Eng v WI, Lord’s, day four: Eng 10-2

There will be a fifth day. I did not expect that, in fact I’m not sure anyone expected that. There was apparently more than one journalist who checked out of the hotel this morning. The West Indies fought well, but it has to be said that England bowled poorly. By England’s usual standards it was actually abysmal. Most of the morning was spent trying to contain Chanderpaul and Samuels. Strictly speaking it worked, as the run rate dropped, but it should come as no surprise that Chanderpaul was never tempted into an injudicious shot. As annoying as that was, it did at least seem to be leading up to a proper attack with the second new ball. Except once England got that second new ball, Broad and Anderson kept bowling wide! The length was also a bit too short and they were not making the batsmen play nearly enough. When Broad finally got one full and nipping away it was edged to slip, but the lesson did not seem to sink in. The West Indies fought well (and I do want to make it clear that I think Chanderpaul and Samuels batted very well when not trying to run themselves out), but it was poor bowling by England. For whatever reason, they looked toothless. To be fair, the pitch was flat and the old ball was not really swinging. (And the new one was only a bit.) The lack of swing was probably the biggest problem. Not only was it too cold for the ball to really swing, but England have to use the current (2012) Duke’s balls as they have run out of the 2010 models. For whatever reason (and the people at Duke’s need to find that reason out so they can replicate it) the 2010 balls swung much more than either the 2011 balls or this year’s balls. Last year England did not even use the 2011 balls, preferring the leftover 2010 models. With those gone, England have to work with the less helpful balls. Still, that is no excuse. The ball should not have swung at all in Sri Lanka at all, but they made it work there. At home with some runs with which to work they ought to have done much, much better.

England batted for four overs before stumps. It’s always tricky to do so and I was not terribly surprised to see a wicket go down. It is a situation for the bowlers similar to that of a rugby side playing with a penalty advantage: they can attack unhesitatingly knowing that even if it fails they can just start again the next day. The wicket to fall came off a very good ball and there was very little Strauss could do about it. This did not prevent people from suggesting that it in some way negated his first innings century or that he was not back to form after all. (Both patently ridiculous, of course.) It also meant that there was something akin to panic on Twitter. England were blowing it again, collapsing to an ignominious defeat this time to a weak team at home. The subsequent dismissal of the nightwatchman confirmed this. One wicket was bad, but the loss of James Anderson was vital. One would think that he was key to the run chase and without him England were surely going to lose.

Annoyance with the reaction aside, it really was a good four overs to watch. It’s not nearly often enough one sees the West Indies look like they think they can accomplish something. Roach bowled very well and we got much more lively cricket than when England were bowling negatively and the match was drifting a bit. Anderson’s wicket will not affect the result (except for that if England win the official margin will be different) but it did lead to the very exciting appeal and subsequent review for lbw against Trott. If he had been dismissed it would have put the match more in the balance. As it is, I do not think England have anything about which to worry. The pitch is still very flat, the West Indies do not have a spinner in the side, the forecast tomorrow is quite good and England only need 181 more with five specialist batsmen plus Prior not out. That’s not to say that England can’t lose, of course, but they are still strong favourites.

Eng v WI, Lord’s, day three: WI 120-4

On the face of it, today was certainly a much better day for the West Indies than the first two of the Test. They came out in the morning with a new ball in some of the best conditions of the Test and restricted England to 398 all out. I said yesterday that they had to prevent a partnership from forming with Bell and someone who would be able to increase the scoring rate and that is exactly what they did. With some poor weather forecast later in the Test, England did appear to be consciously trying to get some quick runs and the West Indies did very well to usually make sure it was at the cost of a wicket. Jonny Bairstow looked pretty comfortable on debut, but went for only 16 and Prior had looked set too before he missed a straight one trying to flick it through mid-wicket. Only Tim Bresnan looked uncertain and he made a very quick duck. The bowlers were not faultless, however. Ian Bell always looked like he wasn’t going to get out unless he was the last man and Graeme Swann, whilst a decent batsman, was hitting orthodox cover drives to the boundary. A decent batsman he may be, but he is not so good that he should be able to get to thirty off 25 without some help from the bowling. Still, it was a creditable effort and kept the West Indies in the match, albeit barely.

