West Indies v England, 2nd Test, Day 3: Awful England Crash Again

 

West Indies v England

2nd Test, Day 3: Awful England Crash Again

February 2^nd 2019

 

The relative batting performance for England and the West Indies can be summed-up in one statistic:

·        Seven West Indian batsmen got a start in their first innings, of whom, only two failed to reach thirty.

·        Seven England batsmen got a start in their second innings, of whom, only one reached twenty.

In a low-scoring Test, in which batsmen never felt in, the ability to grind-out a 30, or a 40 was fundamental. No one on either side got very close to Moeen Ali’s first innings 60, but all seven West Indians who got a start, passed 20 and enough of them chipped-in with 30s and 40s to take them past 300 and a total worth 500 to 600 on a better pitch.

In the 1^st Test, you could think of plenty of excuses: not enough practice, unfamiliar conditions, players a little over-confident, the wrong playing XI picked on the day, misreading of the conditions, etc. They would be switched-on and ready for the 2^nd Test. In fact, the margin in the 2^nd Test was probably even bigger than in the 1^st.

Much has been made of the relative difference in pace between the two attacks. In fact, it was not as great as it might seem:

England	Average Speed	West Indies	Average Speed	Difference
Anderson	81.7	Roach	81.6	-0.1
Broad	83.5	Gabriel	87.7	+4.2
Stokes	84.3	Joseph	85.3	+1.0
Curran	78.8	Holder	78.0	-0.8

Anderson and Curran were both slightly faster on average than their West Indian opposite number. Stokes was a fraction slower than Alzarri Joseph. The big difference was that the England pace attack had no one to compare with the pace of Shannon Gabriel. Although Gabriel only bowled around twenty deliveries in the England second innings that were above 90mph, the menace was always there. In contrast, 88mph was the absolute limit for the England bowlers, even with an effort ball (Ben Stokes bowled a couple of deliveries a little above 88mph, without ever threatening 89mph). Knowing that a really quick ball could come, the batsmen would always be a little tentative above getting into line, in case a ball came that exploded in their face in the way that the ball did to Joe Root in the 1^st Test.

One criticism was that the England bowlers were bowling the wrong length and line. Stuart Broad, in particular, beat the bat on dozens of occasions. Was he bowling too short? Would bowling straighter have helped?

Unfortunately, data is not available for the England first innings, but we can compare the line and length of Stuart Broad in the West Indian first innings and Shannon Gabriel in the England second innings. The comparison is interesting:

 

Gabriel only bowled 9 deliveries that pitched closer than 6m from the stumps. Broad pitched many more deliveries well up. Gabriel’s average length was about 7m from the stumps; Broad’s about 6.5m. Gabriel’s greater pace justified his slightly shorter length, but there is no good reason to say that Stuart Broad was consistently too short.

What about line? Gabriel’s average line to the right-hander was around seventh stump. Broad’s shows more dispersion, but was, on average, almost identical, although around half his deliveries were on the fourth/fifth stump line that Gabriel left almost unexplored. Gabriel pitched just one ball on the stumps; Broad just nine, one of them a toe-crunching Yorker on middle-and-off to the left-hander.

The biggest difference though was between Kemar Roach and Jimmy Anderson:

Anderson’s grouping to the right-hander was extraordinary, his deliveries landing in a box 4 metres long and about 4 stumps wide. The further up he pitched, the closer to the stumps the ball landed, making the batsman play. Roach tended to go much wider of off, tempting the batsman to have a go. In contrast, to the left-hander, Roach bowled more balls in line and was slightly tighter around off stump, with not a single ball down leg. In contrast about a third of Anderson’s deliveries to the left-hander were down the leg side, effectively eliminating LBW and bowled as modes of dismissal: in fact, around a third of his deliveries to the left-hander showed exactly the same tight grouping as he showed to the right-hander but, now, they were the wrong side of the stumps. This was the biggest single difference between the respective New Ball bowlers.

However, overall, there was not a huge difference between Anderson and Broad on one side and Roach and Gabriel on the other: Gabriel was that bit faster and could produce the 90+mph effort ball that was beyond Broad and Anderson’s line to the left-handers was significantly untidier, but there were not the abysmal differences in bowling between the two attacks that some critics perceived.

The big difference between the sides on a difficult pitch was:

(a)    Taking the chances that were offered. England missed too many.

and

(b)   The West Indian batsmen were far more determined to hang in there in difficult conditions and not to give it away. The West Indian batsmen sold their wickets at the highest possible price.

For the 3^rd Test, at Gros Islet, England are hoping for a better pitch because they have seen that, on pitches with life, the West Indians have a big advantage. It would be astonishing if the groundsman did not serve up another spicy pitch, with the West Indians going for the throat. That said, is there anything that England can do to give themselves a better chance?

Denly had two low scores and his one Test has produced 23 runs, compared to the 31 of Jennings. Neither has exactly covered himself with glory. It would be hard to drop Denly and bring back Jennings… and pretty unjustifiable. There might though just possibly be a reason to play both Jennings and Denly, with Denly opening and Jennings slotting-in at #3, where many pundits suspect that he may do better, long-term, although it would be better to go with Burns and Jennings opening and Denly in his accustomed place at #3. While Jennings has not exactly been full of runs, part of the opener’s job is to see off the opening bowlers and get the shine off the ball. That Jennings did do: he faced as many balls in his two innings in the 1^st Test, as Buttler, Foakes or Moeen Ali have in the two Tests combined and not many fewer than Bairstow and Stokes.

