That is a great stat! I confidently predict that the reverse has never happened, and will never happen. I wonder what the closest to it is (i.e. greatest positive difference between most wickets taken by spin in first innings and pace in second innings)?
It could. Imagine a situation where a team bats through the pace bowlers and then loses all their wickets to spin and then, in the second innings, collapses in a session to the pacers before the spinners can even get on. I mean, it’s not likely, but I don’t think it’s really much less likely than the reverse.
Can I take a little from Column A and a little from Column B? From what I saw, Bess and Leach did bowl better this time around, and particularly Leach produced some genuinely dangerous balls, but the Sri Lankans played into their hands with some over-ambitious shot selection.
Take the Mathews wicket - it turned a good way, but why was Mathews, with the score at 37-3, aiming a big sweep at one well outside off stump?
A lot happening:
Cricket Australia pulling out of the test series in South Africa due to Covid concerns means that NZ have qualified for the World Test Championship final, which I think is great news to be honest. Forget about the vagaries of the competition (and there have been many given Covid) and the NZ struggles away from home, it’s decent that the India/Australia/England axis was broken up.
Australia can still qualify given a few different permutations of results between England and India, but given the expectation that there will be little to no rain, most of those perms seem unlikely (like England winning 1-0 or similar). Practically, they’re probably going to need England to somehow draw 2-2. I can’t see it. It’s probably going to be an India-NZ final. It was due to be at Lord’s but seems like it’s going to go to the Rose Bowl, so they can bubble the teams in the hotel at the ground. Maybe fans will be allowed in by that point - if so, I may try for tickets and see if I can buy a Kiwi flag or make a “Can Jacinda be our PM?” banner - but it’s more likely to be a behind closed doors affair I suspect.
India’s win in Australia was one for the ages. They’re going to have a stronger team for the England series and I imagine Kohli will have the bit between his teeth, given he missed most of the Australia series - and certainly the most successful bits of it (maybe the bits that were successful were related to his not captaining? Just a thought). There’s been a bit of chat around the pundits up here that England will get a Test off India. I don’t see it personally but would like to be proved wrong. It’s on Free To Air TV for the first time since 2005 too, so just in time for people who never watch cricket to see England get thumped.
Pakistan and South Africa are having a series too in Pakistan, which is great stuff, and hopefully more fuel to the other nations getting their act together and going for full tours out there. In truth, South Africa look brittle, as bad as their batting has been for some time in my view, and their bowlers are having to work very hard to keep them in the game. Shaheen continues to develop for Pakistan, he’s likely to be damn dangerous to everyone in the next couple of years.
Bangladesh also have a series going with the West Indies and look in decent enough touch. West Indies aren’t the best of travellers right now. Bangladesh probably going to win this series going away, I suspect.
Plus the BBL is finally finishing after it started in the Triassic era and there’s some random T10 competition going on in Abu Dhabi where, in one match, a team put up 162 in 10 overs, which is both some going and perhaps an indication of the gulf in class between some of the cricketers involved with bat and ball.
Amazing how busy it is when basically only Australia and NZ can have crowds.
This is my worry. Our spin bowling is simply not going to trouble the Indian batsmen and whilst our own batting doesn’t look as fragile as it once did, it’s not ‘beat India in India’ strong.
We could take a test off India - they are not impregnable, their own batting has struggles and they could throw a game away in a session. But I can’t see them doing it more than once.
Agree with you Teuton - especially once India have wrapped it up, and England have pride to play for. With no hostile crowd, the winning Indian team may relax a little.
I hadn’t realised it was actually going to be screened live by Channel 4 - that will be nice to have on in the background while working from home. Or possibly better, have TMS on and quickly switch over to catch the replay of any notable incidents.
I’ve been watching a bit of the Abu Dhabi T10 - Chris Jordan bowled an excellent (2 over) spell today, going for just 11 total and taking a wicket. In another game, some other bowler of whom I haven’t heard went for 45 of their 2. So yes, gulf in class indeed.
If England are going to win one, yeah, they need to run into an Indian batting collapse. They also need to avoid having one of their own in the same match. Remember that we’re flying people in and out of the squad throughout this series, so it’s not the case that we’ll necessarily be settled. We are also still all too frequently 10-2 putting pressure on the middle order.
If England are to win a match, I think they need to target the day-night test. Pink ball, under lights, might move around a bit. Anderson and Broad probably shouldn’t play together on this tour (using the same logic as flying people in and out, they’re going to need workload management given the number of matches and bubbles they’ll be in this year) except for that match.
+1
Kohli will have the bit between his teeth, given he missed most of the Australia series - and certainly the most successful bits of it (maybe the bits that were successful were related to his not captaining? Just a thought).
That one definitely has legs.
For all his batting mastery, Kohli is a bog average captain. He is primarily defensive, manages his bowlers poorly, changes the field to chase bad deliveries and is probably a least a podium finish for being the worst DRS judge in Test cricket.
The Australia v India series was the equal of Ashes 2005 and there would be an argument that, given the depth of Indian cricket and their burgeoning capability to exploit it, that the injuries and high turnover of personnel weren’t as debilitating as you’d first think. An Indian selected “net bowler” is still pretty good and they have international standard bats out their wazoo. But the new selections hadn’t been in the bubble for as long as the more seasoned campaigners. So fresher legs and minds at play while their strengths and weaknesses may likely not have been so well known. The backstory to Suraj Kumar is worth the price of the ticket alone
There is also a brewing story that Langer is a shot duck as coach.
He’s not my cup of tea and he has a pronounced bias toward the sons of his home state but he has backed off the ugly Australian approach without affecting the team performance. Which is no mean feat and a very good thing.
