Whatever happens, what a match.
I think I’d prefer to be backing England, but I wouldn’t like to be betting on the match.
Plenty of swings.
Absolutely.
At the rate we’re scoring, there might be time to fly Collingwood out and substitute him for the vomiting Trott. You can do subs in cricket, right?
One things for sure, Broad and Swann won’t try to get there in singles. I firmly predict that will be a good thing for one team or the other.
Oh, for one good partnership…
Also, I think the groundsman in Abu Dhabi should get a pat on the back. The wickets have been great in giving everyone a chance.
Yes, results pitches are good for the game, and there has been nothing unfair about this one. It’s helped the spinners, but hasn’t been a minefield.
56/5 now, Strauss gone for 32, and Trott makes an appearance.
Given his stomach upset, Trott is a good name.
Rehman takes another two wickets in an over, 71/7 with 74 still needed. Time to slog and hope. They have to try and knock these spinners off their length.
Swann gone. Now you see why I rarely punt.
Well England claimed to be Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. They were really Jimmy Ellis.
To the ECB. Kindly send that oversized lollypop to Islamabad by registered post. C/O Pak High Commission… Knightsbridge.
India lost. We beat England. Now if the entire Australian team can pull a hamstring, it will have been the perfect day.
I know you are excited for your team AK84 and it was a great series win, but in the end nothing in the rankings changes. I suspect India will continue to freefall and the other sides will get closer to England.
The results of the last few weeks certainly make any form against India seem not as strong as first impression.
And you also left out of your equation RSA, who are a strong side.
One factor that must be uncomfortable for most of the top teams is number of aging players in the ranks.
And that’s that, we got exactly half way to our target. Great job by Pakistan, even when Cook and Trott were comfortable together I knew their first innings might be enough. Their scores on 257 and and 214 sound pretty poor, but were mostly a result of the quality of our bowling rather than bad batting. I just hope our bowling and fielding standards don’t suffer in the next text after this defeat.
Three of our batsmen, Strauss, KP and Bell, have a huge problem against quality spin bowling. It’s tough for Morgan, he’s been out injured, but he’s never shown he’s really a test player. As Vaughan has just pointed out on TMS, we also lost the one day series in India 5-0, and lost world cup matches to Bangladesh and Ireland over there. Our record in asia over the last decade is terrible. Ignoring Bangladesh, since winning back-to-back series in Pakistan and Sri Lanka under Hussein, we’ve won one test match, against India.
What I said about England or at least their batting having a glass jaw is once again in sharp relief. They are have been spoiled I(as Nasser Hussain was saying) facing mediocre bowling and for the first time they are facing good bowler and the Cooks and KP’s show their vulnerabilities.
Incidentally, while Pakistan bowled superbly and agressivly, they really had no choice in the fourth innings, they had to attack. The English did the opposite of what they did in the first test, which is withdraw into their shells. The target was less than 150. They should have gone in guns blazing, put pressure on Pakistan and if they had done that, it would have been all she wrote. Furthermore, England twice let Pakistan get away, first when they were 170/2 in the first innings and second when they had Pakistan at 50/4. If it had been the Winsdies or the Oz of the Waugh and early Ponting, era, they would have hammered Pakistan from positions like that, not le them come back.
Evidently if England get white washed and RSA win their next series, the Proteas are rhe new top dogs. And about time for someone to explain how exactly the ICC rankings work.
The problem was, the batsmen all got out playing shots in the first test. The only batsmen to prosper up to that point (Prior, Trott, Cook) had done so by playing themselves in. What message does the coach give them in that situation? He can’t say “be patient, but whack them out of the park”. The collapse was a hangover from the last test. It’s all about shot selection at the end of the day. If they can play a few big shots against the spinners and get the field spread it makes it much easier to survive and knock the singles around.
There is some truth in that. However, they have also made decent bowlers look like chumps, and have all survived good spells in the past. Bell’s revival as a player began with a couple of crucial innings against a Steyn-led South African attack. Hilfenhaus and Siddle are now having a lot of success. They may have improved, but I doubt they have grown a foot since England faced them. They are good, not great, batsmen, with different strengths and weaknesses. In recent times they have fed off of each others success, and right now the reverse is happening.
Cook and Trott are have good technique and great powers of concentration. However, they don’t dominate attacks, they grind them down. We saw the limitations of that approach in the first innings, where Pakistan were able to deploy two good spinners on a pitch doing a bit. It’s much easier to wear down seam bowlers than spinners, and they never did anything to knock the spinners off their lengths. They were able to keep working away to their plans, and were eventually rewarded. It was a good partnership, but never likely to become a huge one. Cook may also have a problem with the fastest bowlers, I’ve seen him done for pace when well set a few times.
KP and Bell do get after attacks, but struggle to adapt their games. We’ve seen this in the past with KP, where he has got out over and over to left arm spinners, even when he has been playing everyone else well. Bell’s inability to pick Ajmal seems to have killed his confidence, and he’s not playing naturally against the other bowlers. Murali once got him out 5 times in 6 innings, but he still averaged over 40 in that series as he was able to survive for a while against him while still scoring against the rest.
