Sitting back in our cricket clubhouse on Sunday, having just soundly “palmolived” our primary club rivals in 5 out of 5 games for the round, and with an appropriate amount of lubricant consumed, I have to say there wasn’t much appreciation of the ENG approach in their second innings. It would have barely made sense in a T20 let alone to set a target of less than 4/over with ample time when everybody prior seems to be going at closer to 6/over.
Though we weren’t factoring in the fact that the loss of play due to the absence of light meant this was only ever going to be effectively a four day Test.
Scoring quick is good at anytime and in the circumstances quite notable. But when your turn in the field to bowl a unstinting barrage of short pitched stuff as a defensive measure didn’t sit well with me. Though I guess the tactic could be described as novel.
I noted the renowned flibbertigibbet Vaughan was waxing lyrical about the ENG batting on Day1 and then vociferously complaining that such an unhelpful pitch was not appropriate for Test cricket when PAK were batting and largely returning the favour on Day2. Prat.
But I guess the positive thing is a salient point to the PAK admin and curators.
If you are going to prepare, more correctly fabricate, a section of the autobahn to play where the Plan A obtain a draw then you still can get beaten in four days. So maybe even water the surface so as you aren’t playing on a near frictionless outfield.
220x4s and 26x6s = 1,036 runs in boundaries. Enough runs to win 2 Tests.
If you want to beat BazBall, prepare a pitch which at a bare a minimum gives some encouragement to the leather flingers. See ball, hit ball not workee quite so well.
An (in)famous game in 1930 where England scored 849 in their first innings, bowled the West Indies out for 286 - and refused to enforce the follow-on (hey, it’s timeless). After 7 playing days and one rest day, with the West Indies at 408/5 in their 2nd innings in pursuit of 850 or so, the rains came, the next two days were washed out and the game was abandoned as a draw.
An even more (in)famous game in 1939 between England and South Africa, which was abandoned as a draw after 9 playing days, two rest days and one day lost to rain, because the ship taking the England team home was due to leave. The fourth innings, where England ended on 654/5 chasing 696, holds several first-class records, probably permanently.
Timeless tests did not reappear after the Second World War. There is a reason for this.
That was the consequence, but not really the intent.
Pitches were left uncovered during matches, and pitches would dry out and crack and crumble as the match progressed usually making batting more difficult by the fourth or fifth day. Or they got wet and became unplayable even dangerous once they dried sufficiently to restart. Most of the “Timeless Tests” finished before the end of the 4th day.
Curators of that time generally prepared pitches so as to be at their optimum for batting on Day1 (ergo the ancient cricketing dictum “9 times in 10 when you win the toss you bat, the 10th time you think hard about sending them in but bat anyway”) and from then they were allowed to deteriorate as conditions dictated.
They didn’t have the equipment (or the inclination) to roll a pitch to a flawlessly hard, even, lifeless road such as we saw in Rawapindi. That wasn’t curating, that was engineering.
To be fair, In the first innings there was one team going at 6.5/over and the other at 3.7. England were then backing their batsmen to score at a rate that the other team couldn’t match (which was 7.3/over in the second innings). To be fairly certain of giving themselves enough time to most likely win it, the declaration was a sound one. It was just very unusual and very aggressive. The usual approach is to make sure you can’t lose first and another 50 or so would have done that.
That isn’t the mentality of this team apparently and I’m all for it. No doubt it’ll bite them in the arse in some games but what a spectacle when it does pay off.
One of the intentions of the team in playing this way is to raise the profile of test cricket as the limited-overs game has done. So if this approach persists and prompts others to do the same we could be in for some fireworks over the next few years.
Well, you won … which absolves most of any cricketing sins.
My thinking was that if ENG hadn’t gone so tonking mad they could have scored just, if not more quickly.
But the key was that PAK was missing a session of play.
And getting Azam cheap was a cherry
The most interesting and surprising thing I took from the excellent Statsguru link @merrick posted above is that the team declaring ‘early’ (and therefore setting a relatively low target) has won on EVERY occasion. So it seems fortune really does favour the brave, in the right circumstances. I wonder if Stokes and the England camp were aware of this stat when executing their plan.
Fair suck of the sauce bottle; declaring 300 in front at tea Day4 is hardly setting a “relatively low” target. Throughout history, chasing targets of over 250 in 4th innings to win are rarely successful.
Out of 596 4th innings in Test cricket where the batting team lost 10 wickets there have been 167 times they scored more than 250 and they all lost.