But the word is, in soccer parlance, that he’s lost the dressing room based on an authoritarian micromanager attitude who plays favourites. He’s been on a media blitz since Brisbane so I think it has foundation. I (being the intractable curmudgeon I am) prefer cricket managers, if they are needed at all, to be background operators, not be the ones fronting the TV talk shows and social media.
I know West Indies has a rich cricket history full of legendary figures. Even today, their players are stars in all the major T20 leagues, but many don’t seem to make it onto the test teams. I know that T20’s and Tests require very different skill sets, but I would think Gayle, Pooran, Russell, Holder, Roach, etc. would comprise a formidable test side. Is Test pay so low that they’d rather just play the tourneys? Does it have to do with the fact that they aren’t really playing for their country, but a collection of countries?
Well, I think Gayle is a special case - he is notoriously lazy, and his playing style is generally far more suited to shorter formats than Tests. Not sure about the others, but Holder doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to dodge Test matches. I also doubt it’s to do with nationalism - West Indies have been an established cricketing ‘nation’, as you point out, for a long time. Obviously none of the individual islands could compete at the top level by themselves.
On England/India - no matter what happens from here, you have to say this is a decent start by England. Winning the toss has obviously helped our chances in this match, but you have to put the runs on the board and we’ve done that so far. 63/2 is now 205/2. Of course, we could still look silly if we collapse and India then win by an innings because they knock off 600 in 5 sessions.
Sibley looking more and more the real deal - a strike rate of 30 is actually what we’ve been crying out for at the top of the order (Chris Tavare, anyone?) - OK, he’s no Cook/Strauss/Trescothick but as I mentioned before, we were extremely blessed to have those three exceptional players one after the other (and indeed together for a lot of matches).
ETA: regarding my previous comment about TMS, I have just realised the team aren’t out there. Also, weirdly I can’t seem to get 5 Live Sports Extra on my bedside DAB radio - it just doesn’t show up for some reason. Not massively impressed with the Channel 4 commentary team so far, but it’s churlish to complain given we have free live Test cricket after such a long break.
The commentary is on talksport 2
Nice, thanks. Can’t imagine it will match TMS but will give it a try tomorrow.
England lose Sibley in the last over, which is a shame, but still a great day for them, 263/3 at the close. If they can see off the newish ball when the bowlers are fresh tomorrow morning, they have a chance of a formidable total.
This is currently a job half done - at some point you’d reckon the pitch will start to spin and become more difficult to bat on and England need 500, maybe even 550, to stand a chance of winning. Even then, they will have to get stuck in with the ball to a quite good batting line up. Being really harsh, that was about par today - it’s what should happen if you have designs on winning the game.
So it’s also weird to say that it was a heartening performance? I didn’t expect England to do this necessarily - the Sibley innings in particular - so it’s a big step in the right direction, particularly if they can repeat this sort of display within the series.
I think both things can be true - this was a positive but also kind of what they should be doing and we shouldn’t get too up just yet.
Famous last words: the two non-Ashwin spinners don’t look all that good on the deck as it currently is playing. Root and Sibley attacking them in the evening session, when the first two sessions of the day were perpetually on a knife edge, made a huge difference.
On West Indies: my understanding is that this is a money thing (their cricketers going for a lot of white ball comps), as the WI board is not flush with cash. Someone who knows more about the ins and outs of WI cricket should probably weigh in though.
Well this is nice to wake up to - just put the TV on in time to see Root smash a six to get his double hundred. 452/4 at the moment, and I don’t want to see a declaration short of 600!
This could definitely be going worse.
Elsewhere Pakistan held a useful 71 run lead over SA going into the third innings. You’d make them favourites right now.
WI have been set a target of 395 by Bangladesh. 4 sessions to go in Chattogram.
Rohit has just put down an absolute dolly from Bess. How much can we punish this? Clearly there is no plan to declare, at the moment Bess and Leach are doing a decent job of making the Indians work for their wickets and putting a few more on the board. 545/8 with 3 overs left in the day.
That Rohit drop is about as bad as the Denly drop in NZ 2019. Harder to drop it in some respects.
If you’d offered me 550 before the game started I’d have snapped your hand off. Now I am kind of disappointed we won’t crack 600 unless something remarkable happens with these last 3.
Pope looked pretty ropey. Perhaps understandable as this is his first cricket in quite some time due to injury. Weird to be playing yourself into form in the middle of a Test match. Thought Buttler looked good until he made an error of judgement. 600 was there if he could have stuck around.
You had better timing than me. I turned on just a bit later, watched Pope and Root get out, sighed, and turned off again. My ability to jinx England by watching them remains unrivalled.
555/8 cannot be bad - the Indian attack was looking pretty toothless at times - but I don’t expect it to be enough to threaten a win on what is still a very flat pitch. Of course, if it was England batting second with 550+ on the board we’d be saying they’d do well to avoid the follow-on…
Is it just me, or is batting Jofra Archer (Test average: 8) at No. 8 becoming more a matter of hope than expectation?
I’d bat Archer below Leach and Broad currently in Tests. There is this assumption that because he can (and has) hit useful lower order runs in IPL, he can do it in Tests. But I’d give him licence to do that at 10 where if he gets out you shrug your shoulders. At 8 or 9, you might be batting with Buttler or Pope and should be looking to stick around for them.
England need the pitch to break up but they’ve done quite a bit to try and bring that closer to happening in India’s first or second innings rather than their own. I would bat on tomorrow with that in mind. The bowlers are going to have to work hard to win this match but they’re in a good place for now, better than India’s at least.