They also managed a bit with the bat. It was not a fluent second innings to set a total, the scoreboard shows that much, but it was a far cry from the catastrophes they had at home. It was much more like what they did in the first innings: the bowlers on top for most of it, but not getting as many wickets as one would expect. By the end of the day they looked pretty comfortable. They in fact did exceedingly well (or were exceedingly lucky) to survive Jimmy Anderson’s spell with the new ball. They did show just a glimmer of their old form, however, and it was enough to cost them three wickets. After Bresnan got the first wicket, England all but telegraphed that they were going to bounce Powell. Broad came around the wicket with two men out on the hook. Between the capacity crowd at the ground and those watching on telly, there were no fewer than 100,000 people who knew what was coming. Powell was not amongst them. Broad’s bouncer was good, but Powell was surprised. He tried to hook, a bit half-heartedly, and could only get under it and sky an easy catch to Bell. That was bad. Worse was the horrible running mix-up on the stroke of tea. Bravo hit one to Bairstow and Edwards came halfway down the pitch before being sent back. It was one of the highlights of the day for England though as the debutant threw down the stumps directly.

Despite the flaws, it was clearly a better day for the West Indies. They can at least show up tomorrow knowing that the match could have been over by now. Part of the reason it is not, however, is the over rate again. Today we played six and a half hours and still lost five overs. That is unacceptable and the fault is with the West Indies again. By my maths, England batted for a total of eight hours and 48 minutes in their innings. That gives a ‘raw’ rate of 12.90 overs/hour. The ICC Test regulations section 16.3 set out a minimum rate of 15 overs/hour with two minutes allotted per wicket (when a new batsman comes in) and four per drinks break. There is also an exemption for reviews and other ‘unavoidable’ delays. By my count, in this innings that gives 18 minutes for wickets, 16 for drinks and let’s say another ten for reviews etc. The revised over rate is still only 14.07, far too low. Put another way, in the eight hours and four minutes of ‘real’ batting time the West Indies were seven overs short of the minimum of 121. The good news for Darren Sammy is that it looks like England will bat again and give him a chance to make up for lost time.

Tomorrow will probably see England win. The West Indies have done better than they might have and better than I thought they would, but the fact remains that they are in a pretty desperate position. Four down and still 35 runs in arrears means they will probably need to bat all day tomorrow and also probably won’t. They resisted today, but once again most of it was due to Chanderpaul and they are dependent on him staying around. If he does and they keep fighting the way they have done today they might last into the afternoon session, but that will still leave England with a fairly small target. My guess is that they will last past lunch, but only barely and England will knock the runs off around tea.

Eng v WI, Lord’s, day two: Eng 259-3

A great day for England, they’ve put themselves in charge of this Test. This highlight was, of course, Andrew Strauss’ unbeaten century, his fifth at Lord’s. He looked fluent almost all day (until he got into the nineties) and hit some of the best drives down the ground one can hope to see. Upon reaching the milestone, he got what sounded to me like an unusually sustained ovation from a packed Lord’s. Every second of it was absolutely deserved, one could see the determination writ across Strauss’ face during his innings and his delight was palpable when he got to his century. I noted three types of reactions. Most common was the delight. I think almost every England supporter wanted to see Strauss score a century and as noted above the appreciation shown by the Lord’s crowd was immense. The second, and rather amusing, reaction was from the people quickly covering themselves by explaining why all the previous ‘questions’ had still been warranted. As I mentioned the other day, I don’t think they were justified, but I do accept that if they were then this innings would not have changed that. It would simply have meant that he had answered the questions they had set. I still found it amusing to see how quickly people started to defend themselves, however. The reaction that was not amusing (but was at least in a small minority) was that of those who immediately said that a hundred against the West Indies was meaningless. I’ll be the first to admit that runs against a small side should be noted and treated as such, but if a batsman is poor enough to be dropped then he or she is not going to score a century against anyone. It’s especially ridiculous in the case of Strauss because the ‘problem’ has always been that he was getting starts and not going on. This time, however, he set himself and made sure that he did go on. The weakness of the attack was not relevant.

