England v Bangladesh: The Fall and Rise and Fall of Alex Hales

 

England v Bangladesh

The Fall and Rise and Fall of Alex Hales

September 13^th  2016

If there is one player who has epitomised the violent swings of fortune of the England team over the last year, it is Alex Hales.

An up and down year for England took another couple of unexpected tangents. First, after going 4-0 in the ODI series and setting a world-record score to boot, the series came to a shambolic end with a heavy defeat in the final ODI, followed by being utterly trounced in the only T20 as they staggered, drunkenly from 56-0 after 39 balls and threatening to cross 200, to 135-7. Pakistan won with more than five overs to spare and, as in the Test series, finished on a high and with the momentum. Those last two games of the international summer showed how England who, two games earlier, had looked sublimely untroubled in scoring 444-3 in 50 overs, can swing from brilliant to mediocre. There was some justification in the ODI, with a raft of changes introduced to rest some players and give a chance to others. Less good news was that with Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali being rested, Liam Dawson registered the worst-ever figures for an England debutant in an ODI. 8-0-72-2 was fairly eye-watering, although it is as well to record that just below Liam Dawson in the “worst-ever debut” list come Andrew Flintoff and Steve Finn, who both turned out okay.

While many regard Liam Dawson as the best young spinner in the country, it is interesting that, despite the lamentations to the contrary, the selectors have almost an embarrassment of choice of spinners for the two winter tours. Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid are assumed to be givens. Behind them, Ollie Rayner at Middlesex and Jack Leach at Somerset are causing mayhem from unexpected directions and both demand a call-up on the back of form, heavy wicket-taking and consistency. Ollie Rayner’s last three County Championship matches have produced 23 wickets (combined figures of 23-322). Middlesex fans have been frustrated for years knowing that he can attack and be lethal, but has all too often been used in a holding role to speed up the overrate and got overly defensive. If the selectors want to go for a form spinner, Ollie Rayner is currently the most destructive in the country.

If Ollie Rayner’s 23-322 since the summer break in the CC have put down a marker, what of Jack Leach’s 27 wickets in Somerset’s four matches since the break, including 2x6-for and 1x5-for? His wickets have been more expensive (27-529), but he has had to bowl long spells and put in hard grind in a much weaker attack than Ollie Rayner. With 56 First Class wickets, he is joint fifth in the wicket-taking list for 2016, somewhat ahead of Ollie Rayner, who is eleventh. Jack Leach was taking wickets in quantity even early in the season and has been consistent and threatening all summer.

Apart from Rayner and Leach, many fans have pointed to the golden summer that Gareth Batty is having with 41 wickets @ 32.3 and suggesting that he is the one outstanding candidate to head the attack in India. It is twelve years since he acted as unwilling stooge to Brian Lara’s 400* in Antigua: although picked twice more as cover for an injured Ashley Giles and briefly re-commissioned in ODIs in 2009, the 52-4-185-2 in that Antigua Test really finished him as an international bowler. However, fans will recall how Shaun Udal was plucked from pre-retirement obscurity in 2006 and won a Test in India and how both Pat Pockock and Peter Such were re-commissioned some years earlier with surprising success.

Many pundits will say that Liam Dawson (15 wickets @ 46.8) is the best young spinner in the country, while Simon Kerrigan has been disappointing this year (25 wickets @ 45.4), he has been a consistent performer over many years, while Zafar Ansari, who was picked as a spinner for last winter’s tours, is finally coming back to the sort of form that saw him selected, after injury saw him miss the start of the season (22 wickets @ 30.7, with 7-164 in his last two matches). Several other names are mentioned as promising spinners.

What though has really exercised the minds of pundits and fans is the latest extraordinary turn in the Alex Hales story. After a rather unhappy Test series in South Africa (to be fair, he was far from the only one to struggle with the bat), followed by a record-equalling ODI series against the same opponents, with his five consecutive 50s, crowned with a glorious century, he took a calculated risk and, when many fans thought that only heavy run-scoring in early season would save his place, decided to take off the first few games of the season. Obdurate performances to try to save games in a Nottinghamshire side that was unravelling fast, saved his Test place and a big fifty in each Test v Sri Lanka seemed to mark his breakthrough. The one thing that he failed to achieve was to get those last few runs to obtain a maiden Test century, but 5 half centuries is one more than Nick Compton (who reached 50 only 4 times in his 16 Tests), three more than Sam Robson (who reached 50 only twice in 7 Tests) and four more than Adam Lyth (who reached 50 just once in his 7 Tests): failure is relative here.

However, a poor series with the bat against Pakistan in the Tests led to many writing his obituary again, particularly after two failures in the first two ODIs, only to come back with the highest score by an Englishman in ODIs (and, unlike Robin Smith, whose record he broke, he is as English as you can get, born in Hillingdon in Middlesex). 743 runs @ 61.9 in 2016, with 4x50 and 3x100 is astonishing by any standards, more so even from a player who, only a few months before, was being written-off as a failure in ODIs.