Out of 632 Test matches where a team declared their 3rd innings the results are:
Wins 285 - 45%
Drawn 333 - 53%
Tied 1 - 0.2%
Lost 13 - 2%
I have no doubt that, from day 1, they had this eventuality in mind and it was cemented by Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to score quickly and It fits in absolutely with the new mindset. Why score so ridiculously quickly on a flat wicket if it is not to force a result?
Of course that decision could have been de-railed had the second innings push not succeeded but let’s just take a second to look at those figures. 7.3/over. They were batting at a very brisk 50 over pace clearly with that declaration in mind and I’m sure they had time/score figure identified that both tempted Pakistan and ensured they didn’t shut up shop, but gave England time, space and enough scoreboard figures to go on the attack
Yes, but that’s precisely my point - the stats incontrovertibly argue in favour of declaring before you reach the point that it’s impossible to lose. Whereas plenty of people (me included) thought that when England declared, they might not have enough on the board.
I can’t be bothered to look up how the points for the Test Championship are awarded, but if a win gets you more than double the points for a draw, in the long run it makes sense to risk a loss while going for a win sometimes. Just like in football (soccer) if you get 3 points for a win but just 1 point for a draw - you’d prefer a win and a loss to 2 draws. And indeed, football introduced this system precisely to discourage ‘bore draws’.
More to the point, geology is remorselss.
If you want a spinning track, you aren’t going to get it in the rockhard surface of Rawalpindi. All trying to do so will accomplish is to make the track flat once the grass is shaved off.
England were seven down with an injured Livingston and the tail and Naseem getting some reverse.
The get they made was that while the track was flat there was something in it for the bowlers and 4 Sessions might be needed to win.
Australia are 511/7d declared, with West Indies 35/1 after tea on Day 2. Australia scored at 3.7 an over, a respectable Test scoring rate which somehow now (ludicrously) feels vaguely under-cooked. Big centuries for Labuschagne and Head, and an unexpected duck for Smith. W.I had 7 bowlers, which in and of itself tells you quite a lot about the way the innings played out.
In the other match, England have largely failed to deal with a brilliant debut by legspinner* Abrar Ahmed who took the first seven wickets for 114 as England went all out for 289, a far cry from last week’s astonishing performance. They did still score at over 5 an over so the consolation is they’ve definitely got time to take wickets. The bad news is that they are arguably long on seamers (Anderson, Robinson, Wood) and short on spinners (Leach, plus Root and Jacks as part-timers). The decision to bring in Wood and stick with Pope as 'keeper rather than return Foakes to the gloves raised some eyebrows; the two proofs of this pudding will be: how many wickets Wood’s pace takes, and how many catches and stumpings Pope misses off the spinners. Here’s hoping.
*Technically legspinner, but he bowls a lot of googlies, plus a carrom ball, plus some that defy categorisation and the general picture is that while he knows exactly where the ball is going and what it’s going to do when it gets there, not many other people do.
It was supposed to be a seaming wicket, but they did a panicked grass shave last night when Naseem withdrew. Its going o be foggy all 5 days, being Punjab in December, so seamers might have something to go on.
Day finishes a little early due to the aforementioned fogginess, with Pakistan on 107/2 and going along at 3.8 an over. Probably their day on balance but they still have 190 or so to get for parity so some work to do tomorrow. England setting very aggressive fields, which means that there are big gaps to score boundaries from. Leach, Root and Jacks have bowled 22 overs; Anderson and Wood 6, Robinson 0. If we can’t use our seamers more, we’re likely going to suffer.
I mean, I think they have to in any case. I’d say “alongside a spinner holding up an end” but a) our spinners can’t hold up an end and b) they won’t even try under the new approach which is much, much more focused on taking wickets than it is on restricting scoring.
I imagine we’ll give them an early spell tomorrow anyhow, and probably give Robinson a look in but I wouldn’t hang around for too long waiting for the optimal conditions for them. I love the approach that says we go all out to take wickets but if that isn’t happening, it’ll be interesting to see if the fallback is “start bowling dry” or just “try harder to take wickets and back ourselves to score more than we let them get away with”.
Just got up and checked the score. Pakistan went from 142/2 to 202 all out, losing 8 wickets in an extended session, to give England an unlikely but vital 79 run lead. A similar 300 run second innings will be difficult for Pakistan to overcome!
Another good day for England. Even batting “normally” and losing a couple of silly wickets they end up 202-5, scoring at 4 an over and now with a lead of 280.
anything approaching 350 on this wicket looks to be a challenge too far.
I don’t expect any challenging declaration this time though. There is plenty of time so unless the Pakistan spinners intervene I’d expect England to bat to the end