One reason to play Jennings would be if there is a second, attacking spinner, because his specialist fielding at Short Leg at least partly compensates a lack of runs. That would be if the selectors went with Jack Leach instead of Sam Curran. Curran is going at almost 4-an-over and has taken just a single wicket in 42 overs of generally quite innocuous seam and, although third in the batting averages thanks to a Not Out, has managed just 50 runs. One suspects that Jack Leach would be a much better foil to Moeen Ali than Adil Rashid, would offer more wicket-taking threat than Sam Curran and, even if he slightly lengthens the tail, that tail has hardly wagged so far in the series anyway, with the last three wickets falling for one run in the first innings and fourteen in the second, having fallen for sixteen and eighteen in the 1^st Test. Overall, Leach is likely to add far more value in total than Curran.

With Ollie Stone withdrawn from the tour and Chris Woakes injured, the Leach for Curran swap is the only one feasible in the attack. Who though might make way to allow Burns, Jennings and Denly to make up the top 3? Jos Buttler’s 55 runs in 4 innings, while not exactly any worse than his colleagues, is certainly no better and it looks as if his hands have been generously spread by some errant kiwi with what was, for my generation, termed “Britain’s favourite butter”. He is also batting at least one and possibly two places too high at #5 If Buttler were to make way, Jonny Bairstow would go back to #5, where he would be likely to make more runs and we would, at least, have a top five of specialists, batting in their specialist position, rather than a mixture of batsmen out of position.

So, although it would make some fans splutter over their morning toast, the following XI would do no worse than the two sides selected so far:

Burns

Jennings

Denly

Root

Bairstow

Stokes

Foakes

Moeen

Broad

Leach

Anderson

West Indies v England - 1st Test, Day 2: Nightmare in the Caribbean

 

West Indies v England

1st Test, Day 2: Nightmare in the Caribbean

January 24^th 2019

 

After the shenanigans with the new ball at the end of the day, it was hard to avoid the sinking feeling that England might have, yet again, fallen for a Caribbean sucker punch. Sadly, it did not take long for these suspicions to be confirmed. Time and again they have arrived with high hopes, had a nightmare start to the series and then been unable to make headway on a series of dead tracks designed for timeless Tests or, for those of a more conspiratorial disposition, to protect the West Indian series lead. The 2019 Caribbean tour took just four sessions to conform to that pattern. 30-1 at Lunch. All out and facing the Follow-on at Tea on Day 2. Yes, it’s good to be back in Barbados.

What was obvious was that the bowlers had to nip out the last two wickets quickly and retain the momentum because, if the West Indian bowlers found the same help that England had found, 280 might be an awfully useful-looking score by the end of Day 2. The sinking feeling was not helped by the way that young Shimron Hetmyer protected his partner, took the singles late in the over and hit what was there to be hit as the score crept up towards the 300-mark that should have been unattainable. An edge from a brutal Stokes bouncer flew past Ben Foakes’s desperate stretch, balls eluded edges, false shots fell safe. And all the while the wags were calling for Joe Root to throw the ball to Stuart Broad – yes, the same wags who have been calling for him to be dropped through most of his career. Huge outswinger from Stokes, nick, into the gloves, given… but nothing on UltraEdge on review. The bowlers could not bowl a maiden to Hetmyer to get a full over at Alzarri Joseph and when Ben Stokes finally did manage five consecutive dot balls, the last ball flew to the boundary to take Hetmyer into the 80s and the score ever-closer to the 300 that the West Indians wanted before the start. However, with Joseph in his sights, Jimmy Anderson made no mistake in the next over and a simple catch to Jos Buttler at 2^nd Slip gave him his twenty-seventh five-for. Five balls later, Stokes got Hetmyer to edge to Ben Foakes and the innings was over. For England, Anderson and Stokes were magnificent. For the West Indies, Hetmyer was immense: surely the WICB cannot manage to lose him to the Test side too through incompetence and mismanagement?

Once the tail had been dismissed, Jennings, Burns and Bairstow had to do their job. This was not going to be suitable for those of a nervous disposition. A confident start by Jennings strangely did nothing to calm nerves. Taking the lion’s share of the strike and doing almost all the scoring, he got a start, drove without due care and attention and was convicted at gully. Only three years ago, Haseeb Hameed and Keaton Jennings had wonderful Test debuts in India and England supporters were thinking that they had a ready-made opening pair for the next decade or decade and a half: Hameed’s fortunes have only gone downward since he left that tour with a broken finger and an average of 9.7 for Lancashire in 2018 makes one wonder how much longer his county career will last without a sudden change of fortunes. Jennings has had two golden streaks in County cricket, each followed by a prolonged run-drought: the fans have lost patience, how long will England’s last? There is no doubt that, having tried so many openers since Andrew Strauss retired, England do not want to chop and change again, but nor can they afford to start an Ashes series with an opener desperately short on form and confidence. Plan A is to support him in public and hope that he gets enough runs on the tour to stop wagging tongues. Plan B is to hope that someone on the County circuit gets a thousand runs before the end of May as an opener. Having got a start in 16 of his last 20 Test innings, a single score of 50+ - albeit a monumental one in Sri Lanka – is no kind of return, but suggests that the issue is as much psychological as technical.

That said, as England staggered from 30-1 to 77 all out, Jennings’s 17 was comfortably (uncomfortably?) the top score of the innings and the opening partnership of 23, by some way the largest of the innings (the next best was 12). Things were put in sharp perspective as the West Indian openers put on a fifty opening partnership. A cynic would have said that they already had more than enough of a lead to win, but this was “grind their faces into the dirt time”. The next stage of this process will be to provide England with two low, slow shirtfronts for the 2^nd and 3^rd Test: yes, we have been caught this way before. The England opening attack, at a gentle low-80s, just did not have the pace, or the height to exploit the devil in the pitch. As in the first innings, it took the introduction of Moeen Ali to break the opening partnership. The difference this time was that, suddenly, the rhythm was there, the ball started to turn and, suddenly, it seemed that Moeen was bowling hand grenades in a minefield. With Ben Stokes getting seriously wound-up, 52-0 became 61-5, with four wickets falling for one run in fourteen balls. You really wish that the bowlers had shown this fight before the West Indies batsmen had got away from them the previous day. However, as England had, the West Indian batsmen decided to apply the long handle to counter the clatter of wickets and, unlike for England, it worked.