However, with many questioning whether or not he had done enough to hang on to his Test place and the pundits saying, reluctantly, that he had probably done just enough, mainly due to the lack of obvious alternatives, Alex Hales has come up with a new surprise by withdrawing from the Bangladesh series on security grounds. It is only two Tests and, with the selectors having the habit of experimenting when England visit Bangladesh, it is quite possible that he would have been “rested” anyway. However, things have changed radically since the Pakistan Tests finished. Suddenly, it looks as if Alex Hales has ended his Test career.

There are several top-three batsmen who have made big runs this season. Tom Westley, with 1427 runs @ 62.0; Ben Duckett, with 1268 runs @ 57.6; Nick Browne, with 1196 runs @ 52.0; Nick Gubbins, with 1191 runs @ 59.6 and Chris Dent, with 1133 runs @ 45.3 have all shown some prolific form, not to mention a young sprog called Marcus Trescothick (1252 runs @ 52.2). While Westley is a #3 who could open, if necessary, the others are all genuine openers.

All but two of the above though have the not-inconsiderable issue of having made their runs against the much weaker, Division 2 attacks. Marcus Trescothick would no longer tour even if the selectors were to ask a 40-year-old to come back after ten years out of Tests. And Nick Gubbins, although he has his fans, has not been as eye-catching as some others, but will still be hoping that perhaps he gets the nod or, at very least, to be parked off-shore ready for a call-up on a Lions tour.

Two players have though really caught the eye.

A sequence of scores of 89, 57*, 114, 100*, 26, 17 & 56 by 19 year old Haseeb Hameed has led to a massive band-waggon calling for him to be picked for the Bangladesh tour. Having made his First Class debut at the end of the 2015 season, he has played just 18 matches, but his last eight have produced 4x100 and 5x50, boosting his average to 51.3. Bangladesh would be a great place to blood him before a far more politically charged tour to India where the pressures, on and off the field, will be far greater.

Another suitor for Alex Hale’s position is Keaton Jennings, another young player – this time 24 years old – whose record prior to this season was more likely to lead to calls for him to return to South Africa. However, he has committed his future to Durham, is now qualified for England and, despite Chester-le-Street’s  famously green pitches, is the run-away leading run-scorer in the country with 1565 runs @ 71.1 (almost 450 more than Haseeb Hameed, in three more innings) and has an impressive seven First Class centuries.

Quite possibly Alex Hales had not bet on a First Division opener who was already having a good season, scoring 201* on a famously tricky pitch, less than 48 hours after he had surrendered his opening position.

What will be interesting is to see if the selectors take both Keaton Jennings and Haseeb Hameed to accompany Alistair Cook in Bangladesh, with one of them, or maybe even both if the other is given a chance with the tricky #3 slot, having the chance to seal his place in the starting XI in India. The selectors have said that there will be no reprisals for either Hales or Eoin Morgan for missing the tour but, were Hales’s replacement to make a century in one of the two Tests, it would inconceivable that we would see Hales re-gaining his place in India.

While it is certain that Alex Hales will return to the ODI set-up in India, the chances great are that he will not even be in the Test party unless whoever replaces him has a dire tour. With England needing a stable opening partner for Alistair Cook and Nick Compton who might just have been pushed up the order instead, out of the picture, yet another player will have a chance to make a claim to be Andrew Strauss’s definitive replacement.

Rumour has it that a decision had already been made to go with Haseem Hameed this winter instead of Alex Hales. Maybe Hales just felt that he knew which way the wind was blowing and decided to bow-out gracefully, rather than be dropped. Whatever way it blows, the announcement of the touring parties is going to be met with great interest.

England v Pakistan, ODIs: Arise Sir Donald Hales

 

England v Pakistan

ODIs

Arise Sir Donald Hales

August 31^st  2016

A summer that threatened to end as a damp squib from England’s point of view, has re-ignited after guttering and fading. Three years ago England took a 3-1 Ashes lead against Australia: they lost the Final Test, the ODI series that followed, the five Tests in Australia, all but one of the ODIs, the series to Sri Lanka and went down in the series against India before finally reviving. A sad, dispirited defeat in the Final Test to a suddenly revived Pakistan, led by a suddenly revived Yasir Shah, raised at least the spectre of that scenario. Yasir Shah, who had spent two and a half Tests looking totally inoffensive and seeming the least of England’s worries, thundered back with 5-71 and made England look clueless again. A drawn series was a tribute to Pakistan’s capacity to come back from the abyss and England’s incapacity to close out series. On the balance of play, it was deserved, with each side totally dominating two Tests. As a spectacle though, it was dispiriting.

At the end of the Test series most fans looked at the England side and called time on James Vince’s career. A large majority felt that Gary Ballance had not justified his recall – to be fair, his county form did not justify it. And an increasing number of fans thought that the faith that the selectors had shown in Alex Hales had not been justified.

Poor Alex Hales. Equalled the England record with five consecutive 50s in the ODIs in South Africa after being written-off. Came back with three scores in the 80s and 90s in the Tests against Sri Lanka without making those last few runs that would have silenced the doubters. And has had three consecutive low scores in his last three ODIs. One feed-backer put it succinctly: “he’s shown that he is not good enough in any format”.

