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.

New Zealand v England: 2nd Test, Day 3 - This is not an April Fool: England may win!

 

New Zealand v England: 2^nd Test, Day 3

This is not an April Fool: England may win!

April 1^st 2018

When England were 94-5 on the first afternoon, you would not have got very good odds on a New Zealand win. The dark forecasts of some fans that England would be whitewashed 2-0 looked all too likely to be fulfilled. It is Joe Root though who, today, will be shouting “April Fool”, having fooled most of the cricketing world into believing that his side would struggle to beat anyone right now. Suddenly and unexpectedly, England are right on top and, with two days to play – albeit two days that will be curtailed due to bad light – will hope to set New Zealand around 400 to win in four and a half sessions.

If you had added that this position would be set up by Stoneman and Vince, you would have been condemned for trying an obvious April Fool. Let us not be fooled though. Stoneman and Vince respect tradition and have not suddenly become Compton and Edrich: Stoneman pushes his highest Test score ever upwards – 52, 53, 56 and now, 60! At this rate he should score his maiden Test century in around his 40^th Test. If you look at Stoneman’s scores in this series – 11, 55, 35 & 60 – you would feel forced to say that he has been a success, averaging 40, but he continues to suffer from vertigo when in. If you consider reaching 15 as getting a start, he has done it in 13 of his 18 Test innings, but still averages only 30.2. Vince is just as bad. He has now played 13 Tests and averages under 25. He has reached 15 in his last eight innings, but passed 25 just twice. And his dismissals are almost identical ever time, prodding outside off. Partnership of 123, grinding England into a position of near impregnability and then both getting out within a few runs of each other.

It is fortunate that two other players who are short of runs in recent Tests took up the baton. There is a lot of chatter about Joe Root’s inability it covert 50s into 100s in Tests – a century here would set up a declaration and make a point. And, after a superb run, Dawid Malan’s run fountain has started to dry up. Since the start of the winter Tests, Joe Root has fallen in single figures just twice and made 6x50, but never got close to a century and has just one century in his last 13 Tests, as against 11x50. It is hard to criticise someone who has passed 50 twelve times in thirteen Tests, but such are the standards that Root has set, that people do wonder if the captaincy has just taken a little edge off his game. Dawid Malan was one of the great successes of the Ashes with 1x100 and 3x50 but, his last 5 innings have been 5, 2, 23, 0 & (now) 19*: another low score and the shine will be coming right off that Ashes success. Malan’s average is under 31 after twelve Tests and he knows that it has to increase, and rapidly, to cement his place.

That England are in this position is down to some excellent bowling from Stuart Broad. Bowling a fuller length and making batsmen play has made him look exponentially more threatening and a 6-for and his best figures for almost two years have been the reward. The opening bowlers on either side now have the first 23 wickets of the match. Never have the two pairs of opening bowlers bettered this number and, should Boult or Southee manage the next wicket to fall, the match will set a new record in Tests, beating the mark last set in 1912.

What England would like is to press on in the first session and stretch the lead from its current 231 to around 350. An hour in the afternoon at most, then, to a declaration. Ideally, they would like Root and Malan to set a foundation for Stokes and Bairstow to come in with a licence to enjoy themselves. Of course, in this topsy-turvy series of collapses and tail-end heroics, who knows what the reality will be like?

New Zealand v England: 1st Test, Day 4 - The Clock Ticking for Cook and England, While a Bomb Explodes Under Australia

 

New Zealand v England: 1^st Test, Day 4

The Clock Ticking for Cook and England, While a Bomb Explodes Under Australia

March 25^th 2018

Despite the fact that only thirteen balls were possible on Day 3, the match situation had not really changed: Day 4 was simply a matter of how long New Zealand would bat before declaring and how many they would set England to avoid an innings defeat.

When you have only scored 58 in your first innings, to bat again needing 369 to avoid an innings defeat or, what is the same, to survive 145 overs, is the toughest of assignments. Assuming that they score at 3-an-over on the 5^th Day, England will not knock off the deficit until just 19 overs remain to play. That would mean effectively leaving New Zealand no more than 4 or 5 overs maximum to chase, if they are to avoid defeat.