The clatter of wickets had to continue for England to have any remote chance and that meant removing Hetmyer. Easier said than done. A second fifty partnership in the innings, including a brutal assault on Adil Rashid’s first over and any fantasists who harboured thoughts of a great escape were sadly disabused of their notions. With a lead of 339 going into Day 3, the West Indies will expect confidently to win around Tea tomorrow. It has been depressing to watch England implode, washing away all the successes against India and Sri Lanka. Make no mistake, England are going to lose and lose badly, but they desperately need to show some fight in the second innings and to bat a lot better, if only for their self-respect. Australia are watching England and are shaking in their boots, but it is with laughter, not fear.

West Indies v England, 1st Test, Day 1: Anderson and Stokes Provoke a Calypso Collapso

 

West Indies v England

1st Test, Day 1: Anderson and Stokes Provoke a Calypso Collapso

January 23^rd 2019

 With the pitch suggesting to Joe Root that a second spinner might be more useful than an extra seamer, Sam Curran put another nail in the incipient coffin of Stuart Broad’s Test career by keeping him out of the side again and Adil Rashid won the battle for the #10 spot in the batting order from Jack Leach, with the selectors reasoning that his ability to produce an explosive, wicket-taking delivery was more important than Leach’s economy and ability to close-down an end. While the Curran-for-Broad selection worked in Sri Lanka, where seamers were bit-players, how effective it will be in the Caribbean is open to doubt. Broad, at his best, is by far the better bowler, although Curran offers variety, giving a left-arm/right-arm opening attack, something that England have missed for many years. However, it did not take long for doubts to surface, with his first ball disappearing to the boundary and the 21 runs from his first five overs providing sharp contrast to the just 4 runs from Jimmy Anderson’s first five. The decision to play Adil Rashid brought the normal storm of protest on social media, ignoring the fact that the eight matches since his unexpected recall have brought him 22 wickets at 29.4, well below his career average and a reputation for making critical breakthroughs when most needed and least expected. While the Moeen-Leach OB/SLA combination is probably the best match and the most reliable, life is never boring when Adil Rashid is bowling. And to think that Dominic Bess, who made such a favourable impression last summer, is no better than fourth choice and maybe even fifth. Spin may be dead, but England have probably six spinners right now who are as good as any who played in the barren years before Monty Panesar’s brief career.

Within an hour in the morning the fans more inclined to knee-jerk reactions were summing-up the match and the series. As Jimmy Anderson reeled-off maiden after maiden at one end, Sam Curran’s first ball sailed away to the boundary. Things did not get much better for him after that inauspicious start. Suffice it to say that he does not look like a new ball bowler at this level.The pitch looked friendly. The bowling looked impotent. And the selection of Curran and Adil Rashid ahead of Broad and Leach looked like a pretty crass error. It was a situation that threatened 300-3 at the Close and a hard day chasing leather. The openers put on 53 and then 73 were added for the second wicket. At 126-1, with only Jimmy Anderson exercising any control, Stuart Broad was beginning to look like a bowler of legendary powers (it is curious, when he is in the side the fans moan that he has done nothing to justify his place and, when he not picked, they moan that he is the best bowler that we have). There was though a little warning of the frailties of Caribbean cricket as Ben Stokes picked up Brathwaite and Bravo in quick succession and 126-1 became a slightly less solid 128-3. Still, five of the top six reached 40 and with the new ball taken and the Close looming, 240-4 looked like the foundation for 400+. The West Indians just needed someone to hang around and turn a solid start into a big score and make England suffer. This is not a great England side, but one of its virtues is that it finds ways to turn games that look to be heading the way of the opposition.

Sixteen deliveries with the new ball and even though the odd ball beat the bat, more were beating the boundary fielders. Then Royston Chase played a loose shot and, suddenly, the batting disintegrated in the Calypso Collapso fashion that has encouraged tired bowlers for years. Three quick wickets for Jimmy Anderson and then one for Ben Stokes with what proved to be the last ball of the day. The West Indians can consider themselves fortunate that, despite a decent over-rate from England, the umpires considered that there was not enough time left to finish the over, otherwise you would not have bet against a ninth wicket falling.

264-8 represented a decent day’s work yet, with the new ball suddenly starting to spit and misbehave, you wonder if the pitch really is as benign as it appeared to be in the morning. It could have been even better. At 178-4, Hetmayer drove Jimmy Anderson to Jos Buttler at cover. Buttler shelled what should have been a fairly straightforward catch and Hetmayer went on to 56* at the Close. Maybe England will pay for two sessions of anaemic cricket and 280 will prove to be a match-winning score: that you never know until both sides have batted and, sometimes, not even then. England though have a got themselves into a position that offers them a real chance if they can finish the tail quickly in the morning. With Jimmy Anderson resting on figures of 24-12-33-4 and Ben Stokes, 19.2-2-47-3, with a still new ball in the morning, the England batsmen may get their chance quite quickly.

England v Pakistan: 1st Test Preview - And the Winner is… Dom Bess!

 

England v Pakistan: 1^st Test Preview

And the Winner is… Dom Bess!

May 23^rd 2018

First: an apology… I never did wrap up the New Zealand series. Disappointment at the outcome – when you take wickets with the first two balls of the day and it is all downhill from there, it takes some effort to dredge up the effort to write. New Zealand held out comfortably for the draw and took the series. England were not good enough. New Zealand were good value for their win and deserved it thoroughly.