Of course, there was another batsman at the crease during all this. For most of the day it was Trott, after Cook got a little bit careless in the morning session. Trott batted well, clipped the ball through mid-wicket a lot as usual and generally looked pretty untroubled until getting out to a bit of a rash shot. There had been a very unusual incident with his batting after lunch, however. With Fidel Edwards bowling, he fished at one outside off, there was a small noise and a stifled appeal by the Windies. The fieldsmen never acted as though they thought it was out and the umpire did not look like he really considered the half-appeal. Hot Spot and Snicko both subsequently showed, however, that the noise heard was definitely a faint outside edge! Trott was lucky there and he had also been lucky just prior to that as he survived an lbw shout and a review that had the ball just barely not hitting enough of leg to be overturned. Needless to say, there was no comment from those who claim that the DRS is unfairly increasing the odds of an lbw.

For most of the day the West Indies were poor. England’s overnight score of 259-3 is one which may look a little bit low at first, I think especially with England one expects closer to 275-300 runs in a day, but this is not because the Windies kept the scoring rate down. It was around four an over in the morning and even though it dropped from there it still ended up well above three an over. The problem was the West Indies over rate. Even accounting for 2.5 overs lost in the morning to the change of innings, the West Indies only managed 80.2 overs before bad light stopped play after the scheduled close. They hardly have the excuse of wickets falling either. Their overall rate was an appalling 13.3 overs per hour and even assuming one minute for each wicket and two minutes for each drinks break it only goes up to 13.7 overs per hour. It had been clear for some time before bad light stopped play that even an extra half hour was not going to allow all of the overs to bowled. In the overs that they did manage to bowl, the ball did very little off the seam and very little in the air. But one gets the feeling that if England had been bowling the conditions would have appeared a lot more helpful. It was a bit like yesterday in that it was not the shambles it could have been, but nor was it ever close to enough.

England go into tomorrow with their two most under-fire batsmen at the crease: Strauss and Bell. Strauss has already made his hundred and Bell made one in the County Championship as well. I don’t think he is nearly out of form as many people think (remember that he averaged 118 in 2011) and is up against an attack that suits him. I would not be at all surprised to see him get a hundred as well. Jonny Bairstow will finally get a chance to bat tomorrow once one of Strauss or Bell is out and I am looking forward to that. He has been doing well in the LV=CC and as I recall he looked pretty good in the handful of ODIs in which he played. He is also a pretty fast scorer and if he gets in along with Bell, Prior or Broad England have a chance to pile on the runs quickly. They already lead by 16, so the West Indies cannot afford to let that happen.

Eng v WI, Lord’s, day one: WI 243-9

There were two talking points today before play had even started: England’s team selection and Strauss’ decision to bowl first after winning his first toss in four matches. Whilst I understand the decision to play Bresnan, I would not have done so. He is a good bowler and he adds quite a bit to the side, but I don’t think this was the best occasion for him. The conditions actually most suited Graham Onions and I think Steven Finn would have added some very nice variation to the attack. Purely looking at the bowling, both would probably have been better selections, In a way, I think Bresnan’s main qualification is almost his batting. I can certainly see the argument for using batting skill as a tie-breaker of sorts for bowlers, but with Stuart Broad already in the side along with six batsmen and Matt Prior it is rather superfluous. With Bresnan in the side, we comfortably bat down to nine with Swann at ten. That sounds like an argument in favour of Bresnan, of course, and fact that we can bat so deep without seriously compromising our bowling is definitely a good thing. We have seen lower order partnerships either save us or break the back of the opposition many times before. Against the West Indies, however, it’s probably excessive. In my mind, the benefit of playing a stronger bowler is greater than the benefit of extra batting that is probably extraneous anyway. I’d have gone for Finn.

I do, however, agree with Strauss’ decision to bowl first. The pitch is pretty flat, but there was some moisture in it, there was some cloud cover and there was already a strong indication that the West Indies were not going to play a spinner. The Lord’s pitch has been known to actually get better as the match goes on as well, so there was almost nothing to lose by bowling and an opportunity to see if the West Indies would implode.

The Windies did not do so and it is a credit to them. Jimmy Anderson certainly did not make it easy, but the Windies showed some proper application this time and England had to work for a lot of the wickets. The only times we saw the Windies to which we are used was when Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Darren Bravo found themselves at the same end, glaring at each other. It was Shiv’s fault, but Bravo was the man out. Shiv is a great player, but he has had accusations of selfishness levelled at him before and I think we saw a bit of that today. Not only did he make sure he was not the one to pay for his failed calling, he exposed Fidel Edwards in the last over of the day. Edwards did not make it to stumps.