However, after the events across in Cape Town, to see a match in which the only issue has been the battle between bat and ball, has been a refreshing change. And when Trent Boult produced a brilliant last over, just as England’s hopes were rising of mounting an astonishing 5^th Day escape, no one in the press conference afterwards asked him about what grade of sandpaper he recommends using to rough-up the ball.

Many things can be said of England, but the total lack of any threat posed by the England bowling in this Test shows that ball-tampering is not one of them. The biggest disappointment of the Test is to see how England’s much-vaunted seamers, who look so good in England, have been made to look so second-rate by the New Zealand seamers, who have been so superior.

Unfortunately, even if England do somehow escape, their questions about the side have scarcely been answered. Alistair Cook fell cheaply again. Scores of 5 & 2 are not going to answer the doubts that he has the appetite to continue to score big Test runs on a regular basis. Since the start of the winter tour he has only reached 50 twice, one of them in the Townsville knockabout, the other, his monumental 244* in Melbourne. In 11 of 17 innings he has reached double figures, yet he has rarely made it count. Runs last summer and runs at Melbourne have left him with plenty of credit in the bank, but the suspicion is growing that his international career may not have much longer to run.

Similarly, his opening partner, Mark Stoneman has also left the big question unanswered. This is his 9^th Test. After being one of only two batsmen to get into double figures in England’s sad first innings, he scored a gritty 50 here – his fourth in Tests – only to give it away immediately. Nothing can hide the fact that, despite 4x50 in Tests, his highest score is only 56, his Test average, 27 and his First Class average is only 35. One suspects that only a century in the 2^nd Test will save his career and that if either Nick Gubbins or Sam Robson starts the season well, one or other of them will open with Alistair Cook against Pakistan at Lord’s on May 24^th. With several rounds of Championship matches before that 1^st Test, there will be opportunities for a batsman to put down a marker.

With Stoneman and Root batting comfortably, England seemed to be starting to wriggle free. This looked like the opportunity that Stoneman had been waiting for to make a century and to settle arguments about his place. He was confident enough to reach his 50 with a big six, before giving it away in the most Vince-like fashion. Come May, he may live to rue that shot.

With James Vince apparently defenestrated, the second burning question was about Joe Root at 3. Could he make a success of it? A double-failure for Root in this Test, combined with a fit Ben Stokes, could just have seen James Vince make a comeback in the 2^nd Test. Root also reached his fifty just before the Close and looked increasingly comfortable until Trent Boult ratcheted-up his pace and hostility in his last two overs before the Close. It did not take Mensa-like intelligence to work out that if England reached the Close two-down with Root and Malan batting well, their chances of survival start to grow considerably.

Root fell for a two-card trick and, possibly, his own need to show that he would not retreat under any circumstances. When Boult hit his bottom hand a wicked blow with the fourth ball of the last over of the day, Root decided to bat on after treatment when a more pragmatic approach would have been to retire hurt. Had he done that, the umpires would have signalled the Close. Root though is tough enough to check out of hospital and come out to bat even when evidently in no fit state to do so. Glove back on. Take guard again. Wicked bouncer. Gloved to the ‘keeper. 94-1 and beginning to get out of the mire had become 132-3 and a renewed struggle to take the game even as far as Tea tomorrow.

Ben Stokes will have one ball of the over to survive from a fired-up Boult in the morning before he and Malan have to set about blunting the attack.

Escape is unlikely. It will need yet another big innings from Malan, supported by runs from Stokes, Bairstow, Moeen Ali and Woakes to pull it off. But then, hope springs eternal and that is why hundreds of thousands of fans will tune-in after midnight… just in case.

What to make though of events in South Africa?

When the series started it looked brutally one-sided. In the 1^st Test Australia were all over South Africa and looked set to win comfortably, as they had done in previous series in South Africa. The change in the 2^nd Test though was as big as it was unexpected. What set off the change was a series of controversial incidents, including on and off-field confrontations between players and then between players and crowd. As the series heated-up, the crowd became more and more hostile and suddenly the Australian team discovered that getting it back is nothing like as enjoyable as handing it out without fear of reprisal and have increasingly lost focus.