Cricket fans are a fickle lot. Their memories are short. Their gratitude is parsimonious. And a player is only as good as his last match. In T20 Hales was ranked as the #1 batsman in the world for a time and has top scores of 94, 99 and 116* - the first English T20 century. A relatively lean run in T20 (no 50 since 2014) has seen his contributions forgotten.

Three low scores in his last three ODIs have seen calls for him to be dropped in all formats. The suggestion is utterly bizarre. You do not become a poor player overnight and Alex Hales had, in his eight ODIs of the year up to the end of June, scored 520 runs in 8 innings with 4x50 and 2x100.

The nature of limited-overs cricket is that you will sometimes have failures and runs of low scores. And sometimes you will just have a brainstorm and do something really stupid. To come back though from being pilloried, from looking totally out of sorts and make a murderous 171 in 122 balls at very least shows character.

Hales’s sequence in ODIs in 2016 is something that even Sir Donald Bradman would be proud of:

57, 99, 65, 50, 112, 4, 133*, 0, 7, 14, 171

That is a small matter of 712 runs in 10 completed innings at a strike rate of 101.7. If that is not good enough, long live mediocrity!

When a player such as Joe Root has to act as sheet anchor because he is only scoring at a run-a-ball you know that great things are possible. We wanted to know what England could do batting first and now we know. The highest score in an ODI and some fairly eye-watering bowling figures. Only the fact that the last two overs unaccountably brought just 15 runs when the previous five had gone for 77 saved Pakistan from being the first side to concede 450 and 460 was definitely on with two overs to go.

The headline figure was the10-0-110-0 of Wahab Riaz, but Pakistan’s combined fifth bowler (Yasir Shah, Azhar Ali and Shoaib Malik) was actually more expensive (10-0-112-0).

Jos Buttler, who has looked short of match practice in the first two games, came good with the fastest 50 for England in ODIs and could have reached a century. What no one noticed is that Eoin Morgan was close to equalling the record: he was 42* from 20 balls and just two hits away from equalling Jos Buttler’s 22-ball 50. 33*, 68 & 57* is a big revival of fortunes for him.

If Pakistan had been sensible they could have at very least scared the target. Until the end of the 20^th over they had only once, very briefly at the start of the chase been behind and had been as much as 21 runs ahead of England at the same stage. The difference was that Pakistan panicked and, instead of accepting the odd over with only 3 or 4 runs scored, lost wickets regularly trying to force the scoring. At 106-3 after 15 overs they were 20 ahead of England at the same stage; within eight balls though that had become 108-5… game over!

England’s extraordinary ODI revival continues despite the ICC table saying that they are still only a mid-table team. The sceptics, who say that England have not yet beaten anyone of any quality must, at very least, be getting nervous. The suggestions that England are no different to the sad side of the last World Cup are getting harder and harder to justify. And, for Pakistan, the danger of having to qualify for the next World Cup is getting greater with every defeat.

England v Pakistan 4th Test, Day 3: Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

 

England v Pakistan

4^th Test, Day 3

Final Test Syndrome Strikes Again

August 14^th  2016

Some time on Day 4 Pakistan will win this Test and continue England’s bizarre run of failing to win final Tests. This has cost them time and time again: series wins became shared series and narrow series defeats have turned into heavy ones. This time it will cost England the chance to become #1 in the ICC Test table, but the points lost over the last three years through lost Final Tests are so many that England would have been runaway leaders in the table now if each of those defeats had been a draw instead.

It has been a wonderful series of twists and turns. A shared series is probably no less than Pakistan deserve.

Previous series going back as long as I can remember – and that goes back to series in the 1970s – have often been bad-tempered. The rights and wrongs of the different incidents are now lost in the mists of time, but they have summed over the years to produce a bad blood that has almost invariably been carried-over to the next series. Some incidents were seemingly trivial at the time: the bat-pad catch that David Constant turned down, the five penalty runs for ball tampering, but exploded when the players reached the dressing-room and thought about what had happened. Others were seemingly down mainly to cultural and linguistic difficulties, but had no place on a cricket field at all. No England captain should abuse an umpire; however, to have done something that was perfectly legitimate within the laws and to be called a cheat, by the umpire of all people, in a series where the umpiring was a little erratic, to put it kindly, was a fairly substantial and unnecessary provocation – what is worse, neither player nor umpire were sanctioned!

Pakistani players have often felt slighted in the past and, in hindsight, with good reason. When you develop a new method of bowling – reverse swing in this case – that no one understands, or can cope with, the temptation to cry foul is huge, but the consequences dire when you cannot demonstrate foul play and the bowlers know that they have done nothing wrong. You then go for the return series determined to get some of your own back, pushing the limits of fair play in a sense of righteous indignation and the cycle goes on.

Misbah-ul-Haq has managed to break with the cycle. Although there have been some wobbles – the Alex Hales dismissal in the first innings did stress things a little – the spirit has been good. Neutral umpires and DRS ensure that neither side can feel credibly that the umpiring has been biased one way or the other and when an injustice is done, it can usually be rectified. No system is perfect and no system can ever be made perfect [sorry, if you do not want DRS until it is perfect, you will never get it], but DRS massively reduces the uncertainties.