There was also some discussion during the day of Chris Gayle and how much the West Indies theoretically miss him. One would get the impression from listening to people that he would be scoring a century by lunch and keeping the West Indies in the match single-handed. In fact, he only averages 36 in England with one century in 21 innings. In his last six Tests in England he has only passed fifty twice and last time he played at Lord’s he made 28 and nought against an attack that was not as good as the current one. The subject of where he ought to be playing is one for it’s own post, but there is no reason to suspect that the West Indies would be substantially better off in this Test or on this tour with him in the side.

I don’t think the West Indies were particularly poor today. Certainly it was not like what we frequently saw from them against Australia. At the same time, England did not look quite at their best, particularly in the morning session. All the same, England are in the stronger position overnight and deservedly so. They may not have been at their best, but they did play the better cricket over the course of the day. Anderson looked lethal, though that’s nothing unusual, and Broad came back from a poor morning to blow away most of the tail with a combination of fortune and some brilliant deliveries. Today was a case of a very good side playing a fairly poor one. Given how it went, one shudders to think what will happen when England find their stride or the West Indies slip back into their old routine.

Captaincy issues

I have been having a very interesting discussion on Twitter about the merits of various styles of captaincy. This was born, probably fairly predictably, out of a different discussion about Andrew Strauss’ place in the current England side. There were two very interesting questions raised: is captaincy skill reason enough to justify selection and what skills are most important for a captain?

With regard to the first question, I would answer ‘yes’ in almost all cases. The captaincy is almost a specialist position in itself and skill or lack thereof there can have as much an impact on the match as runs or wickets directly taken by the player. The best example of this is probably Mike Brearley. Brearley is rightly famous for his captaincy and boasts not only the fifth highest W/L ratio all time (amongst Englishmen he is behind only Douglas Jardine) but also a record of 11 wins and just one loss in 15 Ashes Tests. He also had a Test batting average just under 23. The goal of a Test match is to win and it is clear that a very good captain can increase the odds of winning even if he or she is a poor batsman. The question of selection is not then ‘pick the best five or six batsmen, a ‘keeper and four or five bowlers’, it is a more general matter of picking the eleven players whose combination of skills provide the best chance of winning a Test match. Depending on the circumstance, one might have a team with very skilled players who can carry a poor captain (eg: Ricky Ponting in the Warne/McGrath era) or one might have a team in which a very good captain causes his team to perform at a higher level than they would otherwise and is thus worth more to the team than a better batsman/bowler. I prefer the latter, but clearly both can work. It is a matter for the selectors to determine which course the situation of the team requires.

How that relates to Strauss then ties into the second question of which skills are most important. As a captain, Strauss has been both lauded for his man-management and criticised for his negativity. The question is whether his captaincy is good enough to offset his form with the bat and I would say that it is. I have certainly not refrained from criticising Strauss when I have felt that it is warranted, but this does not mean I think he is anything other than a very good captain. He has the misfortune of being a captain whose weakest area, tactics, is the one most publicly visible. His work in uniting the dressing room, however, has been utterly astounding. Remember that he took over a very fractured one and managed to transition the ‘old guard’ out with a minimum of fuss whilst at the same time winning an Ashes series that we were not expected to. Since then he has managed to get the very most out of all the players (with the exception of Morgan) and has won the respect of the team. His influence has been visible in some of the ODI series where Cook has been in charge, most notably in India. Cook struggled to control the team when the results were not going their way, this is not something that happens when Strauss is in charge. His calm demeanour and the respect the players have for him has ensured that England have stayed professional even on the occasions where things have not gone their way.

This is not to say that I think tactical ability is completely unnecessary, merely that one can compensate for it. I actually rate Michael Vaughan as one of the best ever England captains because of his tactical genius, but what he and Strauss both exhibit is a massive amount of skill in one area or the other. As with the first question, we have a situation where both man-management and tactics can be successful with the right people in the right circumstances. Finding someone who can do both would be ideal, of course, but a rare luxury. As to which is ‘better’ it is a matter of opinion, but I personally prefer a tactician. As important as it is to have all the players behind the captain, one needs to look no farther than the 2005 Ashes to see the benefits of a tactically astute captain. Cricket is a cerebral game and if a captain can outthink the opposition then the battle is halfway won already. Again, good management can adequately compensate for tactics, but given a straight choice I would choose a tactician.

