GraceCricket

Day 3 of Trent Bridge

My initial thought about yesterday is to focus on a really excellent day's cricket.

A solid first hour real battle between bat & ball. Then 2 crucial wickets, then a steady flow of runs and wickets and then an amazing battling partnership taking the momentum of the game from the Aussies into our hands.  We've batted our way on a tricky pitch into an excellent position.

The media attention is inevitably about one moment in the game, not the other 539 balls bowled during the day, the analysis of Aussie tactics, the way that Bell is more often playing really solid essential innings.

I'm torn on the Broad dismissal if I'm honest.

Half of me agrees with the neutral cricket lovers, yes it wasn't gentlemanly action, it wasn't very 'British', walking is good for the game and places cricket in the moral high ground above other sports.

But at the time I was totally with full scale English cricket fans in the midst of the Ashes.  Aussies don't walk, all cricketers who have travelled out there and played out there report that. There's past history of that in the Ashes, its an unwritten part of Ashes cricket, 'We won't walk if they won't walk'.  Broad's ability not to look guilty is extraordinary, Aleem Dhar's decision is shocking and the Aussies' reaction is hysterical.  It really was enjoyable watching the partnership, the loss of momentum, the sun and that decision really get under their skin and take chunks out of their emotional energy for the game.

Most alarming of all I find myself agreeing with Siddle. "You grab the ball and move on".

We have another exciting day of Ashes cricket ahead, I have Sky installed & a day off....

Just under 2 hours until the start of play and I can already feel the nervous tension, which is concerning given the massive pile of work I need to get done today.

That's not helped by the fact that for the first time in my life, today I become a SkySports customer, won't be installed until this afternoon, but total excitement.
If day 1 was about nerves, Day 2 is almost unanalysable.
Session 1 After a sedate solid passage of play, two players who are believed in by their country but mocked by the rest of the world steered themselves towards settling down.
Then; carnage - 5 Aussie wickets for about 9 runs. As enjoyable a batting collapse as you will find.
Session 2 Rookie. An extraordinary innings from Ashton Agar

Debutant, teenager, Aussie spinner, picked from obscurity, put in at no.11 - very nearly becomes the first test no.11 in history to score a century,

breaking the 10th wicket partnership on the way and then falls agonisingly short. Whatever adjective I use it can't capture that or add anything to all that's been said.
Eng lose two quick wickets to complete a huge session for Aus. The second is a shocking decision as technology and TV companies all let England down big time.

Even the on-field umpire shows dissent.
Session 3- The sweat-free master of composed sedate batting Alaistair Cook settles in with the formerly frenetic now mature and wise KP for a session of attritional leaving of loose wide balls. They hardly have to play the ball, the scoring rate is slow and the Aussies keep tempting the loose drives and our boys keep resisting.
Slow, old fashioned 'proper' test cricket, completely unlike the two sessions that had gone before.

After 2 days these Ashes are already living up to the hype. 

Brief Review of yesterday - Swing & Nerves

Yesterday was great fun, lots of drama and the key words for the day were 'Swing' and 'Nerves'.
The ball was swinging enough to challenge batsmen.
There were too many batsmen swinging at loose balls and getting caught.
The swing of momentum in the evening session was key, but will it swing back to Aus this am?

The other key word was nerves. Quite a few players played like they had less sleep and more tension in their bodies than they'd want. There were record numbers of boundaries and wickets during the day. That makes for exciting cricket. This isn't a symptom of too much OneDay stuff, its a symptom of nerves.
Nervous energy causes bowlers to bowl a mixture of stunning deliveries, (& media pundits to hype them even further!) and total dross. The case in point being Agar's first ball in test cricket, for a spinner to bowl a full toss negates the whole point of being a spinner. (& Swann did the same later)
A mixture of bad balls with stunners means that batsmen will score boundaries and get out. Add into that the batsmen's nerves, they'll play shots and make mistakes - again causing boundaries and wickets.

Today will be sunnier, drier I expect a more settled day and expect England to have to work to dismiss Aus for less than 200. How England then bat in the second innings will set the course for the game.

In tennis its not who wins the first set that matters, but who wins the second. THey say in football its not who scores first that matters, but who scores second (but who cares - its football!)
This test wasn't decided by the first day's play, but could well be decided today.

Root or Compton to open against NZ?