Much is made of the ways that DRS can be spoofed, or is terribly unreliable. You can make a lot of the fact that the DRS system that you are using was not made by you, or in your country and thus must be biased against you. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to think of ways to reduce the heat signal from an edge for HotSpot, or the acoustic signal for Snicko, but that same edge that you are hiding, will save you from being given LBW: by trying to avoid being given out caught when you edged, you are increasing your chances of being given out LBW when that same edge will fail to be detected (think “bat-pad” chances, or LBWs with bat and pad close together) – in other words, your net gain is likely to be small. DRS giveth and DRS taketh away! And if the umpires are allowed to inspect the bat as they inspect the ball, even such options for cheating the system will be largely eliminated. The fact remains though that to it is now almost impossible to accuse the umpiring of being biased without looking a bit of an idiot. When neither side can feel legitimately aggrieved, it does help to diffuse tensions!

Both sides have made a big effort to play in the right spirit and Misbah should take great credit for the way that he has ensured that his side has been a band of happy warriors. The press-up celebrations have been great PR, if a little galling at times to the opposition and such is the atmosphere created, that even Jimmy Anderson who, like many medium-pacers, is inclined to get a little worked up when the adrenaline flows, has felt obliged to apologise spontaneously to the umpires for his behaviour and not before time.

The legacy of the 2006 and 2010 series in England was shameful. The 2016 series will be remembered instead for some amazing twists and turns and some quite wonderful cricket between two well-matched teams that played in the spirit of cricket.

England v Pakistan, 3rd Test, Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

 

England v Pakistan

3^rd Test

Tales of the Unexpected: Pakistan’s Bizarre Capitulation Sets up England’s Assault on Becoming #1

August 9^th  2016

After the great Follow-On Cop-Out, we have had the Declaration Debacle. Both times the usual suspects accused Alistair Cook of everything from the most pusillanimous cowardice, to playing Father Christmas to Misbah’s team of happy warriors. Again, he was accused of throwing away the series by not knowing how to attack. And, again, events proved the critics completely wrong and Alistair Cook totally correct.

In fact, Alistair Cook is just one Test away from taking England to #1 in the ICC Test rankings: avoiding defeat may be enough to go top, winning guarantees it. Yet, despite results, it seems that Alistair Cook’s captaincy is fair game and vilified by (almost) everyone.

In contrast, the Pakistan team and their fans have been a happy bunch and, even as most people were reading the last rites, were convinced that their team could pull off an incredible win in both Tests that they have lost.

There is something very British about talking down your team, about being senselessly critical. We saw it before the 2012 Olympics too, where every story seemed to be a negative one, where the media gave acres of space to anyone who wanted to say that the Games would be an expensive disaster and that no one would turn up. Of course, although the Games had their faults (it is impossible to produce a perfect games), no one who was there can doubt that they were a great success perhaps, for a cricket fan, slightly tempered by the failure to include T20 cricket as a demonstration sport.

However, the vilification that has been poured on Alistair Cook’s handling of the side at times has gone past the reasonable. Like Andrew Strauss before him, he has received the labels “defensive” and “cautious” and nothing that he can do can change that. Even when proved to be absolutely correct in his decisions the pat answer is shot straight back “well he got lucky and did not deserve to get away with it”. When England almost pulled off an astonishing heist in the Oval Test of 2013, the plaudits were all for Michael Clarke for his attacking (read “totally mis-judged”) declaration, despite the fact that England scored more runs, far faster than Australia on that last day and it was not Alistair Cook who was time-wasting desperately at the end).

Alistair Cook belongs to the Clive Lloyd/Viv Richards school of captaincy. He knows that he has the weapons to win and backs his side to do it more often than not. Cook, like Clive Lloyd, does not take unnecessary risks. He likes to grind down his opponent, break his spirit. That much was shown by the way that in the 2^nd Test Pakistan were set a target that went far beyond anything reasonable. It was a West Indian trademark in the great years: even if the opposition was bowled out for 150 in the first innings, rarely enforce the Follow-On; bat again and toy with them – set them 450, 500, a target that they know that they have no hope of getting anywhere near.

Like those great West Indian teams, Alistair Cook was ruthless. He knew that the chances in the 2^nd Test of Pakistan surviving five sessions, or smashing the world record chase were just about zero. He backed his rested bowlers to do the job and they rewarded him by winning the match with a day to spare, despite a session being lost to rain.

At Edgbaston, in the 3^rd Test, the problem was a radically different one. For two days Pakistan had dominated totally on a surface so dead that it should have struggled to produce a result in six days, let alone five. Having been put in and batted at the one point in the match where there was significant help for the bowlers – and even then, it was not a great deal – and failed to get to 300, at the end of Day 2, England were on their backs and desperately trying to protect their collective throat from a mortal blow. At 257-2, with one ball of the day left, in reply to England’s 297, you could see a Pakistan lead of at least 150, probably 200, possibly even 250. England should have been batted out of the game and would have been likely to need to bat two days to save it. With Azhar Ali 139* and Younis settling-in nicely, it should have been curtains.

From that ball on though, just about everything went England’s way. Why did Azhar Ali guide an fairly inoffensive ball outside off straight to Alistair Cook from the last ball of the day? It confirmed the increasing suspicion that Chris Woakes has more than a touch of Ian Botham about him: things just happen around him, with no reasonable explanation. Those fans with longer memories will remember that Ian Botham’s introduction to Test cricket was fairly chastening: although he came back to take five wickets, his first spell was very roughly dealt with and his batting showed very little initially. Botham had the luck that the selectors stuck with him and repaid their faith once he started to believe in his own ability. In contrast, Chris Woakes has just had the odd Test over the last three years to make a case until finally given a run in the side: now it is hard to imagine the side without him.

The only moment when you could just imagine things going wrong was during the sixth wicket stand of 62: once it was broken, Pakistan seemed broken too. Only an annoying last-wicket stand got the lead over 100, but it was evident that the momentum had shifted.

When England’s first wicket pair got England in the black without great scares, the unthinkable started to become thinkable: might there be time for England to get far enough ahead and declare?

What was good to see was the way that Geoff Boycott purred over Alex Hales’s innings. Hales was patient. He started slowly, he avoided mistakes and he accelerated, giving England just the start that they needed. Hales is another player who is coming in for unfair opprobrium from the fans, who forget that he has had golden form in Tests and ODIs over the last few months, marred only by the lack of a maiden Test century. His first fifty of the series will not have silenced the doubters, but it at least eases the pressure on him and on the selectors.

Misbah seemed to get it all wrong. When Cook and Hales fell in three balls, early in Day 4, he switched quickly to all-out defence to stop England scoring. Perhaps he reasoned that it was the way to provoke a collapse, but it seemed to be more a fear of letting England set a target and thus exposing Pakistan to defeat. However, with fears about the ability of Vince and Ballance to perform at this level, a period of all-out attack might have let some runs flow, but could have also led to three or four wickets falling quickly. A century partnership steadied nerves and allowed James Vince another opportunity to count past 42 (an opportunity that, of course, he spurned): 9, 35, 10, 0, 16, 42, 18, 39 & 42 – in six of his nine Test innings he has got in, got set, looked good… and got out. Time is running out for him and the calls for Adil Rashid to replace him at The Oval are only getting louder, with even the England management publicly considering this option.

However, with every one of the top five making a contribution and the bowlers tiring, Pakistan were left incredibly vulnerable to a counter-attack. Once Bairstow and Moeen Ali had played themselves in, the bowlers were ripe for taking. After a relatively sedate start of a 50 partnership off 69 balls, the next hundred runs took 101 balls. It was Operation Annihilation again and, again, Yasir Shah was left to take the heat. 43-4-172-2. Seventy overs in the match for a return of 3-236: he might have won Pakistan the 1^st Test, but the contest has got more and more uneven since: match figures of 10-141 in that match, have been followed by combined figures of 4-502 in the 2^nd and 3^rd Tests. He has bowled 70 overs more than any other bowler in the series, averaging 32 per innings and is looking less and less effective. As the strike and stock bowler in a 4-man attack, he has been bowled into the ground and, more than anything, that mis-handling has turned the series. From a Pakistan point of view, their hopes of levelling the series and becoming the ICC’s #1 Test side depend on whether or not he can recover from such mega-abuse in time for the Final Test. If England bat and Yasir Shah is sent straight back into the attack, his stamina will be sorely tried.

The ultimate humiliation was for Yasir Shah to be given the first over in the morning, with a declaration in the offing and Alistair Cook being condemned for batting on, only to see twenty runs come off it: singles for Moeen and Bairstow, followed by 6 6 4 2 for Moeen. It was tantamount to a Pakistani declaration of surrender. Instead of taking 40 minutes out of the game, batting on in the morning cost just four overs, plus two for the change of innings.

Even after England had pulverised the Pakistani bowlers and allowed themselves almost a full day to bowl, there was no excuse for what followed.

At Lunch, Pakistan needed 264 to win from 62 overs, with nine wickets in hand and the ball was doing absolutely nothing for the bowlers. It was most definitely on. There was plenty of good bowling (Stuart Broad finished his second spell with the remarkable figures of 10-5-9-1). Plenty of pressure. Just nothing to suggest that wickets would fall. Not even Chris Woakes was making things happen.

And your spinner, your main hope of taking wickets, is short on confidence and many fans – and even some pundits – are asking why he is even in the side.

Cue Moeen Ali. A magic ball. An edge to slip. Thanks skipper! And the floodgates opened. 79-1 becomes a barely credible 151-9.

Why? There is no reasonable explanation. Collective panic?

The fact that the Pakistani last-wicket pair could put on 50 together with some comfort and, briefly, raise hopes that Pakistan could save the match, should put some of their colleagues to shame. There was nothing wrong with the pitch.

