Colombo, day three

A marvellous day for England. I said last night that Sri Lanka had to be worried about the implications of England’s batting clicking and we did exactly that today. KP was fantastic, absolutely dominating the Sri Lankan bowlers and showing how good he really can be. It must be said, he benefited from the top order batting well. Strauss was out last might, but Cook and Trott batted well into the morning today and England were well set by the time KP came to the middle. Batting with the pressure off and Sri Lanka already starting to fray around the edges he set about putting his boot on their throat and by the time the lunch interval came around Sri Lanka were starting to lose it in the field. They wasted both of their reviews in rapid succession, the second one a horrible referral. They then started to fire the ball around and conceded quite a few overthrows before the interval.

The big controversy of the day came with KP on 98*. He was looking imperious and had recently hit a switch-hit for four. He then set up to do so again and Dilshan pulled out. This happened twice and after Dilshan had a word with the umpires they decided to warn KP for time wasting! Whilst they did not say that KP could not play the shot, they did give him an official warning for setting himself before the bowler was in his delivery stride. As far as it goes, that is correct: all though the MCC ruled that the shot was legal, the ICC said that in international cricket the hands must not be reversed before the bowler enters his stride. The problem here was that the replay clearly showed that KP had switched his hands after the bowler had entered his stride and was thus well within his rights to do what he did. In fact, the second time KP did not even get around to switch his hands before Dilshan pulled out. The player who was wasting time was Dilshan. The entire Sri Lankan team was in a strop by this point and this was a blatant attempt at gamesmanship and sad to say, it worked. The umpires should have stood up to it, however, and it was a very, very spineless effort by them to cave in. Luckily KP was untroubled by this and brought up his hundred with a reverse sweep anyway. But it was absolutely appalling behaviour from both Sri Lanka and very poor from the umpires. Hopefully England will lodge a firm complaint about this, but in the meantime I hope Jimmy, Finn and Bres ping a few off Dilshan’s nose tomorrow. Though if he needs treatment, the umpire will probably warn England for time wasting.

Apart from that, it was a very good day for England. Four hundred and sixty all out represents a first innings lead of 185 and Sri Lanka will do well just to make England bat again. England were bowled out with one over left in the day, but Dishonourable Dilshan did not even go out to face the music, instead sending out Prasad as a nightwatchman. He survived and Sri Lanka are 4-0 overnight. There was not only turn, but very uneven bounce on display as England batted and all four of England’s main bowlers will surely be very eager to have a go tomorrow. Whilst England will probably bat again, I do not expect the match to last into a fifth day.

Colombo, day two

This was the day for which we have waited all winter. England dominated it pretty much from the word go and in another situation would probably be well on top. The conditions required scoring slower than usual, which England duly did. It means that they are not as well positioned as they might have been if they were at home, but are as well placed as they could ask to be here.

England started the day still needing four wickets and went after them patiently. It meant that I started to hear some hand-wringing as half an hour elapsed with no wickets, but it always looked like a case where one wold bring four and that is exactly what happened. The batsmen eventually tried to break the shackles and Strauss had the men set perfectly for it. His clever captaincy was mostly ignored, or course. Swann ended up with four wickets having bowled very well to get them. Jimmy ended up stuck on just the three he got yesterday morning, though he deserved rather more. It’s something that I need to look up, but it seems that Jimmy fairly often takes a few top-order wickets but only finishes with three or four as someone else cleans up the tail. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as the wickets are taken.

The highlight of the day was that England finally remembered how to bat. It won’t make the highlight reel because this was old-fashioned batting. Strauss and Cook kept out the good ones and tried to rotate the strike off worse ones. The run rate was only two and a bit per over, but that was what England needed. The runs did come, Strauss and Cook looked progressively more and more comfortable and Sri Lanka looked like they did not quite no what to do. The entire afternoon session passed without a wicket falling. It was precisely what England needed to do and even when Strauss departed in the last hour for a very well played 61, Trott picked up right where he left off. England finished on 154-1, trailing by only 121.