Over the years the Australian team has based much of its success on the idea that visiting teams should be abused as much as possible on and off the field. This has included the request from Darren Lehmann for the public to target Stuart Broad and to make his life hell. While, of course, neither coach nor players can control barracking and abuse from the crowd, nor such tactics as setting off the fire alarm in the visiting team’s hotel during the night, or waking players with early morning telephone calls requesting radio interviews, nor have they done anything to condemn such behaviour. They regard it as part of the hospitality service to be offered to visiting teams, while crude, on-field, personal abuse is regarded as necessary to play the game in the right spirit.

When Darren Lehmann said that the abuse that his players were receiving had “crossed the line” there was a certain irony to his comments given what many players have received from Australian players and crowds without censure. As one broadcaster and writer on the English game pointed out, “the line” seemed to be positioned wherever was most convenient for Australian interests at any given time.

What this series – and others – has shown is that when a side refuses to be intimidated by Australian aggression and starts to give it back, the Australians lose focus and can disintegrate themselves.

However, do we really want world cricket to turn into a contest to see which set of players and its fans can be most yobbish? England can smirk, but they themselves have been involved in some distasteful incidents in the past.

There are many alarming aspects of the latest incident. All sides push the limits when they can. All sides resort, at least occasionally, to tactics that are dubious or are gamesmanship. And all sides do like their home support to give them a hand. And, of course, it is different when they are on the receiving end rather than handing it out. Not all sides though sit down and have an open, tour management discussion on how best to cheat when things are not working on the field. And yes, it was cheating when other sides have done it and it is cheating when Australia do it too.

There are still many aspects of what happened that are unclear. Surely neither Cameron Bancroft nor the captain seriously believed that no camera would pick up their attempts to rough-up the ball.  How believable is the story that it was some dirty sticky tape that had been used on the ball? Plenty of people watching the images saw something that looked much more like sandpaper, which would surely be far more effective anyway than some dirty sticky tape. Have the players actually come clean even now? How much did Darren Lehmann know and have to do with the plan?

As in the case of Watergate, the original crime was not such a bad one – the umpires did not even change the ball, considering that its state had not been altered – but the clumsy and incompetent cover-up made it infinitely worse. Bancroft’s comic attempts to hide the evidence and willingness to lie to the umpires when challenged, made things far worse than if he had come straight out and confessed. The intention was to damage the ball, even if the execution owed more to Monty Python than to Professor James Moriaty. And, of course, video has come to light of Cameron Bancroft apparently doing something underhand in the dressing room during the Ashes series, meaning that he is now marked with previous.

As a Gloucestershire supporter, I am very glad that Mr Bancroft will not be representing my county this summer and I know that other Gloucestershire fans feel the same. The fall-out is only starting. Bancroft has signed with Somerset, who have put out a statement to the effect that the decision on his contract is under review. Certainly, if Bancroft were to come to Somerset, his reputation would precede him and would be a major on and off-field distraction. Bancroft’s position in the Australian side is far from secure (despite runs in this Test, his average is hovering just over 30 after 8 Tests) – hence perhaps his willingness to play along – and it would be easy to drop him on the pretext of not scoring enough runs.

There are loud calls for Steve Smith to be stripped of the captaincy. Probity as captain of your national team is important: Mike Atherton got away with it, probably because he had a reputation as a decent person and captain who had made a bad mistake, but Keith Fletcher, Mike Gatting and Andrew Flintoff, quite rightly, did not and Ian Botham’s off-field antics ensured that he was never given a second chance. However, there are rumours that Cricket Australia are so horrified by the negative publicity generated by the whole affair and the fact that it was so pre-meditated, that they are considering life bans for Smith and Warner. As a legendary South African captain of the end of the 20^th Century found out: you cheat, you get caught, you face the consequences. Not too many Boards are willing to overlook such matters in the face of public opinion.

In the English language the word “cheat”, or an accusation of cheating, has huge emotional consequences and the word has been used a lot to describe what happened. In the infamous Shakoor Rana incident with Mike Gatting, the trigger was the umpire observing Gatting move a fielder behind square, where the batsman could not see the change, stopping play (no “dead ball” call though) and, telling Gatting that he was a cheat (the English version) or, in the umpire’s version, “you are making unfair play”. The word “cheat” inflaming passions to the point that Gatting snapped.