Back to the Root or Compton debate I saw on BBC Sport website that Alec Stewart was recommending Compton to open in this series, I've had a response on twitter to imply others agree with that. I'm going for Root to open, with Bairstow at 6. That looks like players batting in their usual positions, Bairstow has shown more talent than Compton so far. This Kiwi side has very little to concern us and is like a weaker version of the Aussie side, (which is currently a weaker version of a cricket team) so its an ideal chance to establish some solid wins and confidence building structure in the team. Build foundations during the 'easy' times ready for greater challenges. Root and Cook to have a good time to establish themselves as a batting against the Kiwis makes sense to me. The only glitch is that the Kiwi's have Tim Southee, who has played for Essex, so therefore is brilliant and dangerous and might even take an early wicket. One other factor in play, Root actually looks to score. Cook's run rate is improving, but if we were to have a top 3 of Cook, Compton and Trott, its possible that England would win the toss bat for 2 dull days, reach 500-1 after 2 days, but that woudl hardly promote test cricket as a dynamic watchable sport? (Maybe not a problem as most of us sleep at night) As for the pace attack. Is it clearly Jimmy, Broad and Finn with Swann as the spinner, or does anyone else challenge Broad's position? It looks like Finn is now established above Broad from the pundit chat I've heard.

The Mumbai trend continues

Like many of us, I got up this morning, excited by the score and then by mid-morning was disappointed with England's day.  

We had knocked over Gambhir, Sehwag and Tendulkar cheaply & they are (now) India's 3 most experienced batsmen.  Then we allowed Pujara and friends to bat them into a very good position in the game.

But this is the 3rd match England have played in Mumbai on this tour, (at different stadiums I acknowledge) and the pattern has been the same in all 3. Wickets in the morning, attrition in the afternoon and runs in the evening.  Today that pattern was repeated.

This was the 7th day of cricket England have played in Mumbai this tour. Here are the averages session by session.

Mornings - (overall) 21.38 - (today) - 29

Afternoons -(overall) 68.27 - (today) - 40

Evenings -(overall) 77.20 - (today) - 99

 

And the run rates; Overall/Today

Mornings 3.23 / 3.11

Afternoons 3.16 / 3.16

Evenings 4.95 / 3.3

 

What does that mean for this significant game? = I think it means England are in a better position than we think. 

According to this pattern, we should be able to knock their tail over by lunchtime.

Then our top order will be able to bat attritionally (we can guarantee that with Cook, Compton and Trott) through the afternoon, then if we lose a wicket or two, KP & Bairstow can rattle up some runs in the evening.  The real key to winning this game will be to knock them over early tomorrow morning and then bat well on the morning of day3. - If we can do that, then I think we're in with a chance.

But England vs spinners this year - Not a happy story.

 

Opening dilemmas

The most interesting question for the warm up games for England in India is who will have first option to stake a claim as Strauss's successor opening with Cook.  The Compton vs Root discussion is an intriguing one. (Far more than analysing every detail of KP's body language and how he relates to his team mates)

The difficult thing is that neither have really had the chance to impress yet, because they've had to bat in the mornings of the games and that has been far harder conditions, (at least so the stats say) both games have been in Mumbai.

Here's a quick breakdown.

Averages by session.

Morning 27.73

Afternoon 68.50

Evening 81.17

I had to make a few guesses on how many overs were bowled/session. 

But the strike rate (Balls/wickets)

Morning 44.80

Afternoon 109.50

Evening 79.00

and Run Rates. (Runs/Over)

Morning 3.71

Afternoon 3.64

Evening 6.18

These reveal that batsmen have struggled in the mornings, Batted with care accumulating in the afternoons and had some fun in the evenings.  All of which works well for lower order players.  With 3/4 inns starting first thing in the mornings.

This is reflected in the runs/batting position. (including opposition)

1. 55.75
2. 10
3. 35.5
4. 25
5. 40
6. 105.67
7. 65
8. 85
9. 15.5
10. 9.5
11. none dismissed.

With the exception of Cook's solid ton, this shows that the middle and lower order has been having fun, whilst the top order has struggled.  That seems to be largely due to conditions, although the spread of wickets doesn't tell me whether that's related to helpful conditions for the seamers or the use of the new ball. 

So the questions this raises for the test series are.

Which batting line-up will this suit? 

India have amazing openers, but out of form. They have a blend of phenomenal experience and new developping talent and a very dangerous keeper-batsman lower down the order.

England have 1 amazing opener, (of a totally different style) a bit more balance of experience, a legend at 4 and a very dangerours keeper batsman. - So no hints of which team this favours.