From 257-2 with one ball left of Day 2, Pakistan somehow contrived to lose their next 17 wickets for 294 runs. After the hammering at Old Trafford, to pass from the point of dominating the Test, to a humiliating defeat must hit Pakistani morale hard.

From being reviled after two, poor dismissals in the 2^nd Test and an anaemic bowling display, Moeen Ali has picked up another Man of the Match award and averages 58.7 with the bat and has 9 wickets at 39.3 with the ball in this series, at a strike rate of 54: better than Stuart Broad and only marginally inferior to Jimmy Anderson. It almost makes you wonder of he is strategically ineffective for a time to make batsmen take him too lightly and surrender their wickets to him!

The scene now shifts to The Oval, with the #1 ranking in Tests up for grabs. There are so many scenarios that they would take up a couple of pages of A4 but, a summary is this:

·        If England win the Test, they are guaranteed to go top of the ICC Test table.

o   Unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka, England will top the table if they avoid defeat at The Oval.

o   If Pakistan win the Test, they go top unless India win their last two Tests in the Caribbean, or Australia win the 3^rd Test in Sri Lanka and England will stay fourth in the table.

England v Pakistan, 2nd Test, Day 4: Operation Destruction Completed Successfully

 

England v Pakistan

2^nd Test

Day 4: Operation Destruction Completed Successfully

July 25^th  2016

The petulant whining about the non-enforcement of the Follow-On has been shown to be as ridiculous as it was irrelevant. It was all a bit wet, which was the one thing that the weather was not: the rain, which the critics assured us even this morning would wipe a huge swathe out of play both today and tomorrow, did not turn up. The BBC weather forecaster had promised in the morning that the weather would be fine and, like Alistair Cook, was vindicated. Despite losing a session to rain, England sealed a massive win with almost four sessions to spare.

Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper was vitriolic in its ridicule of England’s decision not to enforce the Follow-On. This might have been out of frustration as much as anything. They would have known that Pakistan’s one, slim hope of survival was to Follow-On (against an attack that would soon be a bowler short) and watch them tire progressively on a flat pitch. It would only have taken a single stand. Instead, England took to their task to grind down Pakistan’s own 4-man attack and destroy the confidence of Yasir Shah very seriously. Just look at the figures for the conclusion of the England innings:

·        86 runs from the last 10 overs of the innings.

·        75 runs added from 9 overs in 40 minutes in the morning.

·        A partnership of 105 in 85 balls (14.1 overs) at 7.4 runs per over between Cook and Root to bring on the declaration.

The fans predicted confidently that Pakistan would bowl wide, to a defensive field and slow scoring to a crawl, taking time out of the game. As it was, they seemed too utterly defeated to do anything about the England scoring rate, which accelerated steadily as the declaration approached, despite putting seven men on the boundary.

Shah’s match figures are an eye-watering 63-6-284-1: unable in this Test either to take wickets, or to slow down the scoring on a pitch on which England seriously considered playing two spinners (for comparison, the much-criticised Moeen Ali, had match figures of 26.2-1-131-5).

As an exercise in demoralisation it recalls Mike Gatting’s destruction of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan in India in 1984/85, when after winning the 1^st Test almost single-handed with 12 wickets, he took an expensive 6-for to give him a third consecutive 6-for in an innings, in the first innings of the Second Test, before Gatting destroyed his confidence so totally that he was never again effective, even at First Class level.

Misbah-ul-Haq, who is proving to be a diplomat, as well as a fine captain and a generous opponent, admitted that the pitch did little and that Pakistan should have scored 400 in the first innings and plenty in the second innings, but were short on confidence. What the Pakistani confidence levels will be like now, after this horrible pummelling, does not bear thinking of. Pakistan will look at how no fewer than nine batsmen passed 20 in the Test, yet only Misbah reached 50 and he was dismissed for 52 in the first innings.

Needing to survive 186 overs, Pakistan were 25-2 in the eleventh over – from there, there was no way back. Mohammed Hafeez and Younis Khan gave some hope that the game could be taken into the final day, but the danger of a brain-fade was always there and the desire to hit Moeen Ali out of the stadium did for both of them. Moeen Ali’s lack of success in recent Tests turned out to be his biggest weapon, as batsmen failed to treat him with sufficient respect and threw their wickets away in a macho attempt to emulate Misbah’s treatment of him from the 1^st Test. Those match figures of 5-131 will do Moeen’s case no harm, even if he was, inevitably, upstaged by Joe Root’s first over of the series (a wicket maiden).

Even the bad news for England may turn out to have a silver lining. Ben Stokes looks to have done real damage to his calf muscle, but his likely absence will allow England to give a game to one of a long list of players fighting to get into the attack. With Edgbaston unlikely to favour spin, the temptation to play Adil Rashid will be resisted, instead, England will have to decide the relative merits of: Wood (back playing for the Lions and bowling well), Finn (surely he cannot be brought back so soon), Plunkett (who only lost his place due to injury), Ball (who did nothing wrong in the 1^st Test and looked the part) and possibly even Chris Jordan (back from the IPL and bowling with vim and vigour). Plenty of bowlers are banging on the door and shouting for a chance to play.