There is still a lot to do, of course. England are supremely well placed, but another collapse could still undo all that. We saw that happen in the first innings at Abu Dhabi, though the big partnership there was for the second wicket. If Cook and Trott can go the way they did there, after a big first wicket stand this time, then KP might not even come in until the scores are almost level. A collapse then might be too late for Sri Lanka, so they know that they have to get an early wicket tomorrow. It sounds surprising after all that has happened this winter, but right now the only one of the top five not to have scored some runs is KP. Even if he and Patel fail, England have enough lower order batting (Prior, Bresnan, Swann) to get a big lead if they’re only a few behind when Bell comes in. England have to go for big runs. It is very optimistic, but until there is a collapse England have to try to only bat once. They cannot try to up the rate, however, keep going as they are and accumulate. The plan will be to grind out the runs and declare around 500 before tea on the fourth day. Even if there is a bit of a collapse, if they stay sensible 400 is still possible. Or England could lose three wickets before lunch tomorrow and have to rely on Swann to get the lead up to fifty. That’s still possible too.

2012 MLB preview

It’s almost Opening Day! Well technically it already happened, in Japan, but that is one of the stupidest things MLB have done recently and that’s saying a lot. The real, proper, season starts this week when the Cardinals visit the ~~Florida~~ Miami Marlins on the fourth (as part of a one game ‘series’, further evidence that the schedule setters were high as a kite this off-season) and by the time the Royals play the Angels on Friday evening the season will be under way for everyone. I’m not going to do a team-by-team preview for all thirty clubs the way I did for the LV=CC, but instead go over each division and give my predictions:
AL West
The division boils down to Rangers, Angels = good; Mariners, A’s = poor. At the bottom of the division will be the Mariners and A’s. They split the pretend opening series in Japan, but it looks on paper that the Mariners are the better team. Their offence doesn’t look much better than last year, though Ichiro could reasonably be expected to improve and their pitching should still be passable. The A’s have brought in Manny Ramirez, which reeks of desperation. At the top, the Rangers lost CJ Wilson, but gained Yu Darvish. The Angels very publicly gained Albert Pujols and… CJ Wilson. That might hurt Texas. The notion for them is that Darvish will be enough to both fill in for CJ Wilson and negate the fact that the Angels acquired him. We don’t know if the very large sum the Rangers paid out to Darvish will be worth it, but the Rangers have to worry that he will be to them what Fenando Torres is for Chelsea and there seems little chance that he will fully justify the nine digit figure that the Rangers had to pay out. Ultimately if the Rangers win some sort of title it will, rather frustratingly, be deemed enough. My prediction for the final standings:
Angels
Rangers (wc2)
Mariners
A’s
AL Central
The Tigers are favourites to win by a distance; they have Justin Verlander and have acquired Prince Fielder in the off-season. There really is no team in the division that look like they can challenge them. The Indians have a good looking lineup, but the pitching looks dodgy and they never made their success last year look like anything but a fluke. The Twins were desperately unlucky to finish as low as they did last year, but they have lost a few players in the off-season. It’s hard to ever write them off, but they seem less likely than usual to make the division close. The White Sox have lost their manager and best pitcher in the off-season. Last year was not good for them, they finished below .500, and I expect this one will be worse. I will go into more detail on the Royals later, but I think we will play well without pushing for the division title. Standings (and note that the Tigers will have a large lead):
Tigers
Twins
Royals
Indians
White Sox
AL East
A division that contains one sixth of the teams in the major leagues and yet gets at least half of the media attention. The Yankees and Red Sox will play each other 19 times again this year and every one of them will be treated as the most important game of the year. They will all be impossibly dull five hour affairs. As part of my effort to offset this, I will simply skip straight to my prediction:
Yankees
Rays (wc1)
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles
NL West
Of the five teams in the NL West, the Padres are the only ones who have not made the playoffs at least once in the past five years and they were a hairsbreadth from doing so in 2007 and only a game away in 2010. A different team has won the division in each of the last three years and last year Arizona went from being terrible in 2010 to winning outright. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it’s hard to predict what will happen. Arizona look like they can carry last year’s form into this one though, and the Giants always look pretty good. The Rockies would need some luck, but they could compete too. The only teams that really look out are the Dodgers and Padres. Prediction:
Giants
Diamondbacks (wc2)
Rockies
Dodgers
Padres
NL Central
Last year the Cardinals won the wild card on the last day of the season, partially by winning their last game against the 56-106 Astros. They, and the other teams in the NL Central, will have one more year in which to make the most of that advantage before the Astros leave for the AL West. The composition of the teams is rather different from last year, but a lot of the dynamics seem the same. The Brewers should be good with the Cardinals and Reds both competing. The Pirates will hope to continue toward a winning season whilst the Cubs would be last in any other division, but this time are saved by the Astros, who look like they’ll do well to avoid another hundred loss season. More specifically:
Brewers
Cardinals
Reds
Pirates
Cubs
Astros
(In other words, exactly the same as last year.)
NL East
The Florida Marlins are no more. Now they’re the Miami Marlins with a new stadium a new (terrible) logo and new (terrible) uniforms. They’ve also spent some money to bring in some big name free agents and look like they will be competitive. The Phillies still have the best rotation in baseball, but now their best hitters are all injured and they look unlikely to recreate their 102 win season from last year. The Braves finished last year by choking hilariously and missing the playoffs by a game to St Louis. They seem to have written it off as a fluke and made very few changes in the offseason. I think that will backfire, however, and that they’ll be a lot more than a game off the mark. The Nats probably will not compete for the top spot, but they are well placed to reap the rewards of their young talent and should be above .500. The Mets look like a team in disarray and will be hoping everything goes disastrously wrong for one of their opponents. Prediction:
Marlins
Phillies (wc1)
Nationals
Braves
Mets

