England vs India Test Series

The Game Room
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Just to start with praise for Rashid - he’s a bloody good one day bowler and I’d rather have him on our side than not accordingly. I’m not convinced those economy rate figures over the course of the series tell the whole story though. Once you get into the specifics of the game and you see how and when he was used, I think my scepticism of him is justified.

For example: in Test 4, he went at 2.7 in the first innings and 3 in the second. These seem like good figures on their face. But in the first innings, he bowled the bulk of his overs at the tail (who arguably shouldn’t be hammering him all over the place) and in the second, his econ of 3 represents the joint worst (along with Jimmy) of all the bowlers on his side, in a run chase that was definitely achievable. Meanwhile Mo is offering control and ragging it square, so he effectively became unusable. In the 5th Test, you can make a good case he won the game for England by getting the two centurions - but he got at least one of them in the way that he gets his one day wickets (i.e. slogged to the boundary) and went at 4 an over throughout the innings. As much as he might have won them the game, he was also part of the reason why it got a lot closer than it perhaps should have done.

Some of this is “not his fault”. As I mentioned, if his top order actually put up some bloody runs once in a while, you can afford to try and buy wickets and use him as a strike bowler, rather than a controlling option. Without this though, he becomes a luxury England can ill afford. A better balanced side would likely make him look much better.

I realise that we’ve been spoiled a little in the recent past. Swann was a poor man’s Warne - inasmuch as he was capable of both attacking and offering control - which was a major reason why England were pretty successful with him in the side. I’m probably asking for the moon on a stick, but we need spinners who offer control and attack. I don’t think Rashid is one of those. Too many long hops and full tosses. Leach, at county level, seems to be of this ilk and I thought he was a little unlucky to get injured after making his debut in NZ, which I thought looked quite encouraging.

I am a little biased on Pope - as a member at Surrey I have seen him come through the ranks over the last couple of years and consequently rate him highly. Even still, I think he’s been a little unfortunate. He spent most of his time at Surrey batting at 6 and was asked to come in and bat 4 in a team routinely sending him out in the first 10 overs, which is not his role - at least not now. He was teed up for failure in my view. He’ll come again - he’s extremely talented, a bedrock of this season’s county championship winning side and only 20 - but with Root putting his foot down and moving back down to 4, plus the huge number of bats we have that can play between 5-8, he won’t be getting back into the side any time soon, I would say, especially since his dropping, he’s gone back to Surrey and started playing 4 all the time (in an effort to get him the experience and build him up for a role higher up the order - of course, the captain is at 4 now, so good luck with that).

Livingstone is an odd one. They took him on tour to NZ and then didn’t play him and he’s not even been mentioned since. I wonder whether they just didn’t like the look of him, spotted a glaring flaw, or he was a difficult personality. Lancashire have struggled this season, and he has too, but what little I have seen of him, he looks decent. England can’t afford to jettison players willy nilly in their top order at the moment - I’d hope he’s still on the radar.

I think India’s acclimatisation process was pretty woeful and if they’d prepared properly, they might well have beaten us. Some of this is the calendar’s fault, some of it is their board’s fault for not doing more (and reducing the one warm up game they did have by a day) but they’re not the only ones. England’s time in country around some of their tours is limited, as are many other countries’, and I think it’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to win away from home. Boards would rather have more T20s and ODIs to fill the coffers, than the touring team playing up country to put on a good show in the Tests.

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Not to invalidate your point, but this is a little unfair - England had such a big lead in that final innings of the series that he could afford to bowl in this way, as that was the right way to win the game. India didn’t get all that close - we were always going to ship a few runs in the second 40 overs of their innings, but we were safe in the knowledge that the new ball was coming in plenty of time to mop up the last four wickets (though in fact, didn’t Root delay the new ball until the partnership was broken? Smart captaincy, that - avoided the new ball being smashed around the park by two set batsmen - and he had the bowler to make the tactic worthwhile, in Rashid). Even if India had got to 400 before being all out, I think the takeaway from that would be a well-judged declaration rather than “ooh, that was close, better wait until we are 500 ahead next time”, as the latter thinking will cost you far more wins than losses. Even 464 looked pretty conservative at the time, though Root has form of course and clearly doesn’t want a second declaration-induced loss on his record.