Then, a heavy schedule at work was followed by being signed-up by the View from the Outfield website to report on County cricket – if you don’t know View from the Outfield, you can find it at viewfromtheoutfield.com: it is well worth a read – which is taking two or three hours out of many of my evenings.

Another season, another series. Pakistan are the warm-up act for the summer’s main series against India, with an ODI series against Australia sandwiched in between. For England, this summer bears a depressing similarity to 2014, when England played after a 5-0 defeat in Australia, then lost for the first time at home to Sri Lanka and were being thoroughly outplayed by India before Moeen Ali went from being “Moeen Who??” to being “the beard that is feared”.

There is an irony in the fact that, having been a fixture in the England side for four years since his Lord’s debut against Sri Lanka in 2014, Moeen was almost certainly not even mentioned by the selectors for this Test. In India and Australia over the last two winters, England have given debuts to Liam Dawson, Zafir Ansari, Mason Crane and Jack Leach. Ansari has retired. Liam Dawson’s star has faded to the extent that he is unlikely to play another Test. Crane is just coming back from serious injury and now it is the turn of Jack Leach, who took Mason Crane’s place in New Zealand when Crane was injured, to have a serious injury himself.

While short-sighted curmudgeons have been moaning about playing on “the beach at Taunton”, England are seeing it pay dividends. Jack Leach was one of the few successes on the Lion’s tour to the Caribbean and his spin-twin, Dom Bess, also came out of that tour with great credit with a maiden century (in the post-Lions, Champion county match) and wickets. He may have played only sixteen First Class matches and he may not be a regular in the Somerset side but, when he plays, he has often been lethal. Twenty years old and averaging four wickets per match in his short career, astute followers of the county game have known for a year that his Test match debut was just a matter of time: most people expected to be against Sri Lanka in the Autumn but, the attrition rate of spinners means that he will get an early chance to impress. Lest we forget, Alf Valentine had only played TWO First Class matches before he set about destroying the England batting in 1950.

It could all end in tears – England have tried spinner after spinner since the decline and fall of Swann and Monty – but remember that Nathan Lyon was the thirteenth spinner to be tried by Australia in a short space of time and he seems to have done okay.  There are plenty of cricketing reasons to believe that, come this Autumn, in Leach and Bess, England will take to Sri Lanka their most potent spin combination since 2011.

Do not expect miracles from Dom Bess. He has taken just one wicket so far this season on the seam-friendly pitches, as Somerset have relied so far on pace, but this game will be about his temperament and readiness. Bess will play, as England have already stated that he will provide the variety in a seam-heavy attack.

For England there are many questions:

·       Has Alistair Cook still got the hunger to score big runs? In 2017 he was scoring runs for fun for Essex before the Tests. In 2018, he has managed 84, 0, 26, 37 and 66. After a pretty dreadful winter, there is enough there to show that he is getting some form back but, will it last into the Pakistan Tests?

·       Mark Stoneman is lucky to hold his place. He scored 4x50 during the winter and bettered his best Test score three times, falling in single-figures just twice in seven Tests, but still has not passed 60. Can he make a definitive contribution and seal his place? He has reached 20 four times in seven innings this season for Surrey, but has yet to reach 30. In contrast, Keaton Jennings is on a run of 109, 126, 136, 73 and 69 for Lancashire. If Jennings can maintain this prolific form, it will be hard to ignore him.

·       What about Joe Root at #3? He prefers to bat at 4. It is well-chronicled that it is a long time since Root has converted a 50 into a century: he has been scoring 50s a-plenty, but the difference between the two sides in Australia was often the relative contributions of the captains. Can Root score big runs at #3 and improve his conversion statistics?

·       Is Ben Stokes ready for Tests again? We already know that he will miss one of the Tests against India as his charge for affray will come up in Bristol Crown Court, where he faces a possible sentence of three years in prison. How distracted is he by what is coming up and by the media circus that will follow him?

·       What about Jos Buttler? He will bat at 7 with a licence to play with freedom. However, he played just one red-ball game in 2017 and has struggled to adapt to Tests. Can he harness his incredible talents in Tests? His form, opening, in the IPL has been extraordinary, but that is a very different problem to batting in a Test.

·       Which way will England jump with the fourth seamer: Chris Woakes or Mark Wood? Woakes was bitterly disappointing in Australia and Mark Wood can hardly say that he seized his opportunity in New Zealand with both hands. Can either cut it long-term at Test level?

·       And, the $64000 question: how long have Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson got left? Anderson was masterful in Australia and Stuart Broad looks to be back to his best, but England know that Anderson is on borrowed time and Broad may have only two years left in him at this level, even if his form continues to justify his place.

Last time Pakistan toured England, they shared the series, celebrated wins with press-ups. They also became #1 in the ICC Test rankings to boot. Now they are #7 having barely won a match since. They beat Ireland, but not after Tim Murtagh and Kevin O’Brien gave them an almighty scare (in the end they were relieved to scramble over the line) and have been depressingly badly treated with the warm-ups, by having games against the hapless Northants and a weak Leicestershire: as preparation goes for a Test series the ECB should be embarrassed and ashamed by their lack of generosity as hosts.

It is quite likely that just four of the eleven players who faced England at Lord’s less than two years ago will be in the Pakistan XI. Like England, they desperately need a strong showing for their own credibility. Pakistan are mercurial: perhaps the most naturally talented cricketers in the world, they get too easily distracted by what they see as on and off-the-field conspiracies and, as a result, disintegrate far too easily. Just as England have to learn to cope with pitches taking big turn in India and the UAE, India and Pakistan have to learn to cope with a tinge of green in the pitch in England without screaming “foul!!” Cricket is intended to be played on grass and, in a wet and humid country, grass tends to grow green.