Who should play at 6 for England? - Patel, Morgan and Bairstow have all had the chance and conditions to shine and have done so.  Patel for me has been helped the most by this, but I don't think his batting or bowling is test class. (But I've been wrong about players stepping up to test cricket before; Collingwood, Bresnan & Bairstow to name a few) 

The conditions have raised the question of whether we can play 2 of those and push Trott up to open, Eng management have ruled that out, although Trott has practically been opening in the past couple of years with Strauss (& Cook occasionally) falling early regularly.  

The one thing it shows is that these games, transitioning from smash & Grab T20s to proper cricket and different conditions are essential and we've got a lot more to learn in the remaining warm up games before things get going in Ahmedabad.

England top Order

The surprising, sad, but dignified departure of Strauss yesterday, the ongoing uncertainty about KP and the arrival of some exciting young batting talent in English Cricket, makes the selectors job for the top order for the India series quite a challenge, juggling multiple factors.

Which series in the next 2 years do we prioritise?

How do we blend experience with young fresh talent.  Do we have too many new players at once? Can we bat players out of position? How much of a priority are Left-hand, Right-hand combinations?

Cook, Bell and Trott and inked into the team. Where exactly they are placed in the batting order is less obvious.

KP would be an obvious choice if relationships are resolved.

Bairstow has done enough to put himself at the top of the list, he was excellent at Lords, has great strokeplay but showed great resilience, maturity and has clearly managed to listen, learn and develop in just one summer when his shortcomings against the short-ball were highlighted.

James Taylor didn't get a big innings in his first 2 tests, but was unfortunate to be run out at Lords and was facing a high quality attack in a tough series.  He looks every inch an International cricketer (even if he's a few inches shorter than most and a huge 15inches shorter than Finn!)

Ravi and Morgan, have both been tried and tried, decent OneDay players, if the cupboard was bare of young talent, they'd still be persisted with, like we had to with some players in the 80s & 90s. But both will have to really score a lot of first Class runs to come back into the test side.

Of the rest, the untried players I've noted; Root and Compton look to be the other exciting talents in county cricket.  I think its a year or two early for Root, but Compton must be worth considering.

Matt Prior came out top scorer in the SA series, he showed real determination when the chips were down and I still believe we can play him at 6 and Bres at 7, giving space for Swann & 3 quicks. (that's another selection dilema with Finn showing class and Onions being brilliant for Durham)

That's the cast-list.  But what about the batting order?

We've had a wonderful structure of solid cautious players followed by strokeplayers.  That looks disrupted now.  Does Taylor open with Cook, keeping Trott and 3?

I guess until they've resolved the KP question, the batting order can't quite settle down.

My choice for the India series is as follows;

Cook

Taylor

Trott

Bell

Bairstow

Prior

(giving space for Bres as an extra bowler, given the conditions)

What do you think?

 

Eng vs SA - too close to call? Two identical teams?

Number 1 vs number 2. Test cricket Showdown between 2 alarmingly similar teams.

in brief.

Opening Leftie who burst onto the scene young and continues to accumulate lots of runs.

Grafter at 3, who sticks around and has impressed from the start of his career.

At.no.4 one of the best players ever to wear his nation's shirt

at 5. a huge talent, with lots of strokes who hasn't quite converted brilliance to dominance at the top of the world game.

A young pretender, early promise but flattered and frustrated.

A bowling attack of a worldclass swing bowler, a tall skinny quick & a workman seamer who has an amazing record in his early career.

 

Which of those teams have I just described? - The answer is both. 

England won day 1 of this hugely significant series, but there's a lot to say on paper that this series should be tight, fascinating and hard work for both sides.

Lets get the criticism out of the way first, this should be a 5 match series. Thats been acknowledged & hopefully heard. 

The cricket following community has spoken loudly on this, but ticket sales will have to match our ideals for us to be heard. (& I confess, I went to the ODI vs the Aussies at Old Trafford and enjoyed it)

 

The striking thing about this series which I note is the similarity between the teams.

I recently went through the teams section by section with a South African friend and we called it a dead-heat, when doing this the similarity became obvious.

 

Openers. 

Cook & Strauss vs Smith & Peterson.

 

Look past the fact that Strauss & Smith are skippers, the similarity is Cook & Smith.

Lefties, accumulators of big scores from early in life, consistent performers, challenging Tendulkar's age records for all milestones. Play within their repertoire, lethal on the legs, mature, concentrate, very build big innings.

 

Strauss & Peterson are more different, & I don't know enough about Alviro to make a comparison. Strauss has more experience and shades it.

