2nd Test, Day 4: Awful, Awful England

 

2^nd Test, Day 4: Awful, Awful England

July 17^th 2017

Even if winning was inconceivable, the idea was to make South Africa fight for every wicket, wasn’t it? This was going to be like Dunkirk, like Mike Atherton in 1998, like Brisbane 2010. We might go down, but let’s show the South Africans that they have been in a proper brawl.

Even if you had a sinking feeling about what would happen in reality, hundreds of thousands of fans and, we hope, all eleven of the England team had, before the start of play, the image of England 300-4 at the Close today, setting up a thrilling final day. Someone, probably Alistair Cook or Joe Root would score a big century and enough players would rally around to give England at least some hope of producing an extraordinary result.

Of course, having seen so many England foul-ups over the last nearly fifty years (and heard about others, going back to the early 1950s, from my father), I ended my column yesterday suggesting that the most likely result was the game ending around Tea. How right that caution was! England were awful in a way that made the South African surrender at Lord’s seem far less tame. No side should be bowled out in 44.2 overs on a pitch where only the odd ball did something untoward. Nothing summed it up better than the last three wickets going down in four balls as England failed to survive long enough for the Trent Bridge tea lady to put the kettle on.

England needed Keaton Jennings to show the same determination that he saw in India. He was bowled, either to a wonderful Philander delivery (for the more generous), or through the gate, with bat and pad embarrassingly far apart (for the less generous). Patience with Jennings is wearing thin among the fans, although he was sawn-off in the innings of the 1^st Test (his LBW was both missing the stumps and pitched outside leg), played a battling knock in the second innings to help set up victory and, in India, managed a century and a fifty in consecutive Tests. Hence, Jennings’s bad run is really just the two innings in this Test, yet many fans think that he has already had “far too many chances” (honest! I’m not making that one up!)

Ballance is another facing opprobrium. What better way to justify his place than with a fighting century? He was, once again, dismissed LBW playing back, in front of the stumps, completely missing the ball… again. In three of his four innings of the series he has reached 20, yet his top score is only 34 (20, 34, 27 & 4). Get in. Get out. Can the selectors justify sticking with Ballance? Giving him two Tests and dropping him is getting perilously close to the revolving doors policy of the 1980s and ‘90s that, hopefully, no one wants to return to, but not too many people were convinced with Ballance at #3 in the first place.

The key moment was Root’s dismissal. Bowled. Wonderful delivery. Off stump cartwheeling. That made it 55-3, ending a mini-recovery. That was the moment when you knew that it was hopeless. Then Cook went. Rather poor shot, wonderful catch.

From there the principle mode of dismissal should have been recorded as “hari kiri”: Bairstow, miss-timed slog; Moeen Ali, miss-directed slog; Stokes, miss-timed slog; Broad, miss-timed slog. Going down will all guns blazing is one thing but 84-4 is a bit early to give up playing for survival. It was if seeing first Root and then Cook fall convinced the rest of the batsmen that it was hopeless to resist.

Whereas after the 1^st Test it seemed that all the problems were with South Africa, now it is the other way round. In truth, the easy win for England hid a lot of unpalatable truths: among them, an unreliable top order, an unbalanced attack with at least one passenger and a captain who seems not to trust his most threatening wicket-taking bowler (that he may have learnt from Alistair Cook) and who, in general, has not handled his bowlers well and has been as awful with DRS in this Test as Dean Elgar was in the 1^st. Whereas Root out-thought and out-maneuvered Dean Elgar in the 1^st Test, Faf du Plessis made him look like the class dunce in the 2^nd. Whereas South Africa addressed their failings from the 1^st Test (sloppy fielding, lack of energy, poor use of DRS, no fight, …), England’s remained and a few new ones appeared to compound them.

Four players in particular will be awaiting the squad announcement for the 3^rd Test on Sunday with some trepidation. In order of degree of nervousness they are probably: Dawson, Wood, Ballance and Jennings.

Dawson has convinced no one. 18 runs in 4 innings and 5 wickets at 33.8. Apart from Olivier, who has only bowled 10 overs so far in the series, Dawson is the most expensive bowler on either side. Supposedly Moeen Ali is #2 to him, but Moeen has 14 wickets at 15.1 and 139 runs to boot. Time and again Dawson has been the one that Root has turned to first, as if the idea was to justify his selection, but his main threat has been a rare ability, at least in this team, to produce successful DRS reviews. Adil Rashid – still to play a home Test – or even Mason Crane, may feel expectant.

Mark Wood bowled 90mph thunderbolts in the ODIs but, in the Tests, has looked much tamer. 1-197 in 56 overs is not what England wanted from their main shock weapon. With Chris Woakes and Jake Ball training at Trent Bridge – maybe as a subliminal message to Mark Wood – the prospect that one or both may appear in the squad for the 3^rd Test is very real (if both, Toby Roland-Jones will take a break from being drinks waiter). However, at very most they will get one or two T20 games before the Test: how match-fit will they be?

Gary Ballance has shown the same failings as in his previous incarnation. He gets starts and then gets out and he seems to have photocopied a couple of standard dismissals that he tries to perfect, innings after innings: not “eliminate”, he perfects them with constant practice. If he is to be given another chance, it may be down the order at #5, with an extra batsman coming in.

Dropping Keaton Jennings so soon would be harsh, but you feel that yet another opener is living on borrowed time, despite the fact that he scored 7 centuries last summer, playing at Chester-le-Street and arguably should have gone to Bangladesh as first choice. The selectors would be reluctant to drop him so quickly, but one option might be to drop him to #3, hopefully away from the new ball and play Stoneman (currently flavour of the month with the press), or even Sam Robson, who has had some excellent form this summer as opener. Is the Sam Robson of 2017 better than the Sam Robson of 2014, who struggled against India? He has had two summers of heavy run-scoring, although a pair in his last First Class outing may count against him, as may the memory of recalling Ballance and, before him, Nick Compton. Mark Stoneman moved to The Oval to enhance his chances of Test cricket and has responded with heavy run-scoring, but a career average under 35 should count against him. Names who may also be mentioned could include Dawid Malan and Alex Hales.

How many changes will the selectors make? It is inconceivable that it will be none. If they make as many as four, it will look like panic. The most likely thing is that it will be two or, just possibly, three. What is clear is that the fans will expect a whole lot better from the players next time out.