stick. A major betting company offered evens that he would resign in the post-match press conference. He has not, but Michael Vaughan, captain less than ten years ago, expects him to resign. Nasser Hussain, captain before Vaughan, was savage in his criticism, as were two former captains of less recent vintage, Geoff Boycott and Bob Willis.

We have though given Cook up for dead so many times. In 2013 he was suffering a slump in batting and in results, with a series defeat to Sri Lanka and an unexpected Test loss to India following a 5-0 Ashes drubbing. Many pundits expected him to go, but he hung on and turned both the series and his form around. Whereas the disastrous tour of Australia ended the England career of so many members of the squad, Cook survived to lead the new side, born from the ashes of that obliteration. Previously, a miserable summer in England in 2010 (to follow a poor Ashes the previous summer) had many writing his obituary, before runs flooded back in Australia that winter.

Despite coming from a county with a long tradition of spin bowling, many of Alistair Cook’s problems stem from a lack of intuitive feel for how to handle spinners and to get the best from them. In his early years he had it simple: Graeme Swann gave control, economy and wickets and Monty Panesar was a live wire. Together, they were Smash and Grab, Lillian Thompson, … Sadly, Swann’s elbow was increasingly an issue until he realised during the fractious Ashes whitewash that he was no longer worth his place in the squad. Monty’s increasingly erratic behaviour coincided with a rapid downturn in form – the Final Test in India in 2012/13 was the start of a catastrophic slump that saw his last six Tests produce just 9 wickets at over 60. At a stroke, Alistair Cook had to make do with what was available and what was available was an elegant batsman who could bowl some (then, part-time) off spin: Moeen Ali. No one would deny that Moeen is still a work in progress and that his form can be erratic. It is well known though that Alistair Cook gets frustrated with his lack of control. More than anyone though, a spinner needs to feel that confidence that even if a batsman goes after him, he will not be consigned immediately to the outfield as a naughty boy. He needs the captain to set fields to give him a chance, not just be used to spell the seamers when nothing is happening for them (for years this was Ollie Rayner’s complaint at Middlesex). Alistair Cook has never had this intuitive empathy with his spinners that coaxes the best out of them. He is much more comfortable with seamers who give him control and wickets and is out of his depth in conditions which do not favour seamers, but in which his spinners cannot apply a straitjacket and that thus require a lot of thought and tactical nous.

In this series, England had one chance. In the 1^st Test an earlier declaration would have given England a real opportunity to spring a surprise win and for the England spinners to receive a huge boost to their confidence. However, as the series progressed, Cook’s at times bizarre handling of the spinners seemed more designed to destroy confidence. It may be that the very long spells that Ansari and Dawson received were conditioned by the criticism that had been meted out on him for his destructive handling of Simon Kerrigan back in 2013, after which the unfortunate bowler has never been the same again but, tactically, they made little sense. How Moeen Ali went from taking 17 cheap wickets in the first three and a half Tests of the winter to being an afterthought who was a shadow of his former self, is one of the mysteries of Alistair Cooks captaincy career. All kinds of theories were advanced such as undisclosed injuries to explain why Moeen was suddenly surplus to requirements.

You sense that Andrew Strauss or Michael Vaughan would have seized that early chance to put England 1-0 up in the series and would have understood that there was little or no danger that India would have chased even 250 on the final afternoon had the declaration come shortly before Lunch, as it needed to. Almost certainly the series would still have been lost – that fright seemed to spark India into action – but I would take a large bet that England would not have lost the remaining four Tests and probably not even lost three of them had that chance been taken.

Speaking of chances, the estimate after the Final Test was that missed chances had cost England around 300 runs just in that one innings alone (heaven only knows how many more through the series). That was the difference between being competitive in the match and losing badly. India also missed chances, for example, Alistair Cook was missed early in the century opening stand, but more chances always came afterwards, so the Indian misses were never critical for their chances. In contrast, whenever an Indian batsman had a let-off, he seemed to take advantage and make England pay very dearly for it. Five of the six highest scores in the series were made by Indian batsmen and all the scores of over 150 were by Indians. In centuries, the score was 9-6 to India, so England were far from outclassed in that sense, but four of those nine Indian centuries were converted into daddy hundreds. Six times an England player passed 75, without going on to a century; only two Indians missed out. Whether they were chances to force a result, chances in the field, or chances to go on to make a decisive score, India were just consistently more ruthless.  It is not the captain’s fault that chances are dropped, but when there is a general laxity and defeatist air around a side, it is more likely that chances will go begging and that is down to the captain. It is the captain who has to ensure that the team is pumped and primed for every session, that heads do not drop when things start to go wrong and that a fair proportion even of the half-chances get taken.

England really have very few options. Since he made his debut, Joe Root has had the label “FEC” – Future England Captain – tattooed (metaphorically) on his forehead. Established wisdom is though that the intention is for him to take over for the summer of 2018, after next winter’s Ashes tour. There is a fear that his runs are so important to the side that the burden of having the captaincy too is just too great a risk to take in Australia. There seems though little alternative to Root. Stuart Broad has had the captaincy in the short form and lost it: his time has gone. Jos Buttler has deputised for Eoin Morgan in ODIs with some real success, but is not even guaranteed his place in the Test side, especially after Hameed returns, assuming that Keaton Jennings also has to be accommodated in the final XI.  Interestingly, England seem to be covering their bets somewhat, as Jennings captained the Lions in the UAE, will captain them in Sri Lanka and is captain of the North to play the South in the season-opener in the UAE. Is he being prepared as an alternative to Joe Root, or maybe to spell Joe Root in the future so that Root can take some, less important series off and thus ease his burden?

Either way, England face a critical decision. It is possible that Alistair Cook could limp on until the end of the Ashes in 2017/18, but it is just as possible that a heavy defeat to South Africa in the summer could see him resign anyway in mid-summer, pushing the side into crisis and giving Joe Root little time to bed in. Does the ECB back Cook – there has been a rush to get behind him and offer support but, as Sir Humphrey Appleby said, “you have to get behind someone to stab them in the back”? Or do they go with a stop-gap captain, maybe on a series by series basis? Or do they take the plunge with Joe Root now? England’s chances in Australia may hang on making the correct call.