The bad news for England is that even a 2-0 series win – which seems to be totally implausible – will barely gain any ranking points: England need to win 1-0 even to stand still. Pakistan will remember what Sri Lanka did in 2014 and know that England are vulnerable and that there are questions against the name of almost every player in the XI; the Pakistanis will be only too happy to deepen the England crisis and are quite capable of doing it if they can retain their focus.

Ashes 2017/18: Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring!

 

Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring!

November 10^th 2017

To read the headlines in the sporting press there would seem to be little point in England turning up for the 1^st Test in just under two weeks. It is all redolent of a previous tour when Martin Johnson famously summed-up the warm-ups with the phrase:

England have just three problems: they can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field.

Of course, the first day of that series ended 198-2 and England won a comfortable series victory. Fixating so much on England’s problems, no one looked at Australia’s.

Of course, we have been here before. England went to Australia in 2013 on the back of a 3-0 home Ashes win, lost the initiative at the end of the series, particularly in the ODIs and fell apart. Poor selections, poor planning and some downright bad luck played their part, as did an astonishing run of form from Mitch Johnson, who had probably never in his career strung together such a devastating string of performances. England were not the only sufferers: in ten Tests over three series v Sri Lanka, England and South Africa in a 16 month period punctuated by a serious injury, Mitch Johnson took 68 wickets at 16.6. It was England’s misfortune to meet him at the height of his powers – his next five series, the last of his career, saw him take 49 wickets at 33.9 and conform to his stereotype of “occasionally devastating, frequently innocuous”.

The BBC has a particularly devastating exposé of the events behind the scenes in the 2013/14 Ashes, but even it barely scratches the surface. The plan to hit Australia with three tall fast bowlers backfired spectacularly. The selectors were apparently unaware that Chris Tremlett was still feeling his way back from serious injury and a shadow of his former self. Boyd Rankin was never fit on that tour and even so had to play a Test. And Steve Finn got the yips so badly that it would have been kinder to send him home. However, the selectors were not to blame for Graeme Swann suffering career-ending injury, Jonathon Trott’s stress-induced illness (although there were signs that all was not well months beforehand) and Monty Panesar starting to suffer the problems that have derailed his career.

The 2017/18 Ashes touring party has convinced no one. Batting positions #1, #3 and #5 have produced the sort of action normally seen in comedy films when a hand grenade without a pin is passed from hand to hand. While Mark Stoneman has given some signs of being able to cope as a Test opener, his record is modest and he owes his position more to the failings of others. Dawid Malan at #5 was a surprise pick in the summer Tests: again, he has played a couple of decent innings, but is yet to convince. And the “battle” to bat at #3 between James Vince and Gary Ballance sees two batsmen, tried, tested and discarded, in a shoot-out in which the bullet is as likely to hit the batsman’s own foot as it is to hit the opposition gunslinger.

There is no Ben Stokes for well-known reasons and that unbalances the attack and the middle-order. Steve Finn has already been sent home, injured. Moeen has not yet bowled a ball in anger. Jake Ball, who looked set to play in the 1^st Test has sprained an ankle. And injuries ruled out Mark Wood, Toby Roland-Jones and a string of other likely bowlers, while one of the few players to come home from Australia with any credit in 2014 – Chris Jordan – is now out of favour and appears forgotten.

Add to all this that, against a couple of pretty weak attacks, Alistair Cook is yet to make a score and appears to be batting with a stick of rhubarb and there have already been several collapses in just three innings and it is not surprising that the Australian fans and press are shaking with laughter. The opening shots from the bowling attack hardly inspired fear either. Two months without a bowl in the middle has left some of the bowlers logically a little rusty. Stuart Broad looked particularly out of sorts and Chris Woakes’s opening overs were pretty rusty, but that is why you schedule warm-up games. The aim is to have Broad, Woakes and Jimmy Anderson fit and firing at Brisbane on November 23^rd, not at Perth on the first day of the tour. Win or draw that Brisbane Test and suddenly the momentum of the series will change.

Already there are some small signs that suggest that maybe things are not so bad after all. No batsman has yet scored a century, but there have been two near misses. Mark Stoneman has 3x50 in three innings. Six batsmen have registered a fifty, while Malan already has two in three innings and Jonny Bairstow has only been dismissed once so far in three innings.

Of the attack, Jimmy Anderson looks in superb form. His 7 wickets have so far cost under 10 each. Chris Woakes  has run through the Cricket Australia XI top order and wild cards Crane and Overton, who both probably expected to spend two months carrying drinks, have also taken wickets and shown some promising form. And, before his injury, Jake Ball’s accuracy and economy were very impressive.

Australia’s first-choice attack looks fearsome, but the reserves are thin and much depends Pat Cummins, whose injury record is horrific. There are also questions about at least two places in the top seven. At the same time, Australia’s median innings total in the last two years is just 243. There have been eight completed innings totals under 200, not all of them away from home either. Innings totals of 85 and 161 against South Africa in Hobart and a struggle to reach a target of 187 against New Zealand speak of frailties no less real than England’s, as do a series of abject performances in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

You can certainly argue that the 1^st Test will decide the series. If Australia win easily, the cracks in their own side will be forgotten and those in England’s team – one highly respected writer already calls them “beleaguered” – may quickly widen to chasms. In contrast, a solid England draw would send a powerful message and help to knit the team together in adversity. If the top order can oblige Pat Cummins to come back for a third and a fourth spell, the lower order will find it much easier to add the tail-end runs that are so often the difference between victory and defeat.