If Smith and Warner do go, it will be a massive blow to the Australian side, but would be a huge PR coup, showing that after all, Australians do want to win by fair means and not foul. It also remains to be seen if Darren Lehmann can ride out this storm: his position would become very difficult.

The remainder of the South African tour is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, anyway. How do you recover from an issue of this kind? And let us not forget that Australia tour England this summer for an ODI series and that Smith and Warner (and conceivably, Bancroft) would form part of that touring squad.

New Zealand v England: 1st Test Preview - Rehabilitation, or Further Humiliation?

 

New Zealand v England: 1^st Test Preview

Rehabilitation, or Further Humiliation?

March 21^st 2018

I have left this Blog fallow for two months. To be honest, the constant grind of yet more white-ball matches all got a bit too much. And, England reverted to type, winning the first and last matches of their T20 segment, in both cases, meaningless victories (one, a big win in a warm-up, the other too little, too late), before what was admittedly a cracker of a ODI series, with New Zealand where, against all logic, England, who are supposed to be vulnerable in low-scoring games and invincible in high-scoring ones, lost the two games in which the bat dominated and won the three in which the ball was king (at least, it was king when New Zealand were batting). Nothing to get very excited about there.

The two warm-ups for the Tests have been the McDonalds Happy Meal of cuisine: not even a Quarter Pounder to get your teeth into… two, two day games in which both sides would bat for 90 overs, no matter how many wickets they lost. It resulted in some slightly unusual scorecards – e.g. New Zealand XI, 287-13 – and Glenn Phillips failing both as an opener and as a #13 bat, but little else. Almost everyone got a bat, although James Vince, bless him, might be wishing that he had not, as his two innings have placed his name firmly on the list of endangered species… as a Test player, at least.

England have been left with a couple of fine conundra:

·       First – Can Ben Stokes play as a 4^th seamer? He has not bowled since the ODIs, having finished them with some back stiffness (as I have also had some for the last week, I can vouch for the fact that it is not funny). If he cannot, everything indicates that he will play as a specialist bat at #5, which moves everyone else down one place, but also means that an extra bowler is needed.

·       Second – What to do about #3?

England have many options. Some will make James Vince more nervous than others.

If an extra bowler is needed, Mark Wood and Craig Overton are the likely options. Mark Wood played in the first game, Craig Overton in the second. It is fair to say that Anderson and Wood were pretty devastating with the new ball, but that 30-5 and 103-6, became 357-7 and Mark Wood’s figures, by then, were looking a lot less impressive. In the second game, Craig Overton did what Craig Overton does: had a decent bowl, took a wicket, but did not look like running through the opposition, although he kept things tight. However, if either plays, a batsman will need to be sacrificed and that is most likely to be James Vince, with Dawid Malan likely to be pitched in at #3, as Ben Stokes will have taken his own regular spot.

Even if Ben Stokes can bowl – and the indications are that he will be able to – James Vince still cannot relax, because there is a case for replacing him with the impressive Liam Livingstone, who made the highest score for England in either game. However, a measure of just how bad the things were in the Unofficial Tests that the Lions played in the Caribbean is that his scores of 21, 1, 0 & 48 have marked him as one of the relatively successful batsmen in that train wreck. There was even a further option and that was playing Mason Crane, until he had to be sent home injured. Whatever the concerns about Moeen Ali’s form and confidence, which were to a degree alleviated in the second game, playing Mason Crane’s stand-in stuntman, Jack Leach, is not an option.

Whoever is selected – and careers are on the line, particularly in the case of Stoneman and Vince – New Zealand are going to be a formidable test at home. The gloomier predictions are that the series could be lost 2-0. The New Zealand pace attack is formidable in their own conditions and, in terms of depth, reckoned by many to be the best attack that New Zealand has every fielded. The series will be decided by which batting line-up is best able to resist the devastation that the opposition bowling attack can cause. For England, to have a top three who have struggled for runs, pitted against an attack willing to test them to the limit, is not a happy thought. It will be sink or swim but, if it is “swim”, at least no one will be able to suggest that Wagner, Boult and Southee have not been a real test for the batsmen and that they have scored easy runs against a popgun attack.

Alistair Cook has, apart from one big innings, struggled this winter. Mark Stoneman makes defiant fifties, but not enough of them, and has got out soon after reaching fifty each time. And, poor James Vince, makes pretty fifteens, twenties and, sometimes, thirties and then gets out in identikit fashion almost every time.

The feeling is that Alistair Cook’s double century in the 4^th Test should have re-ignited his appetite both for runs and for Test cricket. However, another poor series would undoubtedly start the speculation again. Cook is one of those players who either looks as if he could score tons of runs batting with a stick of rhubarb… or looks as if he *IS* batting with a stick of rhubarb. For one of the modern greats he has had a lot of dreadful runs of form. You only hope that whatever pep-talk Alice, his in-house guru and psychologist has given him over Christmas and the New Year, it has been brutally effective.

No one, bar a few air-heads, should want a player to fail. England fans – and maybe the management too – would be forgiven though for wanting James Vince to define himself one way of the other. He has two Test fifties – good, fighting ones too – but that is only one per ten Test innings: not enough. His last ten matches over three different formats, have been indicative of the enigma that is the Vince Phenomenon. Eleven innings, just two single-figure scores, but out between 10 and 26 no fewer than six times and no innings higher than 45. He gets in, looks world class and then gets out. Nick Compton knows that even two centuries in a series against New Zealand offers no career security, but one begins to hope that he will either be brilliant, ending the talk about his place for a few Tests at least, or incompetent, so that he can be dropped with no guilty feelings. What no one wants is for him to get, say, three starts and a “small” fifty, which will prove nothing one way or the other. The feeling though is that he is very lucky to be in New Zealand and is unlikely to figure in the summer series.

Mark Stoneman is in both a slightly better and a slightly worse situation. Better, because over the winter he has so far scored 5x50 and 1x100, although only two of the 50s have come in Tests. There is no question that Mark Stoneman can grit out brave runs. The bad news is that he has got out immediately after reaching 50 each time that he has done it in Tests. Worse, while no one can agree over a convincing replacement for James Vince, there is a queue of players lining-up behind Mark Stoneman. Nick Gubbins is scoring big runs pre-season. Sam Robson had a prolific start to the 2017 season. Keaton Jennings has shown that he can score Test runs and is Lions captain. And Haseeb Hameed is beginning to show some signs that he may finally be getting back a little form.

There are plenty of other sub-plots: how will Stuart Broad respond to the double challenge of being on 399 wickets and not getting the new ball? Will we see the Chris Woakes of last summer, or the Chris Woakes of the Ashes? Will Moeen Ali re-affirm his position after a poor Ashes series? Can Joe Root start turning 50s into centuries? Which set of bowlers will come out on top? And, not, but not least, how will New Zealand react to the pressure of being favourites for the series?

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, Days 1 to 4: About Turn! As You Were!

 

West Indies v England, 2^nd Test, Days 1 to 4: About Turn! As You Were!

August 28^th 2017

We wanted England to face a much stiffer challenge and for the batsmen to get tough runs. Well, we have had it, although the betting is that the end result will be the same, even if the route has been totally different.

The good news: we have a game on our hands. Yes, despite one high-profile pundit stating that the impending three-day finish in this game just added weight to the need for four-day Tests, we have a last-day run chase and a (potentially) tight finish on the cards.

The bad news: for the first three days, England were way off the pace, both batting and bowling and often made the West Indies look like world-beaters. If the West Indies had fielded better, they might have sealed a three-day win.

The worse news: after being in a position after Tea on Day 3 in which a West Indian win early on Day 4 looked to be the most probable result, they have folded like a card house in a gale. After three days of plaudits for their massively improved display and turning the series on its head, going into Day 5 we are right back to where we started this Test.

Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan desperately needed runs and both got them when England needed them most desperately. Tom Westley has failed again twice and looks unlikely to figure in the Final Test of the series. The fact that both got their runs with England having their backs to the wall and  looking set for a heavy defeat and when batting was hardest only makes it better. The only downside was that both reached 50 and then got out soon afterwards, instead of going on to a really big score. Stoneman held the innings together when it could have fallen apart had he gone early. Malan set up the glorious counter-attack that was to follow with a “they shall not pass!” innings of tough grind. They both look set to have booked places in the tour party to Australia. Westley, in contrast, has fallen-away after a good start and, with a sequence of 25, 59, 29, 9, 8, 3 & 8, makes it look likely that he will give up his place in the 3^rd Test: one line of thought is that Alex Hales may come back, batting at #5, with Malan moving up to #3. A middle order of Hales, Stokes, Bairstow, Moeen, followed by Woakes and Broad contains sufficient fire-power to give any side serious indigestion.

The transformations undergone by the West Indies in this match have been utterly bizarre. More than Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it has been more like The Hulk, changing from mid-mannered Bruce Banner into the bullying Hulk, bursting out of his clothing, laying waste to all around and then, just as suddenly, transforming back into Bruce Banner and having dirt kicked meekly in his eyes. For eight and a half sessions they have bossed the match and then, thanks to slovenly missed chances – dropped catches (plural), run-outs missed and wickets off no balls (from a leg spinner of all people) – they have let England recover from 94-3, still 75 short of making the West Indies bat again, to the point where they could declare, setting 322 to win on a pitch that is turning square and, at times, keeping very low.

The West Indian transformation has been stark. They have bowled far better and have made more runs in one innings here than in two in the 1^st Test. They looked an all-round better side and certain to level the series. No one expected England to face a fired-up side that was spitting blood and to be made to look second rate. However, the return to being Bruce Bannerman has been even more unexpected: comic missed chances (how often do you see a side fail to complete a run-out with both batsmen at the same end and the return coming in to the bowler, who only has to gather and knock off the bails?) Lethargy in the field and diabolically bad tactics (delaying the new ball and allowing Malan and Stokes to play themselves in when another wicket before Lunch might well have killed-off the England fightback). And then, when they had another chance to finish things off – England falling from 303-4 to 327-7 – and chase around 200, the England lower order scored runs at will and set up a declaration against a side that appeared to have given up.

It is fair to say that most pundits thought that a lead of 180 might be enough to defend and that 220 would give England a real chance but, at 327-7, with the lead only 158, West Indies seemed to have given up already despite the fact that batting suddenly looked well-nigh impossible, with the ball jagging everywhere. By the time that Moeen was dismissed for a rapid 82, the game was genuinely up and the et tu brute, was the 46 added in 11 overs by Woakes and Broad, as Joe Root set about planning the unlikeliest of declarations. With most pundits thinking that England needed to score 350 to stand a chance – and that it would be a tough ask for the batting to get that many – to be able to declare at 490-8 was just ridiculous.

Moeen Ali, who has been in red-hot bowling form this summer, now has a worn, fifth-day pitch, offering extravagant turn and some variable bounce, with a lot of rough outside the left-hander’s off stump. Despite his reputation for disliking the pressure of being expected to win a game in the fourth innings, he has every chance of compensating for a poor first innings bowling performance and being the match winner.

Of the twenty-one successful fourth innings chases at the ground, only twice has a side scored more than 220 to win at Headingley – one of those was Don Bradman’s legendary chase of 404-3 to win in 1948 and the other was a dead rubber in the 2001 Ashes, with Australia perhaps not quite straining every sinew to win and Mark Butcher playing the innings of his life.

More alarming for the West Indies is that fact that the highest fourth innings score to draw a Test at Headingly is England’s 238-6 against Pakistan in 1974 and that that Test was the only time that a side has batted out more than the minimum 96 overs that the West Indies will have to face to force a draw in a Headingley Test. Three sides have though faced more than 96 overs in the fourth innings at Headingley when failing to avoid defeat.

Of the nineteen fourth innings chases to end in defeat at Headingley, the median innings length was just 62 overs.

In other words, unless the 2017 West Indians can match something that only Bradman’s Invincibles have done and score 322 to win a Headingley Test, it is hard to see any other result than an England win some time around Tea.