The playoffs now have the one game ‘play-in’ for the wild card. Even if I could be really confident of the teams even contesting the match, there is no way to accurately predict the results of those matches this far in advance. But it’s pretty unlikely that any of the other predictions will be accurate either so I’ll go ahead and have the Rangers beat the Rays and the Diamondbacks beat the Phillies. Division series: Tigers v Rangers, Yankees v Angels, Brewers v Diamondbacks, Giants v Marlins. Championship series: Tigers v Angels, Brewers v Giants. World Series Tigers v Giants, Tigers to win in five games.

My specific prediction for the Royals is an 85-77 finish. It won’t be near enough to compete and as mentioned above I think it will only be enough for third, though some fortune might see us in second. The offence still looks good. Even if Hosmer falls off a bit there is a lot of talent there as evidenced by the fact that the .250 hitting Alcides Escobar is amongst the worst hitters in the lineup. The question is still the starting pitching. Chen will take Opening Day, with Hochevar going on the seventh. That was a surprise when announced, but regardless of the order in which they pitch a rotation of Chen, Hochevar, Sanchez, Mendoza and Duffy does not look all that intimidating. The hope will be that Mendoza and Duffy have breakout seasons and Lancashire have shown that young talent can come through quickly. There’s a reason it was so surprising when Lancs won the title last year though. Off the field, Rex Hudler promises to reach Tony Greig levels of annoyance in the commentary box. I don’t think he’s quite at the level of Ravi Shastri, but he has 140 games in which to try. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on him later in the year.

This post also appears on The Armchair Selector.

Colombo, day one

This was England’s day. It did not get off to a good start, Strauss lost the toss for the fourth consecutive time and Sri Lanka went in to bat. Strauss’ inability to correctly predict the path of a coin remains the number one reason why he should be sacked.

After that, however, it was eerily similar to the Galle Test, but a bit better for England this time. Once again the first three wickets fell cheaply, this time all to Jimmy Anderson. And once again Jayawardene scored an excellent century as he and Samaraweera consolidated, but this time England managed to get Jayawardene out. Swann trapped him lbw in the 80th over, plus Finn got Prasana Jayawardene before stumps and England restricted Sri Lanka’s scoring rate all day. England might have had loftier hopes after reducing Sri Lanka to 30-3, but 238-6 at stumps is still a good position after losing the toss. With Prasana out, Angelo Mathews is the last recognised batsman and England will be able to target him with a newish ball tomorrow morning.