Expectations of England, as in 1986, are miserably low: that may be no bad thing because the opposition will expect to win easily – if they do not, the pressure in the series will shift quickly.

West Indies v England, 3rd Test, Day 1: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

West Indies v England, 3^rd Test, Day 1: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

September 8^th 2017

The script was for a 3-0 series win against the West Indies and an argument about which of the new players in the side who had filled their boots against a sub-standard team might be good enough to go to Australia.

The reality is that the match is a decider in the series, that the West Indies have won two of the last three Tests between the sides and that England’s record in the Final Test of series since 2013 is so diabolically bad that the unthinkable – a series defeat – is a real possibility.

And, just to make things more interesting, the Test is at Lord’s, where England do not have a good recent record. And lost the Toss, which has, in the last few years, almost invariably been a prelude to defeat.

There is also the small matter of the Test future of Stoneman, Westley and Malan being very definitely still in the air. All have scored a fifty. All have shown flashes of ability. All have shown real vulnerability. And none of them have been able to turn a fifty into a big score. With just two rounds of County Championship matches to go for any alternatives to show their hand, the Test becomes a last opportunity to avoid yet another selection crisis. Reality though is that there are not a whole lot of other options without dipping into Division 2 cricket and there the lesson of Ben Duckett was clear: it is one thing flogging Glamorgan or Derbyshire in front of a couple of hundred die-hard fans, it is a whole different problem to do the same in a Test against India, or Australia, … or Bangladesh. Save the occasional, rare exception, the selectors have to draw from the reducing pool of English-qualified Division 1 players and there are not many of them left who are credible candidates and who have not been tried.

Quite apart from the real issues, there is a further sub-plot: Jimmy Anderson’s 500^th Test wicket.

When Jimmy Anderson took two early wickets in helpful conditions to move to 499, one assumed that the 500^th must come any minute. West Indies 22-2 and scoring at just 1.5 runs per over. Rout seemed imminent and, with it, that warm sensation that Headingley never really happened and that all is well after all. It is the sort of warm feeling that Australia have awoken to having, not without some alarms along the way, put the world – or at least, Bangladesh – to rights. From there though, things seemed to go horribly wrong. Shai Hope and Powell took the West Indies to Lunch at 35-2 after 20 overs and built from there. All the failings of Headingley were present: Broad was not getting his lines right, his heel injury flared-up badly again, Stokes did not look like taking a wicket and, after a good start, Anderson looked human and Cook was dropping catches.

The one difference with Headingley is that when Plan A did not work, Joe Root could at least throw the ball to Tobias Skelton Roland-Jones. Unlike Chris Woakes, who never quite got his length and line right, Toblerone knows what is needed, even if he did not make his accustomed immediate impact. Finally he got a ball in the right place and was fortunate enough to see Alistair Cook hang on. 78-2 with the two batsmen beginning to play their shots and nothing much happening, looked ominous; 78-3 looked so much better, but still well short of what it should be.

Then suddenly there followed one of these odd sessions of play where all logic seems to have gone out to lunch. Ben Stokes has rarely looked threatening with the ball all summer and today was no exception… until Kieran Powell, who was batting very well and looked set, belying his Test average of 26, to add to England’s woes, drilled the ball straight back at him. Good catch. Soft wicket. Thanks very much! Then Toberlone bowled a straight ball – admittedly a surprise weapon from England this summer – Jermaine Blackwood aimed a massive cross-batted slog and the stumps were scattered. Toberlone continues to keep his Test bowling average under 20 in his fourth Test, which is not one of the predictions that many pundits would have made about how this Test summer would pan out. The comfort (if you were a West Indian), or discomfort (if you were English) of 78-2 had become 87-5 and West Indies were sinking fast.

Moeen Ali came on to exploit the breakthrough and, first ball, could have picked up a wicket. Toss it up, bit of width, loose shot from Chase, edge – just wide of slip. How often when he gets a quick wicket does Moeen Ali start to shine. If the first couple of overs go wrong, his biorhythms go wonky. The pitch map would later report that Moeen had all the control of a paint spray; where was the bowler who had laid waste in the first five Tests of the summer? As in Bangladesh and India, a series that has started so well, seems to be ending in a series of full tosses, long hops and occasional leg side filth.

Fortunately, there was Stokes. You would have got long odds against Stokes being the main threat with the ball today. After a loose first over, his next nine produced 36 dots, a No Ball, four singles and three wickets. Suddenly Stokes looked like the devastating bowler that we know that he can be.

There is much debate among the fans about Woakes v Stokes. The argument is plain daft. Stokes is the nearest thing that England have produced to Ian Botham since 1981. Stokes is an impact player who can turn a match around in a session with a quick century, or a burst of 5-10 but, on other days, will manage a duck and 0-60 from 8 overs. He is not as reliable a bowler as the Botham of 1977-85, who could take the new ball and run through a side, but he is as near as we have seen. Chris Woakes though is a steady, reliable pro. He will not make stunning Test centuries, nor is he likely to take a spell of 5-1, but if you want someone to come in and score 40* nursing the tail, or to take 3-40 in 15 mean overs, he is the man. You want both in your side: it would be like having both Botham and Flintoff in your team… a genuine luxury.

Yesterday though, was Stokes’s day, even if another catch went down in the last over before Tea when Root dropped Holder off Stokes and then Holder creamed the next ball for four. Stokes was not impressed and followed up with three snorting deliveries.

119-7 at Tea and England beginning to rise to the occasion. Anderson with the ball after Tea and the tail in his sights. What no one had warned him was that he needed to be quick. Stokes allowed him just two overs to get the 500^th. When Jimmy A did not strike, Stokes did. His post-Tea bowling was 1.3-1-0-3:

…W…WW

Stokes is on a hat-trick in the second innings and finished with 14.3-6-22-6. Who needs Anderson or Broad?