Personally, I would go for Plunkett, with his extra pace and bounce, to shake up some nervous Pakistani batsmen, as the word is that probably Mark Wood has not bowled enough overs to be ready for a 5-day Test (always assuming that a Test goes into a fifth day in this series).

A couple of days ago I suggested that this series was starting to resemble England v India in 2014. I stick by that suggestion. We will see if it still looks that way after the 3^rd Test. Either way, the series is now guaranteed to be live for the Final Test, at The Oval, starting on August 11^th.

England v Pakistan, 2nd Test, Day 3: Break Their Hearts. The Specious Follow-On Debate

 

England v Pakistan

2^nd Test

Day 3: Break Their Hearts. The Specious Follow-On Debate

July 24^th  2016

Day 3 was all about England showing the sort of superiority over the opposition that used to be the mark of the West Indians of Clive Lloyd or Viv Richards, or the Australians of Steve Waugh: do not just beat the opposition, break their hearts. The wailing and whining after Alistair Cook failed to impose the Follow-On made one think that England were playing for a draw in a desperate attempt to avoid an ignominious defeat, rather than winning comfortably and having the luxury to win the easy way, putting the smallest possible strain on the team.

On a pitch that is still a batting paradise, England’s target was to get at least one wicket in the first hour. It came and, by Lunch, Pakistan at 119-8, had basically surrendered the match. What followed shows why Alistair Cook was reluctant to enforce the Follow-On. Misbah, Wahab and Mohammad Amir together added 60 for the 9^th wicket and then the last two added 19 for the last wicket. It was a hard slog for the bowlers and showed that there was nothing wrong with the pitch and that even a tail-ender could hang around for a long time if he was determined. With Pakistan 391 behind on the first innings, Alistair Cook could have bet on Pakistan folding again. He may have remembered though the game in which Sri Lanka arguably finished Andrew Flintoff’s career prematurely.

1^st Test, 2006: England scored 551-6d and then bowled out Sri Lanka for 191.

Andrew Flintoff enforced the Follow-On, despite the fact that the pitch remained flat. Sri Lanka batted for 199 overs to score 537-9 and many feel that the 51 overs that Andrew Flintoff bowled in an increasingly desperate attempt to win the match, contributed to the injury that finally ended his career.

Alistair Cook reasoned that there was a danger that his bowlers could have to spend three full days in the field if he enforced the Follow-On and Pakistan failed to fold tamely a second time. With barely a week before the 3^rd Test and then just 4 days between the 3^rd and 4^th Tests, the risk was to leave his attack totally exhausted by what is likely to be the deciding Test of the series.

Cook also did what Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and Steve Waugh would have done. How often did we see them bat again and increase the lead to a figure beyond all reason before deciding to declare? You knew that England were not going to score 500, or 550 to win, but those captains made a point and only declared when they could see that the opposition was totally destroyed and their will to resist, gone. “Don’t just beat them”, was the watch-word, “break their hearts”.

Pakistan are still a dangerous force. Winning this Test big will help win the next two [it is similar to the reasoning of the hero in the film Ender’s Game. When Ender is asked why he kept hitting his obviously defeated opponent in a fight, he replied “I’d won this fight, I wanted to win the next ones too”. You do that by breaking the spirit of your opponent and destroying their will to come back at you next time].

With time to be made up tomorrow there are, in theory, another 196 overs to bowl still. Expect England to bat for perhaps an hour in the morning and to go after the bowlers again, looking for quick runs. Pakistan will be set at least 550 to win, maybe closer to 600: a target that they will know is impossible, although they will say that, with sensible batting, they can still win. Cook will declare, knowing that they will get a blast with the new ball before Lunch, have a break and then have another blast after Lunch with still fresh bowlers and a reasonably new ball.

Pakistan will need to bat around 180 overs to draw. Only four sides in the history of Test cricket have batted that long in the fourth innings of a match and none of them were Pakistan: their best effort is just 137.5 overs in their defeat at Melbourne in 1990.

If Pakistan can save this game they will have deserved to. It will have been by far the most remarkable rearguard action in their history.

England v Pakistan, 2nd Test, Day 2: Déjà Vu from 2014?

 

England v Pakistan

2^nd Test

Day 2: Déjà Vu from 2014?

 July 23^rd  2016

The advantage of going on holiday for a week to a remote area of Northern Spain with no Internet was that the horribly inevitable spiral of England to defeat in the 1^st Test was limited to score updates on my smartphone. England were simply outplayed in every department and seemed to be carrying at least four passengers in their side and even then, briefly on the final day, suggested that they could win.

The response of the selectors has been to recall Stokes and Anderson, logically enough and, more unexpectedly, to call up Adil Rashid, but then disappoint by leaving him out on the morning when the adventurous option would have been to take in two seamers. Adil Rashid is no destroyer, but would add options to the attack and his form for England in the short forms of the game must have boosted his confidence enormously. It could be that the selectors are worried that they would be exposed if Anderson or Stokes were to break down, but the logical option was to play all four seamers as two are good batsmen too.