What does not work, however, is a ‘leader’. I have seen it suggested more than once and more than once have the selectors decided that the best player ought to get the captaincy. I almost think this is from people who watch too much football. In football, all the captain has to do is play well and ‘inspire’ the other ten men. Cricket is not the same, however. A cricket captain has to have something between his or her hears to succeed. To see that this does not work, one needs look no farther than Freddie Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. (Though one is welcome to look back to Ian Botham too, if one wishes.) Both were unmitigated disasters. Both were captains who played very well, but were tactically inept and could not control the players.

All of the above should give a good indication of why Strauss should have a very secure place in the side. He is not a perfect captain, but there are very few of those and he is a very good one. His captaincy provides more to the side than the runs of another batsman would (and that’s even assuming that Strauss’ contributions with the bat are and will continue to be negligible, neither of which I think are true), if he is dropped the side will be worse off overall.

LV=CC week six roundup

Another heavily rain-affected week in the County Championship last week finished with only one positive result. That result was in a contrived match at Bristol where Yorkshire managed to chase 400 in just over a day. There was very nearly another, however, as Surrey were forced to follow-on at New Road before managing to set the hosts 260 to win and reducing them to 150-8. There was not quite enough time for a memorable victory, however. There was also a contrived match at Leicester with the hosts nine down when time time ran out. The full results:

Sussex drew with Lancashire
Durham drew with Somerset
Nottinghamshire drew with Middlesex
Worcestershire drew with Surrey
Essex drew with Kent
Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire by four wickets
Hampshire drew with Derbyshire
Leicestershire drew with Northamptonshire

Naturally, there has not been a great change in the table this week with only one result. The fact that Notts played and Warwicks didn’t has put the former on top of the division one table, but given that Warwickshire have two matches in hand I don’t think they will be worried. Yorkshire’s contrived victory in the second division has seen them fly up to second in the table. It is an interesting indication too of just how big of a difference even two victories can still make and one which will probably not be lost on Lancashire or Durham.

Whilst there was not a lot of time, there were still some very notable performances. Standing out, of course, are the centuries for Phil Jaques (160) and Gary Ballance (121*) in Yorkshire’s improbable victory at Bristol. That match also featured 111 for Kane Williamson and 5-81 for Tim Bresnan in Gloucs’ first innings. The match at Trent Bridge saw 162 from Michael Lumb countered by 143* from Ollie Rayner as the match never came close to a result. Not nearly as large, but still notable was the unbeaten 43* for the England Captain in the second innings. Surrey’s escape/near victory at New Road naturally included some very impressive batting performances in the second innings, including 115 for Rory Hamilton-Brown and 143 for Tom Maynard. Smaller, but again notable, was KP’s 69 after coming in with Surrey on 11-2 after following-on. Kent’s first innings at Chelmsford saw five ducks and nine single digit scores. And 119 for Darren Stevens. He and Geriant Jones (88) put on 196 for the sixth wicket after coming together at 9-5. The main destroyer for Essex was Charl Willoughby who took 5-70 and four of Kent’s top five batsmen. Derbyshire retained their spot at the summit of Division Two in a tame draw at Southampton. Their first innings of 403-9 featured centuries from Wes Durston (121) and Dan Redfern (133). This was after Hants skipper Jimmy Adams scored 122 in the first innings.

England v West Indies preview

The West Indies come to England fresh from a disappointing 0-2 defeat at home to Australia. They only performed passably well even at the best of times during that series and were frequently dire. Despite England’s recent woes in the subcontinent and similar regions, they are a side who have lost only two Tests at home since the start of 2009 and are still number one in the world. It is fair to say that if the Windies are going to come close in this series, they will have to perform far, far better than they did at home.

History, or at least recent history, is against them. They have not won an overseas Test somewhere other than Bangladesh since the Boxing Day Test in South Africa in 2007. The last time they won a Test in England was at Edgbaston in 2000; since then they have lost 12 and only managed to draw two. Their coach, Ottis Gibson, said that his hope for the Lord’s Test was to take it into a fifth day this time. This was in reference to their defeat inside three days at the home of cricket in 2009. That hope may be a bit optimistic. They have selected a squad which on paper appears to be slightly weaker than the one which lost to Australia and they have started the tour by losing to the Lions by ten wickets. In truth, they did well to make it that close. The Lions, boasting England’s third choice bowling attack, bowled the West Indies out for 147 in the first innings and went on to post a lead of 196. The Windies did come back a bit in the second innings, however.