That was the limit of the good news.

Now the bad news: England had to bat under lights.

Within 13 overs things had got downright ugly.

After 13 overs England were 19-3 and both Stoneman and Westley had gone for single-figure scores.

Even if he were to score runs in the second innings it is unlikely that Westley would be on the plane to Australia. Straight ball. Plays down the wrong line. LBW.

25, 59, 29, 9, 8, 3, 8, 8. Sadly, Westley has been completely found out at this level.

Stoneman’s case is more difficult: 8, 19, 52, 1. It is only his third match. It would be harsh to drop him, but he most certainly has not made a good case to go to Australia.

And, while Stoneman and Westley failed, it did not go unnoticed that Haseeb Hameed gritted his way to his highest score of the season in the gloom at Old Trafford. Make no mistake, Hameed is still in desperate form. No way is he ready to play a Test, but one of the signs of a player who has what it takes, is his ability to make ugly runs when in desperate form.

Even at 19-3 there was time for things to get worse. Joe Root’s wicket made it 24-4 and the West Indies are looking at an unlikely first innings lead. England start the second day with Malan (another who needs a score to seal the trip to Australia) and Stokes at the wicket and, at least battling. No one knows how much play, if any, there will be on the second day with rain and bad light threatening the day but, it may just be that rain is the only thing that will take the match deep into even a third day.

At 46-4 and still 77 behind, England can ill-afford to lose a quick wicket and much less two early in the day. Australia have their problems, but if they are quaking in their boots right now it is more likely to be with stifled laughter. 

West Indies v England, 2nd Test, Day 5: An Extraordinary 24 Hours for Test Cricket

 

West Indies v England, 2^nd Test, Day 5: An Extraordinary 24 Hours for Test Cricket

August 29^th 2017

Over the last twelve hours the cricket world has been turned on its head. First, the West Indies pulled-off an astonishing chase against England: the twentieth highest ever successful chase in Tests. Then, Bangladesh completed a win against Australia when, at 158-2 chasing 266, only an Australian win seemed possible.

Both results were earth-shaking: the West Indies had not won in England since the epic tour of 2000 when Walsh and Ambrose had their swansong and England finally lost their fear of the West Indians. Bangladesh had never beaten Australia in a Test. Australia have played Bangladesh 29 times in all formats and previously lost just once – in an ODI in Cardiff in 2005 after Andrew Symonds had been dropped on the morning of the match for partying the night before and a certain suspicion exists that Australian minds were not exactly focused on the game. It is a measure of how little Australia rate Bangladesh that in 14 years there have been just two previous series between the two sides and, in one of those, Australia famously tried to win a Test in a single day.

If, for a few hours, Australian fans could laugh at England, the manner of the Australian surrender, highlighting one of the topics common to both sides – their vulnerability on turning wickets and the paucity of their spin-bowling resources to respond – was every bit as poor. Australia’s response has been to give themselves the option of going into the must-win 2^nd Test with just one seamer. Now this was a tactic used with success by India in the 1970s and by Pakistan in the ‘80s, but they could count on extraordinary spinners of the quality of Bishan Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar, Venkat, Abdul Qadir and Iqbal Qasim; Australia simply do not have the same quality in depth. It is the same as if England had played Moeen, Batty, Dawson & Ansari together in India: four spinners, yes, but not four of any quality or threat. Last winter England learnt the hard way that it is not how many spinners you play, but how much quality that they have that counts. It is true that for a must-win match on a turning pitch in Port-of-Spain in 1974, England did play four spinners and won, but the spinners were Greig, Underwood, Pocock and Birkenshaw: all class acts (Geoff Arnold shared the new ball with Greig, who turned to spin as soon as the shine was off the ball).

England’s response to their own humiliation at Headingley has been to name the same XIII for Lord’s, but one suspects that Toby Roland-Jones may play instead of Chris Woakes – more of that later. “Same players, better play” might have rasped Essex’s legendary Tonker Taylor in response to the squad announcement.

England turned up on the fifth morning to conditions that normally would have guaranteed a win not long after Lunch: overcast skies, dim light and perfect seam-bowling conditions. The script seemed perfectly prepared for Jimmy Anderson to take his 500^th Test wicket and, despite not playing T20 since 2009 and ODIs since 2015, get close to his 800^th international wicket (he is now on 784).

In reality, England had lost their way not so much by a poor batting performance on the 1^st day (their total was short of what it should have been, but not so far short), but by a collectively horrible bowling performance on the 2^nd day. Apart from Jimmy Anderson, the rest of the attack was very poor. In fact, it is probably not unfair to say that the decision to replace Toby Roland-Jones with Chris Woakes probably lost England the game. Chris Woakes desperately needed the game, but responded with a terribly rusty performance and the rest of the attack took their cue from him. Stuart Broad was inaccurate. Ben Stokes as ineffective as he has ever been and Moeen Ali just had an awful match with the ball. If he has shown anything, Toby Roland-Jones has demonstrated an ability to provide control and nip in with crucial wickets when they are most needed; it was an ability that England sorely missed here. One hopes that sanity will prevail, that Roland-Jones will be restored for Lord’s and that Chris Woakes will be asked to play every possible game both for Warwickshire and for Warwickshire 2^nd XI from here to the end of the season to get himself properly match-fit and into a good rhythm to be unleashed on the Australians.