Having said all that, your general point that Rashid is at his best when the top order actually make runs is well made, and given the latter isn’t happening he does become a luxury - which is a bit unfair on him. Remember he got a few good runs with the bat, as well. On the sub-continent we are going to need to take 3 spinners and it seems hard to make a case for him not being one of them.

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All good points I think but to be honest, I’m not really seeing any test team at the moment really standing out home and away. Just looking over the last couple of years for series results and the theme emerges pretty clearly. All test teams are struggling away from home.

England have their limitations for sure but I really don’t know how to judge their struggles in comparison to all the other test playing nations. Was our series loss in India that much worse than their series loss here? Too many variables of course (as there always is…hell, it’s cricket) but I suppose what it does do is leave the field pretty pretty open for any of the big guns to step forward. If any of them do start to boss a series away from home their elevation to no.1 status is assured.

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Maybe I am a bit harsh - and I brought up the example so I should probably defend it - but before I do, and noting that you essentially wind up agreeing with me in your second paragraph, it’s worth saying how little Rashid bowled in the Indian chases at Edgbaston and Southampton, both of which were more manageable than the Oval chase. It seems pretty clear that everyone knows what the book on Rashid is, even his captain, and he’s not going to get used in those sort of tight chases because of his tendency to lift the pressure. At the moment, at Test level, he’s a luxury player given the balance elsewhere in the side. To always be in it, he has to tighten up.

On paper, the chase at The Oval was straightforward and England had plenty of runs in hand. I think the faces on the field at the time and the interviews afterwards tell a different story. Root, Anderson and Ali (I think) all confessed to being a little worried about the way Rahul and Pant were going. They shouldn’t be more conservative with their declarations, I’d agree. Nevertheless, they declared in attacking fashion against the Windies last year and got beaten and, with Rashid going at the rate he was, he cannot have been far off being removed from the attack before he took those wickets, in favour of hiding the ball outside off stump and trying to settle for the draw. So yes, “they were never going to get it” but I’m not sure the players in the middle were thinking like that - which makes it closer than it looked in my book.

They have to take 3 spinners on tour to SL (and possibly WI too - their wickets have been slower and lower than when their pace attack was in their pomp) but I cannot see them playing three in the same side. We’re already carrying 6 bowlers in the latest line up, so adding one on top and dropping a batsmen will leave not enough overs to credibly go around and I can’t see who of Anderson, Broad (leaders of the attack), Curran (Player of the Series v India, critical lower order runs, roughs up both sides of the wicket by being left arm), Stokes (rightly or wrongly, a talisman), Ali (trying to fill the void at 3) or Rashid (leg spin variety) gets dropped, absent injury, for the 1st Test. They’ve just won 4-1 - they’ll try and retain as many of the side as possible I would think.

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Well, it depends what you mean by worse.

In terms of performatively worse: England drew the first Test and then got smashed in the remainder. They posted two of only 6 scores of 400 or more that resulted in an innings defeat, including the world record 1st innings score to then go down by an innings (revealing them to be short with the bat and unable to take wickets or contain the scoring rate with the ball). By contrast, India were credibly in two of the games that they lost and smashed us in the one that they won. Seems like they did better than we did.

Alternatively, if by worse you mean, it’s psychologically worse, maybe this was a worse defeat. Given the above, India could have won this series and didn’t. By that reading of the meaning of worse, it might well have been worse. After all, England never looked like winning the last series in India and essentially performed at expectations.