 

I'd give the points to England on openers.1.5-0.5

 

Top Middle order

 

At 3. Would Trott have dislodged Amla if he'd chosen to stay a Saffer? We will never know. My South African friend had this down as Amla, I chose Trott. (but Hashim had gone to my friend’s school, so hardly objective) Both grafters, both hugely successful in recent years. Both solid and slightly dull, hard to dislodge & hard to watch.  Trott’s career average is 5 runs more, so he shades it.

 

At 4. Again the question of nationality raises its head.  KP’s parody twitter account claimed yesterday that if he’d chosen SA, Kallis would have had to retire.  In reality Kallis & Sachin are is the only no.4s in the world who KP would have had to shift for.  KP and JK would both make it into any world test side.  At the end of the day you’d have to give it to Kallis. 12,379 runs at nearly 57 and 42 tons and he can bowl really useful, cunning medium pace.

 

I’d say the top middle order is very finely balanced - Maybe SA shade it to take us to 2-2

 

Lower Middle order.

 

Had Boucher’s horrible accident not happened then the SA lower middle order would look very different (& possibly weaker, given how tidily ABdV kept wicket yesterday.

 

Bell & ABdV are very similar. Both attractive to watch strokeplayers, disappointing conversion rates into hundreds. Masses of talent and always knocking on the door of greatness but not quite settling there.

 

Name	Matches	Runs	Ave	Tons	50s
Bell	78	5393	47.72	13	32
ABdV	75	5457	49.16	13	29

 

 

That’s close!

WIth ABdV keeping wicket, I don’t think he’ll score so many runs in this series. (if we look at Sangakarra’s stats, keeping wicket damages your batting.)

 

So we look on to the talented youngsters Bopara and Duminy.

Both have flattered and frustrated, shown talent and promise and then faded

 

 

Name	Matches	Runs	Ave	Tons	50s
Bopara	13	552	34.56	3	0
Duminy	14	654	34.42	2	3

 

 

So that’s got to be a dead heat!.

 

So we look on at the other players in this group. Prior and Rudolph.

Prior’s average is 42.31 and Rudolph’s is 36.46. So that’s another shade for England. To give slight balance Prior as keeper has a stack of Not Outs, Rudolph has had to open a fair amount, so that impacts his average. But given what I said above about keeping wicket, I’d say this section of the batting order takes us to England 4-3.

 

The Bowlers.

If you think the batting line ups are similar, then the parallels between the bowling line ups are extraordinary.

 

An experienced, mid-height, world class fast-medium seamer to lead the attack.

A tall, skinny bowl on a length at pace bowler who on his day can be devastating.

A workman-like, more dangerous than he’d seem stocky seamer, who bowls constantly in the right areas and picks up a goo number of wickets.

 

That’s a description of both attacks.  Put Jimmy A & Dale Steyn next to each other, Broad and Morkel and Bres next to Philander, then you see two identically balanced attacks. 

 

So is there enough difference to give one side the edge?

Steyn is currently ahead of Jimmy in the world rankings and Jimmy’s early start to his career (with less success than recent years) means Steyn’s average is better.

I’d rate Broad just above Morkel.

Philander has had an amazing start to his career, he didn’t look very dangerous yesterday and some think he’s more workmanlike than I’d realise.  Bres has the amazing record in his test career of played 14, Won 13 & drawn 1 (due to bad weather) Philander probably gets the nod though.

So that gives SA a points advantage here on balance of a point. 

Taking us to 5-5.

 

The Spinners. 

I think this is where England snatch the victory and the difference.  SA have struggled to find a class spinner for some time.  That tall blonde bloke they brought on the last tour looked like a decent first class player lucky to find a slot in the test team. (Ala Ashley Giles - although both would be inked in for years in the current Aussie side!)

Let’s keep it simple, Swann is a better bowler than Tahir and he’ll take more wickets in this series.  Tahir takes most of his wickets with googlies, England have focussed on playing much harder spinners this winter and grown in that. 

So England take a lead 6-5.

 

Bonus point for tail-end batting.

One other area where England excel is batting right down the order.  Bresnan, Broad and Swann all have batting averages over 20. (Bres is above 40) none of the SA tail enders have that. So that’s got to be worth an extra point.

 

Giving us a final score of England 7 - 5 SA.

