First Test Rant

This was a disgusting, terrible result for English cricket. This is as poor a Sri Lanka as there has been since I’ve been watching cricket who went into the series with no confidence and having had a hectic schedule. There is no Murali, Malinga or Vaas. The Sri Lankan board and the country itself is a mess; England should not be losing.  Credit to Sri Lanka though, they played well and deserved to win. 

Andrew Strauss is very close to the edge of the precipice. It might well be time for him to go regardless of the result in the second test. As captain you can’t go on scoring no runs while your team is losing. It’s a shame because I respect him as a captain and as a player and I don’t think unlike Vaughan before him that he is no longer good enough to be a test bat but unfortunately he hasn’t scored the runs.

Lol at the English media on the fourth morning. They all predicted England to win. lol, wtf, England hadn’t scored 340 all winter. Why would you expect to England chase this down today on a wearing pitch with a batting order with no confidence now? Retarded.

Samit Patel selection was a terrible selection. He proved exactly what I had predicted. He is not a good batsman and hardly bowled. He bowled poorly in the first innings but somehow fluked a couple of wickets. England needed a proper batsman to play properly, Samit was not that man.

At the start of the winter I wasn’t sure whether Monty should go because I didn’t think his bowling had improved as many had said and his batting and fielding were still terrible. In the UAE he bowled well and didn’t disgrace himself in the field or with the bat but Pakistan are poor players of spin. Here with the ball he lacked penetration, in the field he was an embarrassment and caused England to lose a lot of the momentum in the match/ maybe it was even the turning point of the whole match. I still think he’s basically the same player who last played test cricket 5 years ago. Hopefully Kerrigan continues his improvement and I won’t have to watch Monty through my hands as he bats and fields. 

Alastair Cook was rested from the second warm up because he had scored a hundred in the first warmup and because others had not performed in the first game and England were not sure of who to play as the 6^th batsman. This in hindsight was a bad decision. The batsmen who were going to play in the first test should have been given every chance to be as comfortable as they could be in the conditions. 

One caveat I would like to muse upon is maybe the bowling of England has not been quite as good as everybody has speaking of this winter. Maybe the wickets weren’t as good as people have thought. Obviously the batting has been poor but maybe the bowling and the captaincy(no-one has been saying this has been great, but maybe it has had some affect on the result) hasn’t been quite as top notch as people having been saying.

Sri Lanka Preview

And so the test series against Sri Lanka begins tomorrow and I must say as bad as Sri Lanka currently are, I am distinctly worried about England’s chances in the series.

Sri Lanka are nowhere near the team that England last toured to play against. None of Vaas, Muralitharan or Malinga remains from that test series in 2007 and the replacements since aren’t of a sufficient standard to trouble most international countries. Couple that with the crippling problems of the country which has seen a horrific civil war come to an end in the last few years, and the subsequent economic problems associated with a 25+ year civil war means that this is a country struggling to remain competitive at the top level of international cricket. The players until recently hadn’t been paid for over a year and the cricket board is run by government selected personnel and has been criticized by former and current players alike for corruption and self interest.

For all their problems there remains two players in Kumar Sangakarra and Mahela Jayawardene who are world class and in their own conditions are a formidable pair. Jayawadene averages 62.92 at home and 89.16 with 4 hundreds in 9 tests at home against England. Sangakarra is currently rated the No.1 Test batsman in the world and no longer has the responsibility of captaincy or wicketkeeping to weigh him down. Add Thilan Samaraweera into the fray who in recent times has thrown off his mantle as someone who can only score runs at home – He now has a better record than Jayawardene away from home averaging 47 as opposed to 40 and you have an energy sapping middle order to dismiss.

But for all those qualities, three batsman does not make a team and the fact that that the team has been constantly on tour in recent months and the upheaval with the cricket board and payment of players, the team will not come together completely fresh both physically and mentally.

Many of England’s players from the 2007 tour remain with both Ravi Bopara and Monty Panesar hoping for more success this time around. Both had since been vanquished from the team before returning in recent times. How they do on this tour may well shape the rest of their career. For Bopara it may already be over before it all begins as he has picked up a side strain which means he can’t bowl and it seems like he may miss out on the no.6 spot because of this. If they don’t play with him in the first test there is no point picking him again – the selectors, captain and coach obviously are convinced by his temperament and technique and if he is surpassed by Patel who is an average batsman and no more than a pie chucker who won’t bowl much in a team containing Swann and in particular Panesar than there obviously is no point persevering with Bopara. To me Bopara isn't quite there and unlike Bell he has neither the skill nor mental ability to master international cricket. We always knew that Bell had the technical skill to master international cricket but there had always been question marks over his mental acuity. For Bopara there are still questions of him on both counts if you ask me. Too often when in comfortable conditions he will come in and look incapable of scoring runs. Whether this is a mental struggle with himself to do with the pacing of his innings or the fear of failure, or he just doesn’t have the required strokeplay for international level I don’t know, but the fact that he has question marks over both facets of his game means unlike Bell he has a lot to prove and it seems unlikely that he will make it at international level.

Panesar on the other hand seems to have improved and has found his second coming in international cricket. This will be a test on the flat wickets against very strong players of spin, but from what I’ve seen so far he has improved as a bowler and should offer more now. His batting and fielding still remain embarrassing although he seemingly works hard on both. Graeme Swann is starting to come under pressure and some of his recent comments in the media seem to be of a man who is not altogether happy with how things are going. Swann is the better cricketer and still would be my first choice come the summer but in Asian conditions where long containing spells are often required Monty now has the edge over Swann and this should be a warning to Swann to not rest on his laurels. Swann’s batting in recent times has been reckless and almost arrogant with the approach of ‘ I take all these wickets so I’m going to have a slog with the bat’. That was fine when there was no other spinner in contention but now more than ever he is going to have show that he is a multidimensional cricketer and that he can make contributions in the field and with the bat; that is something Panesar cannot provide.

Personally for the first test I’d much rather go with Bopara or Bresnan rather than Patel. If Patel does play I can’t see him bowling much at all as a third spinner (and second SLA’r) as Monty is used to and even enjoys bowling lots of overs and Patel really offers no variation to the attack. For that reason if they do select him I have to feel they think he is a better batsman than Bopara. Bresnan chances were increased 10 fold by Bopara’s injury but will probably lose out due to his lack of match practice in recent time.

Ian Bell comes into the tour on the back of more poor form in the warm up games and desperately needs a score to help him regain some of his confidence.  Bell averaged 43.5 in his previous tour to Sri Lanka against a significantly stronger looking Sri Lankan bowling attack but as is life, confidence and form is so fickle and he is dreadfully short of both. Where 4 failures in the test series will leave him I don’t know. Before the Pakistan tour I would have said he was England’s classiest player and had finally made the step up to a world class batsman and he may well have been on the verge of a golden period in his career. But now the doubters in the press and supporters, and the doubts in Bell's own mind have seemingly reappeared and the future does not seem so clear.

So much of England’s success comes from the top 3 and Alastair Cook comes more and more vital to the England cause as each day goes by. He really is turning into a very fine player and could become a great leader. Even if he isn’t a great tactician, his professionalism and runscoring alone should allow him to become admired and respected by his peers in the team and allow him to go onto great things with the captaincy when the inevitable happens and he takes over as test captain. For now he will have to concentrate on scoring runs and he has all tools to prosper here. His high levels of fitness and mental strength should allow him to prosper even with the boiling temperatures. So much of what is good by England comes from a solid base that Cook and to a lesser extent Trott build and given the lack of confidence that a lot of the current England top order have in Asia I will be reassured if Cook scores runs in the first innings of the series.

My preferred xi (Strauss, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Bell, Prior, Bresnan, Broad, Swann, Anderson, Panesar)

My prediction: Who knows. We should win given the state of Sri Lankan cricket but I’m not exactly confident.

Test disappointment and an ODI upturn

Well what can you say about England’s tour to the UAE. Well as expected opposite teams dominated the Test and ODI series, and the twenty20 series was tightly contested. The big surprise was that it was Pakistan dominant in test cricket, winning 3-0, and vice versa England in ODI cricket, winning 4-0. Although England came out on top in overall matches and series on the tour, it was for anyone to do with English cricket a massive disappointment and a reminder to those of who have praised them in recent times that this England side is not infallible.

I expected England to win a tight test series, never would I have predicted a 3-0 reverse. There was more in the wicket for both sides than expected but the batsman from either side ranged from average to terrible. There is no doubt that Pakistan were the better team in the test series and deserved to win but why did this England team who have performed so well in recent times fail so badly?

1)   Pakistan spinners. Ajmal and Rehman were excellent and suffocated the English batsman.

2)   We don’t play slow, low bouncing wickets well. No surprise but we don’t and we didn’t adapt.

3)   Lack of match practice. There was a big break between this series and England’s previous and most of the team came into the series lacking any real match practice.

4)   Lost Confidence/Form. With the lack of match practice came a lack of confidence when they failed early on in the series. The batsman never recovered their form or confidence throughout the series.

5)   Were they overrated? Maybe we/I expected too much. The batsman had been scoring very heavily for the last year but before that they really had been no more than good in the current international climate. Maybe the year was the anomaly and they’re returning to the mean.

6)   Didn’t have much effect on the series in all likelihood but the selection of Chris Tremlett in the first test struck me as retarded before a ball was bowled as I posted in my last blog.  He was anonymous with the ball and useless with the bat before returning home after the first test injured. I could have predicted this was to happen from the comfort of my sofa back in England, WTF were the England management doing? One can only imagine that Steven Finn isn’t rated particularly highly as a test bowler because to be overlooked for a half fit Tremlett who hadn’t played for six months is pretty damning.

England missed their chance to go down in history as a great team. There really is no coming back from a 3-0 reverse against an average Pakistan team. England probably still are the No.1 test team but they left this up for debate with fans all around the world and because of this reversal will probably never be accepted as the best team in the world.

I think rightly for the Sri Lanka series Eoin Morgan has been dropped from the test side. He had done nothing before the Pakistan series began to convince that he was a definite and his dreadful form in the series means he will be sidelined probably long term from the test team. Others have called for him to be dropped from ODI and T20 teams but this seems ridiculous. He is still our best ODI and T20 bat in my opinion and the bedrock on which our assault for the 2015 CWC should be built.  

The ODI and T20 series were a much more positive event for the England team and there is reason to be positive about our hopes for the future. The fielding is dynamic and brilliant for the most part. The bowling disciplined and in Steven Finn’s case penetrative. The batting is still too reliant on one or two being in good form and the youngsters didn’t have much success but they are good enough and should be persisted with because of their potential and the bite they give to the team in the field.

For once there is much to look forward to in ODI and T20 cricket; in test cricket I’m not quite so sure. They will still be successful for a few years to come in tests but some of the batsman, Ian Bell in particular have proven that it’s unlikely to be a time in which they become great as a team or individually.