Credit must go to James Anderson again. He bowled a fantastic spell with the new ball yet again and once again dismissed Kumar Sangakkara first ball. He did not get the hat trick, but he did get Thirimanne not long after. Those three wickets were not just reward for his efforts though. He also bowled one of the best spells one will ever see with a 60 over old ball, getting it to reverse both ways and comfortably beating the batsman time and time again. How he did not get a wicket is beyond me, he appeared to have it on a string. The consistency with which Jimmy has bowled over the past two years is incredible and he seems to be getting better. I don’t think there is any bowler in the world right now, Steyn included, who could have bowled the way Jimmy did today and he has performing at that level on very unhelpful pitches all winter. In the past two years now he has taken 101 wickets in 22 Tests (4.6 wk/Test) at an average of 22.83 and ten of those have been in unhelpful conditions. It’s an incredible return and I think Jimmy deserves at least equal mention with Steyn right now.

There was also some controversy when Samaraweera appeared to glove a ball from Finn to short leg on 36. England were convinced that it was out, but the umpire did not give it and it stayed with his call on review. There were two clear noises on the replay, however, and there was just as much evidence that he had hit it as the incident with Cook in the last Test. This time it was not overturned, however and I think England can justifiably feel hard done by. It was a poor decision on-field and brutally inconsistent by the third umpire. I will also bring up the point I did with Cook’s dismissal: the batsman should have walked. He clearly hit it and standing his ground was an act of deliberate dishonesty. For me it is in the same league as claiming a low catch and it should come under similar criticism. For Samaraweera and Cook to stay at the crease was disgraceful. Cook at least was given out but the only bit of justice given to Samaraweera was a nasty blow to the head two overs later. If he’d walked he would have avoided that.

The match is well set up for tomorrow’s play, England took a pair of important late wickets and need to make the new ball count again tomorrow morning. The big wicket is now that of Mathews, he has not played cricket for a while due to injury and it will be interesting to see how he starts tomorrow. If Jimmy and Finn can be as on-the-money as they were today, they have an opportunity to put England in a great position. After that, it will all be down to the batsmen again.

Colombo preview

England go into the final Test of the winter with everything to play for. Four losses from four Tests and now they must win to maintain the number one Test spot and save even the smallest amount of face. The key for England is very, very simple: the batting, so good from their second innings at Brisbane through their only innings at the Oval, must rediscover something approximating their form from that period. Despite slipping a bit near the end of the last Test, the fact is that the bowling unit have had as much or more success this winter as at any time in the past six years. They are not the problem and in fact their success in all conditions must be the envy of all other nations. The level of success they have had with the ball means that the batsmen need to perform only a little bit better and England will have a great chance of levelling the series.

Sri Lanka have a lot for which to play as well though. They have not won a series since beating New Zealand at home in 2009 and this would be a major scalp for them. They will be a motivated side and I expect that their middle order will be desperate to cling on to their wickets in the way that only Jayawardene did in the first Test. If they can thwart England’s bowlers and get just one properly big total in the match, England will have very little chance of getting the victory that we need. That will not be an easy feat for Sri Lanka though, even if the pitch is flat. Even without Stuart Broad, England’s attack have proved that they can take wickets in all conditions against all opponents.

The toss will be important again. Given England’s habit of collapsing at the merest hint of turn, batting last could be disastrous, even on a road. Similarly, we have already seen how much Sri Lanka benefited in the first Test from even a fairly modest first innings total. If Strauss can finally find the luck with the coin that has eluded him for the last three Tests, it should be game on. England’s batsmen did not look in bad touch in the last Test; nearly all of them made at least a start with the bat. If, on the first day on a flat pitch, they can finally be persuaded to dig in like Trott, the runs are there. A big score in the first innings and England can boss the game like they did so often last year. Sri Lanka will be praying that England are still a Test away from returning to form.