 

Very, very similar teams.  England have home advantage, but our conditions suit them as well as us.  On paper we’ll shade it, but what will happen on the pitch?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Backfiring blog - fresh predictions

Well, yesterday's blog seems pretty ironic now.  Since I wrote about top batsmen drying up in scoring centuries. We've had 159* from Kallis, (which he could develop further today) Ponting with 134 and Clarke on 251* plus Peterson scoring a ton and Hussey well set on 55*.

Given that Ponting, Clarke, Hussey & Kallis make up 4 members of my list of top 5 least favourite batsmen, my reflections and predictions yesterday have really backfired!

So given that track record, along with the numerous times my attempts at cricketting Nostradamus have been about as accurate as predictive text on my iPhone.  Here's a few more predictions I want to backfire in 2012.

Strauss' poor form to the early swining ball to become too much, he's removed from the England team, the team loses its quality captain, they appoint Cook too early and the pressure damages his batting irreperably and we slip backwards and our time as world number 1 is seen as a brief anomaly.

Pakistan's murky behind the scenes infrastructure gets murkier, their team falls apart again and the tabloids keep asking 'Is this the end of cricket'.

The ICC believe that ODIs will bring the game to more people and so decide all the 7 match series after gruelling, captivating test series are expanded to 9 games between nation's B teams, and therefore 1 test is dropped from each series.

Aussies continue their rise in form.

Tendulkar never gets this 100th 100 and the cricketting world never stops talking about it and uses it as a reason to parallel him with Bradman's final innings.  Better still he gets out in the 90s in his final international innings.

Jonathan Trott is diagnosed with OCD and decides he needs to mark his guard twice between each delivery.

Sehwag decides that 30 is the new 300 and keeps playing cameos and not moving his feet.

Those are my new predictions for 2012.  Here's to hoping they're as accurate as yesterdays.

What are yours?

What's ahead for 2012

2012 has begun in a surprising way for Test cricket.  

A few hours into the new year and India have been skittled out for a sub-200 score by a young Aussie attack, Ponting is batting assuredly.  Smith is out early against SL and his team ended 2011 badly against them.  So my predictions for these two series are by no means accurate.

The key new trends seem to be green tops and increased disdain for ODIs.

Green tops are good for test cricket.  They seem to end the matches within 400 overs, so there's almost a guaranteed result and even a bit of slack in the system for rain or the dreaded (& endlessly frustrating) bad light. (an ICC directive on common sense for umpires seems to be necessary)  In a world where Graeme Swann is the top spin bowler and India, Sri Lanka and Australia are struggling to replace Kumble, (Harbijhan out of favour) Warne and Kumble pitches are being prepared to suit quicks.  

My friend Rohan Kallicharan (@ro_jito) argues that the best batsmen are the best performers on green tops.  I agree with him, but the concern is that the top stars in test cricket need to adjust and knuckle down in order to re-proove their worth.  On the very shallow measurement of recent form.  Kallis, Smith, Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman, Tendulkar, Jayawardene & Hussey have all seen a dip in form.  (if you take a list of all their innings since their last ton - the number reaches 100!)

[talking of 100s & 100s Apparently Tendulkar is close to his 100th international hundred, but I'm not sure anyone has noticed. we're all too focussed on the race between Dravid and Ponting to 100 scores of 50+ in tests! - a race which Ponting looks poised to win, being 44NO overnight]

Taking those 100 innings since a 100:

29 of those have been 50+  So that's a big gap.  Interesting enough though if you take all the world's top batsmen's career stats, (apart from Chris Gayle, Strauss & Clarke) their average rate is >30% for scoring 50s. (Ian Bell is top with nearly 38%)

So the overall impression is that the world's best batsmen are struggling at the moment, we're in a lean period for run scoring by the big boys.  I think that's in part due to green tops, pitches are hugely important in test cricket.  There is the emergence of some good new bowlers too, but time will tell how good they are.

Will there be some sort of strike action from union of the world's best batsmen?

The other key subjects looming ahead for me in 2012 are universal use of DRS (India just get over yourselves and accept it) and the demise of ODIs.  I think ODIs need phasing out, but one tweeter who responded to my question on this wrote;

reduce ODIs to 3 per bilateral series top 10 ODI play each other home&away in 3 match series over 4 years top 8 qualify 4 WC [@TimTim1981]

That makes a lot of sense to me.  Trim them down and make each one count again, like they did in the old days when they were exciting.

 

The other key question I have about 2012, is how this new look Pakistan team fare against better sides? - They were in disarray after destruction by England in 2009 and then the spot-fixing scandal removed their best 3 players. Yet they seem to be bouncing back.