Their performance against the Lions shows the fact that their batting almost begins and ends with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. He is a true great, but we have already seen that one great cannot carry a poor side. The rest of them have talent, and we saw some of that in the first innings of the first Test against Australia, but they are also very prone to give their wickets away (as we saw in the rest of that series). The West Indies will be facing arguably the best pace attack in the world in very friendly conditions. It is a far cry from the flat pitches and weak attacks on the subcontinent, or even the turning ones pitches from the recent series in the Caribbean. They occasionally performed well in those places, but even then were prone to collapses. Even if they were to cut out all the mistakes that have plagued them recently I think they will find the going very difficult and they are up against an attack that thrives on coaxing batsmen into errors. Last year India failed to pass 300 in four Tests; the Windies have only three and I would not be at all surprised to see the same result.

They will clearly need something from their bowlers. Unfortunately, their best performers at home were probably the spinners and despite England’s struggles against turn over the winter, they are unlikely to be more than a supplement in England. A lot will rest on their pace attack. Again there is some talent, but of what would appear to be their first choice attack (Fidel Edwards, Kemar Roach and Darren Sammy) only Roach has a bowling average under 30. They may cause some damage in friendly conditions, but these are home conditions for England’s batsmen and they put a pair of similar attacks to the sword last summer. Given that their batsmen already liable to give them a mountain to climb, I think it will be a tough ask for the West Indies bowlers.

England are strong favourites, but do go in under a bit of pressure after the disappointing winter. There is a strong sense that nothing less than three emphatic wins will do. As mentioned above, however, they have lost only twice at home in twenty Tests under Strauss and Flower. (They’ve won 14 of those Tests.) Most of the side have scored runs in the Championship already (no easy feat) with Cook the only exception and he has not had a lot of opportunities. As already mentioned, Bairstow looks like he will be batting at six. After the struggles of the winter, the batsmen do seem to have found some form and should present a formidable opposition to the Windies. The biggest hope will be that Strauss can get some big runs and ease the (insane) questions about his place in the side. He has a pair of decent scores in the Championship already, including an unbeaten 43 in Middlesex’s last match, and I do not see any reason why he could not push on from there.

England will probably be playing either Finn or Bresnan as a third seamer, though Onions is also in the squad. Whoever is picked will have an excellent opportunity to nail down the spot for the series against South Africa, but that’s assuming whoever it is (I’m guessing Finn) gets much of a bowl. Jimmy Anderson finished the series in Sri Lanka looking like the best bowler in the world and Stuart Broad had been in excellent form in the UAE before picking up an injury. They have both, especially Jimmy, shown themselves to be formidable weapons in all conditions and in May in England against a side prone to collapse I expect them to take bags of wickets. Swann will also be useful, he always is, but I doubt he will have an opportunity to do much more than chip in with a few wickets.

I can’t see the West Indies winning a Test. I said before the Australia series that I thought they had a chance to steal one from that series, but they could not and England are a much different proposition. I’ve already mentioned that at Lord’s in 2009 they lost before stumps on the third day. At Durham in 2007 the entire first day and quite a bit of the second day was lost to rain, but England still won comfortably. England are now a much better side than they were in either 2007 or 2009, whilst the Windies are arguably worse. Unless it rains non-stop for three days during one of the Tests I can see no other result than a 3-0 whitewash for England.

England Test squad

England have named a 13-man squad for the first Test against the West Indies starting this Thursday. Predictably, Bopara and Patel have missed out. In their place come Jonny Bairstow and Graham Onions. I’m quite pleased with this squad; I’d be pretty happy with almost any realistic XI that could be picked from this. Bairstow, as I said the other day, probably deserves the call-up and I am always happy to see Onions in the squad.

I suspect that Bairstow will get the nod at number six with probably Finn being the third seamer. This series looks like it will be a good one in which to test out the young batsman and Finn has had a very impressive winter and deserves another chance to show what he can do at the highest level. The ongoing ‘problem’ for England is that there are currently no fewer than three different people who probably deserve an extended chance as third seamer. This is one of the reasons why I would still like to see Prior at six and Bresnan at seven and Finn at eleven. Strauss and Flower seem set against that, however. With that in mind, hopefully Bairstow will have a productive series and secure the number six spot for the near future.