I look around world cricket and I see lots of good bowling attacks (or I see bowling attacks feasting on batsmen that are not Test match quality - I think there’s only 5 or 6 active batsmen averaging 50+ right now - go back 10 years and there were many more). The first side that puts together 2 or 3 batsmen that know what they’re doing in Test match cricket will start winning away from home, as their bowlers are likely to come to the party. India and Australia are likely closer than anyone else, simply because they have Kohli and Smith respectively. 2 more decent players to go alongside them and it should start slotting into place if they can a) keep the bowlers fit and b) formulate and execute good plans in the field to use them appropriately.

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I think we’re largely in violent agreement, but:

I haven’t seen said interviews so not in the best position to comment, but I suspect a bit of magnanimity in victory - it’s probably even part of their media training these days. Conversely, if they had lost they might have said things like “we bowled enough good balls to get them out but luck wasn’t with us today”, or some such. I mean yes, Rahul and Pant were hitting extremely well in the middle session, but to get to the target they would have had to have upped the rate significantly with the new ball. Certainly the odds of a draw tumbled in that session but they were never looking like better than 5/1 to actually win it.

I suspect a bit of psychological weakness on the part of the England team plays a part there. Unlike when they were on their unbeaten run a couple of years ago, they now look a bit fragile - not surprising considering their batting and fielding (the bowling has often rescued them). I think Root and the coaching staff (and indeed all the players) deserve credit for motivating them sufficiently for the fifth test, after all, 3-2 would still have been a good result even at home. England have, historically, very rarely been able to keep their boot on the throat of teams having achieved a winning position in a series, the exception being 5-0 against Australia - probably because it was Australia, who have of course done the same to us many times. So this last victory could be very important psychologically. But until it was achieved, of course there were doubts. Of course, I’m an incorrigible optimist and following from afar, always felt the new ball would do for them in the end. Maybe next time, the players will believe that, too.

Agreed, what I was saying was that you (rightly) have some reservations about Rashid, but if you are going to play 2 spinners, who replaces him? The solution is to restore balance to the side by sorting out the top order (easier said than done, of course), so that Rashid becomes an affordable luxury.

My original point was not that you would play 3 spinners, but that of 3 spinners in the squad, there certainly aren’t 2 others who would push Rashid out.

Let’s not forget the amusing fact that Australia pretty much had this before the Warner/Smith shenanigans :).

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I think it’s hard to be sure because of the extreme home-field advantage we’ve been seeing in Test cricket the last few years. For all their batting issues, England’s biggest problem in both India and Australia was that the bowling was toothless. If your bowlers are getting wickets but your batsmen aren’t getting runs, you can always hope that one of yours has a good day or some of theirs have a bad one. If your bowlers can’t take 20 wickets, then the best you can hope for is a draw - and batting out 4-5 sessions to save the game has never been easy.

I don’t think that’s gone away - which is why Rashid is important. I can’t see Moeen bowling a side out even on a turning pitch in India or Sr Lanka and the side is overstocked in the sort of fast-medium seam/swing bowlers who infamously turn into pie-throwers when the pitch isn’t seaming and the ball isn’t swinging.

India, by contrast have a more-than-decent bowling unit for seam/swing-friendly conditions (not sure if the Indian seamers will be any more effective than the England ones in Australia, though - I suspect Ishant/Bumrah/Shami would like to take some of the English pitches with them, or at least a box of Dukes balls). Their problem has been that their batsmen can’t get enough runs when the ball is moving around. They can play long innings - in India. They can bat in tricky conditions - in India. If necessary, their lower-middle order can bail them out from 150/5 - in India. It’s not that they can’t handle good bowling attacks (their home record over the last 10 years is something like W35 D13 L4, and they haven’t done it just by skittling the opposition in dust bowls), it’s that they can’t handle them in unfamiliar conditions.

So have we just seen two very good seam attacks in favourable conditions - or a bunch of batsmen with faulty techniques?

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yes! :smiley: