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: 5th Test, A Match Too Far

 

Ashes 2017/18: 5^th Test

A Match Too Far

January 8^th 2017

When it is 3-0, the rubber is dead and you have to raise yourself for one last game, sometimes there is a danger that everyone is too flat to respond. Back in the old days, before 2005, England made a habit of winning dead rubbers in Ashes series. It was an old tradition and you can argue that the win at Sydney in 2003 was the Launchpad for the successful Ashes side of 2005. It was only a dead rubber, but the elements of the 2005 side were falling into place, with Steve Harmison leading the attack and Michael Vaughan leading the batting.

Another old tradition was to offer a sacrificial lamb for a dead rubber 5^th Test who would go into the game knowing that this might be the only Test he would get. Scott Borthwick drew the short straw in 2014 and, as many predicted when he was selected, never got close to playing another Test (and now, never will). In 2018, helped by Chris Woakes’s injury, it was Mason Crane, although the suspicion has to be that Woakes who, after excellent performances before the 1^st Test, has been very disappointing, might have been dropped anyway.

Scott Borthwick at least could point to some cheap wickets to ease the pain of becoming yet another one-Test wonder. Mason Crane has the most expensive ever figures for an England debutant. 1-193 from 48 overs make Devon Malcolm’s debut look like a success story. He also committed the cardinal sin of taking an excellent debut wicket only to see the batsman recalled because he had overstepped.

If any wicket in Australia were to help spin in the series and justify playing two spinners, it was likely to be Sydney. Of course, Australia called-up Ashton Agar… and then did not play him. However, given England’s lack of high pace and the lack of success of seam and swing bowling in the series, playing a leg-spinner was at least trying something different.

Yet again though it was a tale of what might have been. Joe Root won the Toss and batted. Eight England batsmen reached 24, yet only Root and Malan passed 40 and no one got close to a century. A partnership of 133 between Root and Malan was putting England in an excellent position to push on to 450 or even 500. At 228-3 when the new ball came England just needed to see out the last few overs of the day and start anew in the morning. Not a bit of it. As so often happened England just could not sustain a position of growing superiority. 228-3 became 251-6 with the ball still new and England were up against the wall… again. It would be funny if it were not so tragic.

Even the good news was bad. Moeen Ali, Tom Curran and a revived Stuart Broad batted effectively and, for the first time, the England tail wagged, but it suggested too that the wicket was very flat and that was not great news. Again, at 335-7, England were getting into what was, if not a strong position, at least one that offered 380 as a viable target. If England were at least close to 400, scoreboard pressure might help them, but 346ao was bitterly disappointing.

Cameron Bancroft fell to Broad’s second ball and you thought that maybe England’s score might be better than appeared. At 86-2 you could dream of a first innings lead. By the time that Smith and Khawaja’s partnership was approaching 200 all you could dream about was for the torture to stop. Even if Sir Donald Smith did not reach his century (whoops! Just short), Khawaja and the two Marshes did. Broad 1-121. Crane 1-193. Moeen a comparative success with 2-170. England were ground to hamburger. Through it, Jimmy Anderson’s figures of 34-14-56-1 shone through as heroic: what would he have achieved had he had a bowler of high pace (Plunkett or Wood) supporting him at the other end? Stuart Broad can still bowl the occasional effort ball at 90mph and Woakes can pass 90mph, but it is a single delivery every few overs, not delivery after delivery. Throughout the carnage Tom Curran was quite lightly bowled, but at least kept things fairly tight and continued to impress.

It reminded one of the regular Christians v Lions fixtures at the Roman Colosseum but at least in the Colosseum you could hope for a miracle. Players were trying, but were running on fumes and the hottest ever day in Sydney would be a day when England were in the field and under the pump on the flattest of pitches. And, of course, when you start your second innings more than three hundred behind, losing both openers with 15 on the board is not a great idea. Cook has played one major innings in the series and not threatened 40 on any other occasion. Stoneman started the series solidly, but has faded rapidly since being hit and has finished the series with scores of 3, 15, 25 & 0. And James Vince has managed 2x50, but no other innings over 25. England knew what they were getting with Vince and he knows that unless he can score a lot of runs in New Zealand, he will not be playing again come the arrival of Pakistan and India in the summer. Dawid Malan has been a huge success, but even he cannot score runs every innings and make up for the failings of others.

On a pitch where Australia’s batsmen could score runs for fun with no danger of getting out, England could only stagger to 93-4 by the Close. Any remote chance of saving the match ended when Joe Root was checked into hospital dehydrated and with severe gastroenteritis and could not resume his innings in the morning. This being Australia though, some Australian fans decided that this showed a lack of toughness worthy of mocking: you have to wonder if the last Neanderthals really did die out twenty-three thousand years ago in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, as science would have it, or were deported en masse to live on in the Antipodes.

Root showed tremendous guts to come back to the ground, still wearing his hospital wristband and batted superbly with Bairstow through to Lunch but, by the end of the session he was again visibly out on his feet. Once Root had retired, ill, for a second time, the end was mercifully swift. It was a suitable ending for a depressing series. For significant parts of the series England competed strongly, but always fell short in the end. They won occasional days and, more frequently, individual sessions, but could not string together a performance over five days. The best that you could say is that, at least this time, every Test went into a fifth day: it is not thought, much consolation.