A lucky break

Joy at another person’s injury is probably a little bit cruel. It’s not like being dropped or losing form, it’s actual pain that goes beyond the sporting arena. That said, I’m apparently a slightly cruel person as I am very glad to hear that Ravi Bopara has a quad injury and is a major doubt for the first Test. (I was also happy when McGrath stepped on that cricket ball ahead of the Edgbaston Test in 2005.)

I’m glad because with Compton only scoring 20-odd for the Lions, Bopara looked like he had secured an spot in the Test side. As I have mentioned more than once Bopara should not be anywhere near the Test side, so this injury is a very good thing for England. It’s unfortunate for Bopara, of course and I would prefer that he had simply not been selected. Whatever the actual reason, however, England needed to keep him out of the Test team and this will accomplish that.

Now the question of who to bat at six becomes more interesting too. Compton has still had his incredible start to the season even though he only made 20-odd. Taylor scored a very impressive century, however, to put him in almost the opposite situation to Compton. Bairstow also scored a fifty on the back of his 182 for Yorkshire last week. There’s still a second innings to come, so we may have a clearer picture then, but right now I would still give it to Compton, with Bairstow as the second choice. I don’t think one innings is enough to put Taylor in form or Compton out of form. Bairstow, meantime, I think has consistently done almost enough to be selected. He would certainly not be a bad choice either.

Lancs’ season so far

One would have to say that it’s been poor. We are a quarter of the way through the Championship and are yet to win a match. That’s not great. I do think that we have played better than our record indicates, but in the end our record is what matters and we are seventh in the table. Currently we are 51 points behind top of the table Warwickshire. Whilst it is only May, that is still a huge, huge deficit to overcome and I think it would be very difficult to realistically maintain hope of defending our title. We would almost need to win every match from here. That said, the notion of our being in a relegation scrap is almost equally far-fetched and I do still think that we will finish closer to the top than the bottom of the table.

For reasons why we have been failing, the obvious place at which to look is the batting. All of our matches have been marred by collapses (even the one in which we scored 400) and we have twice failed to set a defensible second innings target and once failed to come close to an admittedly large one. However, the batting is not actually quite as bad as it looks. It is important to remember that the conditions have heavily favoured the batsmen this early in the year and most teams have struggled. The average first innings score in Division One so far this year is only 231. (The ‘first innings’ here is the more traditional per team, not per match as I used in an earlier post.) Lancashire’s average first innings score this year is 230, so it’s hardly been a catastrophic failure of the batsmen. Of course, that average is boosted by the 400 scored at Taunton, but so too is the overall average. That overall average is also boosted by the one-off scores of 545 and 445. If we throw out the top score for every team, the overall average drops to 197 and Lancashire’s drops to 173. It’s a bigger gap, but still hardly a chasm. The bigger problem has been second innings scores, but in that case one has to note the scoreboard pressure under which the batsmen have been put by the bowlers.

That is, I think, an underrated problem. Our bowling won us the title last year (with very little help from the batsmen) and although they have generally done well this year, the expectations in these conditions are correctly higher in these conditions and at least two of our three losses can be put down at least partly to bowling lapses. The above will probably sound harsh and maybe it is a bit, but the figures seem pretty clear. We lost to Warwickshire because the bowlers conceded a partnership in excess of 200 for the eighth wicket. In the first match we let Sussex get away after having them 15-3. And it is also easy to forget that our collapse against Notts only left us 20-odd runs in arrears. The bowlers do have some excuse in that match though, as Smith was injured and Jimmy was off the field for a lot of the match. It is very hard to win with only one front line seamer, even if that seamer is Glen Chapple.

And that gets to what I think is one of the main reasons why Lancs have struggled this year: luck. We played pretty poorly against Sussex, but it was a bad toss to lose. Against Warwickshire we were undone by an incredible partnership from a side that is making a habit of pulling off unlikely wins this year. We played very well against Somerset only to have the rain ruin our chances. And against Notts we were left hoping Chappie could bowl all day and take about seven wickets. We could have played better and if we were to be proper title contenders than we would need to have played better. But I don’t think anyone can doubt that we have not had the rub of the green so far this year. Had circumstances been only slightly different we could have three wins and a loss right now. It’s small consolation, but it does mean that we are likely to improve.