To no one’s great surprise, Jake Ball has been returned to Nottinghamshire and Toby Roland-Jones to England Lions duty. The rise of Chris Woakes has also meant that the selectors took the bull by the horns and released Steve Finn early (translation: he was never under serious consideration to play). Steve Finn’s travails since Graeme Smith decided, in 2012, that his occasional habit of knocking off the bails in his delivery constituted a grave distraction and thus managed to change the laws to eliminate this menace from the game, have been well documented. Steve Finn bowled like a demon in South Africa in the absence of Jimmy Anderson, but has since not looked like taking Test wickets. Of course, Finn responded with a display of real pace and menace in Middlesex’s T20 win against Hampshire after being released by England. Why he can look like a world-class pace bowler one night for Middlesex and like a county fourth seamer for England the week before, is one of those mysteries of cricket.

At Lord’s, Pakistan batted and made what, ultimately, was a match-winning total. The big difference between the sides was Misbah converting a start into a century – something that no England batsman could do – and the bowling of Yasir Shah, sticking to basics and making batsman after batsman commit suicide. This time though, it was Alistair Cook who won the Toss. And this time England made it count on a benign pitch against a friendly attack.

That England’s batting effort was not another disaster was down to Cook and Root getting stuck in and getting support from the lower middle order. Joe Root’s prodigious innings made up for another alarming failure from Alex Hales and another brief but pretty innings from James Vince, who has added yet another low score to his list of Test innings.

Vince’s sequence of scores – 9, 35, 10, 0, 16, 42, 18 – is starting to get seriously worrying. You can argue that Alex Hales had a similarly rocky start before coming good, but Hales at least had the consolation of a 50 against a much better attack than those that Vince has faced. The betting is that James Vince will get the 3^rd Test to make a score and then will make way for his replacement for the tour of India if he cannot. The beauty of Vince’s batting is making the pundit’s purr… as long as it lasts, which has generally been all too briefly before he gives it away. Alex Hales is a different problem. He made three important scores against Sri Lanka and has a string of ODI 50s and 100s since the South Africa Test series ended; Pakistan though are presenting him with a new problem that he is, at present, unable to solve. Hales though needs a score quickly to silence any premature chat about dropping him.

The England innings gave ammunition to those who have suggested that England’s batting is Root, Cook and nine honest triers. It ignores the fact that of Root’s six previous Test innings this summer, four have been not so commendably brief – dismissed in single figures – yet England have been winning, at least until the Lord’s Test. Even at Lord’s, after a Root failure that left the side 47-3 and sinking fast, there were times, particularly as Bairstow and Woakes crafted a careful 50 partnership, when Pakistan must have started to worry a little.

One of the problems at Lord’s was clusters of wickets falling, giving Pakistan momentum at critical moments. Here though, until the final slog that led to the declaration, there was no partnership smaller than the 25 that Hales and Cook put on together and no single-figure score. Even when a wicket fell, there was no great encouragement for the bowlers as the next man settled in. To score 589-8 at almost 4-an-over has made a major point, as have Yasir Shah’s figures of 54-6-231-1: the most expensive bowler apart from Wahab Riaz, unable to tie down an end or to take wickets. Pakistan’s Plan A was Yasir Shah. Their Plan B seemed to be abject surrender.

Sir Geoffrey talked about scoreboard pressure playing tricks on batsman, knowing that they were playing for a draw at best, but even then there was no excuse for what followed, particularly as the new ball attack was seen off comfortably. However, like Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who had the holy terrors every time that Ian Botham took the ball – only he could induce batsmen to give their wickets away to the most innocent deliveries – Chris Woakes seems to be having the same effect on Asians in general. He only took more than one wicket in a match once in his first six Tests but, against Pakistan and Sri Lanka this summer, has 22 in just over 3 Tests at 12.3. None of his wicket-taking deliveries was particularly lethal, but Pakistani eyes lit-up and offered themselves as willing victims.

Pakistan have done what England did at Lord’s. So far their partnerships are 27, 16, 5, 5 & 4*. When a wicket falls, another has fallen quickly, giving the bowlers even more encouragement. It makes fatigue disappear as the bowler’s spell extends. It convinces the batsmen to come that there are non-existent demons in the pitch. And, if you follow social media, it convinces fans of the opposition that the pitch was specially prepared to disintegrate as soon as England declared (a mind game that almost always backfires on their own side, by creating a bunker mindset where everything is conspiring against you)!

Day 3 offers cloud, possibly some rain and favourable bowling conditions. It will be an almighty effort to take 16 more Pakistan wickets on what remains a very good batting surface but were Misbah to fall early, Pakistan could just fold.

It all gives a sense of déjà vu from 2014. Then, Sri Lanka were the first visitors and India the main course that England were expected to digest with some ease. Yes, we talked about how skilful the Indians seamers were, but they were not expected to be good enough to overcome England. India sent shockwaves through the country when they won the 1^st Test at a canter before suddenly falling apart. Are we seeing Pakistan do the same?