Arguably, England should have made 330 in their first innings and the West Indies no more than 300. Had that happened, the course of the game would have been very different. As it was, after the dreadful “wheels off waggon” session on the 4^th evening that led to the England declaration and the sensation that the West Indies had given up on the match, suddenly the steel was back again in the Caribbean performance. Once again, from one session to another the whole momentum of the series changed. The day was tense but, in reality, once the West Indies got through the first hour without losing a wicket, the result had an air of inevitability. The last ball of the fourth over of the morning England had the chance to put the game to bed: short delivery from Broad, Brathwaite could not control the ball - it went at a comfortable height to Cook, through his hands and on to the boundary for four runs. Instead of being 11-1 and England with an early breakthrough, the opening partnership went on to 46 from 16 overs before Broad finally ended it. More critically though, Brathwaite was on 4 at the time and went on to score 95 and to guide the West Indies to 197-3 when he fell finally. From the moment of that drop the force and the momentum was always with the West Indies and the young Padawans always had the measure of their supposed Jedi Masters.

After a poor first innings, yesterday, whenever something happened, which was all too rarely, Broad seemed to be involved. First the missed catch by Cook, then he had Powell caught by Stokes at 4^th slip, then he himself missed what would have been an incredible catch off his own bowling, but deflected the ball onto the stumps to leave Kyle Hope stranded. 46-0 had become 53-2 and the inevitable West Indian defeat seemed to be just a matter of time. Then again at 285-4, with nerve-ends jangling, Cook dropped Shai Hope off Broad, ending any real chance of a late panic. Broad was not a happy bunny. Even then there was time still for Stokes to drop Blackwood too – a sitter – at 316-4. After seven catches and a run-out were missed by the West Indies, England showed that they were just as fallible in the field. One wonders if there were sighting problems at the ground, because even normally extremely reliable fielders were dropping catches.

On a day when Moeen was expected to be the main threat, he cut an unhappy figure: two dropped catches off his bowling and too many bad balls. The suspicion that he dislikes the pressure of being expected to be the match-winner on the last day of a Test seemed to be confirmed. Moeen, like Graeme Swann did before him, likes getting an early wicket; when he does, the bounce is there and he starts to fizz – yesterday, there was no fizz, no zip in his action and, indeed, after a promising first over the previous evening, little real threat however, to be fair, he also saw those two catches go down off his bowling; maybe, if the first of them had been taken, he might have clicked into life. Less forgivable was the lack of threat from the seamers. Stuart Broad bowled with some fire, but little luck and, after a wonderful start, Jimmy Anderson seemed to be missing some spark, while Woakes and Stokes just served to release the pressure on the batsmen.

Against the West Indian side of the 1^st Test England would still have won. This one though played sensibly, failed to panic even when they lost a wicket and hunted down the target like a pack of wolves stalking their prey. When the run rate required started to rise, the ball started to fly to the boundary, easing any run-rate pressure and when chances were missed, they made England pay.

It was the 9^th longest 4^th innings in 51 Tests at Headingley (5 of the 8 longer ones were in losing causes), the 20^th highest successful 4^th innings chase in Tests, the 2^nd highest successful chase ever at Headingley and an object lesson in hunting-down an apparently extremely tough target.

This being cricket, probably England fans are as delighted as the West Indians. It might no longer be true in all parts of the world, but the practice of celebrating the deserved success of the opposition still exists in the English game. After a desperately disappointing South African side were dispatched, England needed proper practice against realistic opposition. Even more so, almost everyone wants West Indian cricket to rise again. However, native caution suggests that we have seen so many good one-off West Indian performances and so many false dawns that, unless this result is followed up in the 3^rd Test it will look like just another frustrating reminder of a bygone age. However, at least in this Test, players such as Brathwaite, Shannon Gabriel, Blackwood and Shai Hope have shown that there is hope for West Indian cricket and that talent continues to be produced. We saw in the 1^st Test that there are Test-quality players even in this severely weakened squad: one hopes that better governance from the WICB will give the young players the chance to develop and thrive, remembering that the West Indies are the current holders of the U19 World Cup, so serious talent is still coming through, despite everything. What the West Indies can ill afford is to lose these players too to the T20 circuses that have led to the WICB banishing all their biggest stars. Think of how much Brathwaite and Hope could learn if they were able to play their Test cricket alongside players such as Chris Gayle and Lendl Simmons for the next two years.

Back in 2004, Brian Lara was finishing his career, but the West Indies could field a pace attack of Jermaine Lawson, Fidel Edwards, Tino Best, Pedro Collins, Corey Collymore and Adam Stanford. It was an attack of frightening potential, that could have been every bit as great as the attacks of the ‘80s and ‘90s but, little by little, they either never developed as they should have, or simply drifted away. The memory of that team should serve as a dreadful warning to the WICB that they either look after their current crop of youngsters or they may not get another set of talented youngsters to lose.

Many England fans have condemned Joe Root’s declaration on the fourth evening. Just why, is a mystery. England were on top. The West Indies looked defeated and 99% of the cricketing world expected the loss of early wickets and a rapid spiral to defeat. Root saw the unexpected chance to win and to seal the series and went after it. Attack, not caution was the right approach. The opprobrium if he had batted on into the final morning would have been terrible to behold from the self-same fans who attacked his supposedly over-generous declaration.

For now, we are back to Square One. The Lord’s Test will be an unexpected decider. Given England’s record of losing the final Test of series over the last four years, they can ill-afford not to bring their A-Game to Lord’s. The West Indies will know that they have a wholly unexpected chance of a series win at a ground where England often underperform (W10 D4 L4 in the last 10 years, but W4 D2 L3 in the last 5 years and 3 defeats and a draw in the last 6 Tests there).

With Tom Westley given a, presumably final, chance to succeed, the only likely doubt is whether to go with Woakes or Roland-Jones as third seamer. One assumes that on his home ground, Roland-Jones has to play. England can scant afford to experiment or to take risks and the tight, mean line and length of Roland-Jones will help to bring a discipline to the attack that was so lacking in Leeds.