I’m now revising my expectations for the coming year downwards. I didn’t expect it to be an easy ride, but hoped we’d have enough to edge past Pakistan and a Murali-less Sri Lanka.
South Africa are a strong side, but they haven’t won many tests and series recently. They have drawn two and lost one of their recent home series, that’s not the form of a no.1 team. The lack of a good spinner is a major handicap to them.
Alka Seltzer, I note your comments about how the team did well aginst a Siddle and Hilfenhous attack. I can’t disagree with what you said, and I am not relying too much on a series victory over a pretty ordinary India.
However, I think Australia has a better bowling attack now. Hilfenhaus was carrying injuries in the last series against England and had to find form in the Shield. The erratic Johnson has gone and the bowling unit seems to be performing well under Craig mcDermott. He is getting a lot of credit. Also, we seem to have a lot of emerging talent with Pattinson and Cummins.
So factor in all that and it will be an intriguing next 12 months or two years. I believe India don’t play Tests away for two years now so they could rise in the rankings (falsely in my view- the ratings should be weighted a lot differently).
It would be great to see the series in England next year.
Re the rankings should be based upon the best 5 to 7 test results over 12 months, with wins over higher teams (and away) getting the most points. I lost any respect I had for the idea when in 2002 the Australians lost the number 1 ranking to S Africa, after mauling them in two seperate series. It was like the time when Sampras lost the number 1 ranking to Agassi, after beating him in the Wimbledon final. Agassi at least had the decency to win the next two Grand Slams.
Completely agree. Other than the occasional burst of brilliance, Johnson became a liability, and dragged the whole attack down with him. The lack of a decent spinner also hurt, England were facing half an attack most of the time. Under those conditions, Siddle and Hilfenhaus struggled. What England have done over the last 18 months, and Australia and Pakistan are now doing, is fielding a complete attack, able to keep the pressure on at both ends.
Yes, that was silly. Right now, there are several teams capable of beating each other. It makes for interesting cricket, we’ll see how it pans out over the next year or two.
I totally agree that the test rankings are a bit of a joke. Personally I just ignore them. I also agree that we’re enjoying one of the best seasons I can remember with lots of resultsand some compelling matches.
I think I have just about calmed down now.
Firstly, congrats to Pakistan. A couple of really good victories - absolutely justified given their performances, particularly with the ball and in the field.
I agree with all pointing out that this is a really great time for Test Match cricket - we’ve probably had 10-15 really good to great Test matches over the last 12-18 months and some really tight series as a result. With the young players coming into the game (particularly in the bowling ranks of Australia and South Africa) and many old stalwarts nearing retirement, the game is in a really exciting place with the potential for a lot of flux. It makes me feel quite positive about the state of the longest form of the game. Now we just need to encourage people to turn up - how can the game be dying when the product is as good as it has been in years?
Not totally convinced about England being exposed by good bowling. Of course, the bowling has been good and its effect should not be minimised. My view is that it’s a combination of that and a lack of a plan to deal with conditions that don’t suit the batsmen. England have dominated teams but they have not really been doing it on flat tracks (as our bowling attack has been taking wickets and forcing innings victories). What they have been doing is scoring lots on pitches that allow the ball to come onto the bat - they’ve played a lot of shots (collectively) off the back foot and are almost “passively aggressive” in accumulating totals. What I feel they lack is the ability to make shots when the ball isn’t coming onto the bat at pace, either because the pitch doesn’t allow it or the opposition won’t let them (witness their issues with Kumar from India in the series in 2011 as another example - they tried to treat him as a seamer but he was not bowling at a pace to allow the nudge and nurdle to accumulate a lot of runs). They tried to block Ajmal in innings 2 in Abu Dubai, failing to realise that they were just letting pressure build. You’ve got to try to score off spinners, particularly off good ones, not just nudge and nurdle and hope you can get away with being passive.
It’s not helping that the aggressors in England’s ranks don’t seem to have much of a clue at the minute: KP and Morgan are not in the best of nick and neither, truthfully, is Bell. In some respects, Broad and Prior have looked the best, because they have tried to score runs. Some of the top order batsmen have no plan beyond the sweep - and due to the DRS showing that you are actually out lbw most of the time if it hits the pad, it’s also a bloody risky shot if not played sensibly.
All in all, this has been a couple of good victories for Pakistan and they have a justifiable claim to being the best side on the sub continent at the minute - and they’re probably better than that too (a series between them and SA now would be a good watch). Their bowling and their planning have been excellent. They have scored enough runs to support their bowlers. They have made life difficult for England - more so than any side in a while. England had better get used to it. SA in the summer are hardly likely to be pushovers. Should be some great series coming up.
I didn’t see enough of England v Pakistan to comment on that, but I do have something to say about this:
I was contemplating going to watch day three of NZ v Zimbabwe last Saturday, but had to help a mate move house. I’m kicking myself now - for $15I could have gone and taken my kid along and watched 22 wickets fall! It’s cheaper to go to a day of any of the South African tests than it is to go to the movies! So at least in NZ it can’t be ticket prices. However, I had to look that up so maybe it’s a marketing problem.