Still raining and it appears that, unless England are bowled out before then, Australia will have to bowl 20 overs for a result other than "abandoned". If they do get the 20 overs in then we have zero chance of winning - according to my calculations the "par" score for 9.3 overs is 117 and the target for 20 overs is 197. So we would need to score 137 off 10.3 overs!
I hadn't realised that they are back out because Sky switched channels. Not missed much apart from England losing another two wickets!!! They are now 65-6 off 11.3 overs and their target is 215 off 24.
Amazing to think that our only seamer has played some 180 more games than the three matches our three front line spinners have managed between them. Since the infancy of Test cricket England cannot have had a bowling attack so inexperienced. Sometimes, though, that element of youth can bond a group together and hopefully Hartley can repeat his last match efforts with the unknown element of Bashir taking India by surprise.
When Jimmy Anderson made his Test debut, Pope was 7 years old, Crawley and Hartley were 5, Bashir's Mum was carrying him and Rehan hadn't even been conceived!
When Jimmy Anderson made his Test debut, Pope was 7 years old, Crawley and Hartley were 5, Bashir's Mum was carrying him and Rehan hadn't even been conceived!
When Jimmy Anderson made his Test debut, Pope was 7 years old, Crawley and Hartley were 5, Bashir's Mum was carrying him and Rehan hadn't even been conceived!
and I was 16
And he still wasn't held in enough esteem for you to take up fast bowling!
Looking at the card for that debut, Sean Ervine, who was later to find fame and fortune playing for Minster CC in the Kent League, was playing for Zimbabwe. Hoggard got him in the first innings but, without looking, who can name the bowler who took his wicket in the second innings?
India A were 192 all out against The Lions thanks to Potts (16.2-3-57-6) and Carse (12-1-52-4). So it is more than possible to have seam friendly wickets in India!
Pretty much as expected then. I think the only debate really was maybe Lawrence for Rehan but it's not the Stokes/McCullum way to drop players after a quiet game. Probably wise to keep him playing.
Pretty much as expected then. I think the only debate really was maybe Lawrence for Rehan but it's not the Stokes/McCullum way to drop players after a quiet game. Probably wise to keep him playing.
The other option was to play 2 seamers, at the expense of one of the spinners. I still don't think we need 4 spinners.
Well, don't forget that India has a weakness with its batsmen - they're not a particularly great outfit, especially with Kohli out. Preparing a lively deck would be asking for it. Maybe the plan is to prepare a drawish pitch and then go for the kill with Kohli and possibly Jadeja back
From what I have read there is a fear from some senior Indian former players that if they make the pitch for the 2nd Test as much a turner (or even worse) then it might favour the Indians even less than us.
If we were to take Root as a marker, someone who prior to this match had just 60 Test wickets to his name in 135 matches @ 44.31 and ER of 3.25, in taking 5 wickets @ 20.20 with an ER of 2.50, it is fair to say that you didn't have to be the English equivalent of Ashwin or Jadeja to be successful. You just had to put the ball consistently in the right areas and wait for the batsman to make a mistake. How many times did players, for example, got in and gave it up - some 20 in the match reached 20 but failed to get to 50. Another four players reached 70 but failed to get to a ton. The game lasted for four full days when some of us thought that it would be over well inside three so it simply wasn't unplayable.
So why was Pope so successful where others weren't? It was his ability to pick the right ball to play the right shot to and to take the game to India by playing unconventional ones with the confidence that they were the equivalent of a forward defensive. Any modern coach will never lambast a player for getting out to a reverse sweep providing two elements are fulfilled - that you can play it successfully and that you tried to do so to the right ball i.e. it was the execution that failed or the ball did something totally unexpected. It is very difficult to set a field to someone who can sweep, reverse sweep, paddle and ramp successfully because in order to stop that from being profitable you have to move players from more orthodox positions which then opens up areas that will allow straight bat shots to be hit for singles, twos or even a boundaries. Pope did not hit a single maximum in the game and yet his strike rate was over 70 and thankfully he realised from his first innings that he didn't need to be so frenetic from the off in order to achieve that. But then he hadn't picked up a bat in anger in more than six months so who could blame him for that initial misplaced desire to impress.
India, on the other hand, have only two batsmen who play the sweep well, one is Sharma and the other is Rahul. The likes of, specifically, Gill and Iyer don't and their confidence isn't great either - not a 50 between them in their last combined 14 innings. They struggle to negate the spin by playing the sweep so end up either "enjoying" a slow death or by doing something rash.
So maybe, just maybe, India are now stuck between a "rock and a hard place" as to what sort of wicket they prepare. With Jadeja and Rahul now out, perhaps they will, actually, be happy to prepare a "no result" pitch and takes things from the third Test when those two might be fit and they know that their messiah will be back. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
Bearing in mind what I've said about the pitch, two things
impressed me about Hartley - one how he managed to rescue things after
such a nervous and wayward start but also how Stokes persisted with him in a
way that Cook didn't with Kerrigan. That is the difference between Cook/Root
and Stokes. If we think you're good enough to be picked then we will bowl you as if you were good enough to be picked.
One word of
warning though. Hartley isn't the finished article - he has 49 FC wickets as
opposed to the 434 that Leach has to his name. He clearly has the ability but the only way that he will become a Test bowler as good as Leach and hopefully even better is by bowling a lot of overs, season in season out, which is when he will
learn to control the game when conditions aren't in his favour. Last season he
bowled 287 overs but took just 19 wickets at 44.84 apiece and was the 72nd
highest wicket taker. The vast majority of those above him in the list were, of course, seamers. For all the reasons I've suggested so many times already.
Rehan is an even more obvious victim of a lack of overs.
He made his Test debut 13 months ago in Karachi against Pakistan and returned a
superb 37-3-137-7 again in conditions that were spin friendly. He's
had to wait 'til now for his second Test match and his figures were 30-4-138-2.
This was a track, as I've said above, where even a part timer like Root was able to threaten by bowling in the right areas and yet Rehan didn't consistently do so even though he is an attacking spinner - in fact, one of his two
wickets was the aforementioned Iyer managing to slog sweep one of his balls to the only man on the
legside boundary. During the whole of last season's CC Rehan bowled just 160
overs and picked up a derisory 8 wickets at 66.12 apiece.
If we really want these two great prospects (because they are still that) and the likes of Rehan's brother, Farhan and Taz Ali from the U19s to develop then they have to be given a proper
chance to develop away from the pressure of Test cricket. But how many games will they get in the CC and how many overs will they bowl even if selected? One only has to laugh at the attempt of the former CEO to allow our players to take part in the Sheffield Shield to recognise that they know we have an issue in that respect.
A bit like this Leuth? The draw is available at 13.00 on Betfair which suggests about an 8% of it being a "no result" albeit that it was at a high of 16.50
Comments
4-29 off 4.3
Bashir for Leach , Anderson for Wood
England Men's XI
Unless one of them takes a lot of wickets, which I can't see happening on these pitches
Looking at the card for that debut, Sean Ervine, who was later to find fame and fortune playing for Minster CC in the Kent League, was playing for Zimbabwe. Hoggard got him in the first innings but, without looking, who can name the bowler who took his wicket in the second innings?
England overcoming such pitches in Pakistan comes to mind, however...