Tag: cricket

Bopara is still not the answer

There has been a suggestion that Ravi Bopara has secured the number six spot in the Tests with his 117* against Yorkshire today. It was a good innings, Essex only made a total of 199, but it is still not a reason to pick him to play at six.

First off, it does not change Bopara’s terrible Test stats. As I have noted previously, Bopara’s batting average against teams other than the West Indies is a dismal 15. Going by the same criteria (ie, throwing out Tests against the West Indies) that average fits neatly between Jimmy Anderson’s 13 and Graeme Swann’s 18. That’s good enough for a specialist bowler, it is not good enough for someone who has one Test wicket for 212 runs. There is no reason to suspect that if we give him another chance now it will be any different from all the previous chances we have given him. He can get runs against the Windies, but we need to pick someone who will succeed against South Africa too. There is no reason to suspect that Bopara will do that.

It is important to remember that Bopara’s innings, whilst good, was in the second division. In their only other match, Yorkshire conceded over 500 in the first innings against Kent. One hundred seventeen is a good fightback when part of 199, but the fact is that it is an innings against a bowling attack that is not special. He played a good innings in difficult circumstances against a mediocre attack in the second division. That does not at all indicate a reversal of his absolutely terrible Test form.

That innings was not even the best in this round of matches. Chris Read played a much better innings for Nottinghamshire, his hundred was ten times the score of the next best batsman. It was out of a tally of 162 and it was in the first division. Also in the first division, Rikki Clarke scored 140 after coming in with Warwickshire 81-7. Darren Maddy also scored what was for me an incredibly frustrating century in that match and they have probably ensured their side cannot lose from a position where they looked very likely to lose. As I type this, Nick Compton has scored his second century of the season to go with his 99 in the first match of the year. He leads the first division in runs, average and balls faced by a huge amount and that is with the incredibly bowling friendly conditions around the country so far.

I am very much in favour of the selectors looking at runs in the County Championship, but Bopara has failed so often he must not be given any special preference over other batsmen and he has demonstrably not been the best of those batsmen. There remains no rational argument to pick Bopara.

Australian fitness

Theoretically, Australia have bowling ‘in depth’. Which is good for them, because they are having a terrible time keeping any of their first choice quicks fit. In a best case scenario, they will have to choose three (usually) of James Pattinson, Pat Cummins, Peter Siddle, Ryan Harris and Ben Hilfenhaus. The problem for them is that it does not look like it will ever be a best case scenario. Cummins played one Test before injuring himself and has now missed the next eight. Pattinson played four Tests before being injured and missing the next three. Harris is so fragile that he has been omitted from the current Test purely as a precaution. With respect to Peter Siddle, there has been a lot of suggestion that Cummins, Pattinson and Harris are Australia’s three best bowlers. (Though I would dispute Cummins, and to a lesser extent Pattinson, on the ground that they have not played in enough Tests to properly establish their credentials.) They have to improve their fitness if they are to compete against the best sides again.

Compare the Australian situation to that of England: Jimmy Anderson has missed one Test (for any reason) since being rested for the tour of Bangladesh two years ago. There is no current consensus about the identity of the third seamer, but Steven Finn is yet to be ruled out through injury and Tim Bresnan has only been unavailable for three Tests out of the 17 since the start of the last Ashes. Only Stuart Broad has had notable injury problems, but even he has only missed four of the aforementioned 17 Tests.

The question of why Australia have such injury concerns is certainly an interesting one. I partly suspect that, slightly counter-intuitively, they play too little cricket, or at least too little first class and Test cricket. They played only three Tests in the ten months between the Ashes and the series in South Africa and their domestic teams play only ten matches in a season. It may be that when they do play they are simply not prepared for the more densely packed Tests seen in modern schedules. Cricket Australia need to find out the reason though. Australia already only have an average, or ever so slightly above, bowling attack. They can get by with playing their reserve bowlers against teams as prone to self destruction as India and the West Indies, they will not be able to do so against the better sides.

LV=CC week two roundup

It was another very entertaining week of matches in the County Championship this week. Early season conditions favoured the bowlers, especially on the first day as over 70 wickets fell around the country. This went a long way to ensuring that all seven matches had positive results. The full results were:
Nottinghamshire beat Durham by 114 runs
Sussex beat Lancashire by ten wickets
Middlesex beat Surrey by three runs
Warwickshire beat Somerset by two wickets
Derbyshire beat Glamorgan by 130 runs
Gloucestershire beat Hampshire by 33 runs
Kent beat Northamptonshire by an innings and 120 runs

It was a poor start to Lancashire‘s title defence as they were bowled out for 124 on the first day. Whilst this was hardly unusual given the conditions around the country, it still looked like a very bad toss to lose. There was some hope: Lancs had some of the best bowlers in the country last year and they reduced Sussex to 15-3 in reply. Michael Yardy and Ed Joyce but on a stand of 164, however, which probably decided the match. It was an especially good innings by Yardy who not only steadied the ship for Sussex but counterattacked brilliantly. Lancashire have to rue the four catches they put down on the second morning however. Sussex had one other fairly big partnership: 43 for the ninth wicket to end Lancashire’s brief hopes of keeping the deficit relatively in check. Lancashire did not play terribly poorly; credit must go to Yardy and Steve Magoffin whose batting and bowling performances respectively were excellent. Lancs could do with a bit more batting practise, but their biggest area of concern will probably be the fielding. It probably did not decide the match, but they dropped far too many catches. In the end, they only barely avoided an innings defeat. Ashwell Prince’s 58 was the biggest score of the match for Lancs as they only set Sussex a target of one to win.

Notts continued a good start to the season by beating Durham despite being bowled out for 161 in their first innings. Both sets of bowlers made good use of the friendly conditions, however, and that 161 turned out to be good enough for a first innings lead of 32. I think it was not unreasonable to expect more of the same, but instead Notts built an unchaseable total around Michael Lumb’s 131. Given that only three other batsmen in the entire match passed fifty, it was a fantastic innings. Durham started the chase of 368 by collapsing to 30-5 and it was only some good lower order batting that saw them avoid humiliation.

Middlesex‘s derby against Surrey looked like it might be the best match of the round even on the second day and it did not disappoint. It started off as a bit of a slow-burner; batsmen had to play themselves in properly before trying to go on. The top order for both sides did so passably well, though both suffered collapses in the first innings (Surrey’s the more dramatic). Neither, however, resembled the implosions seen in many other matches. It was slow, low-scoring work and very pleasing to see unfold even as I listened to Lancashire’s match. The work of Dawid Malan for Middlesex and Steve Davies for Surrey in getting the only two fifties of the first innings was very impressive in light of the fairly low team totals. The second innings saw the return of the proper collapses, however. Middlesex had a first innings lead of 34, but only set Surrey a target of 141. They needed something special from their bowlers and Tim Murtagh and Toby Roland-Jones just about delivered. It was close though. Rory Hamilton-Brown almost got Surrey across the line after they had been reduced to 22-3 and 68-4. He could not find a partner though and even though he made the second highest score of the match with 63, his departure left Surrey 126-8 and the tail could not quite do enough.

Somerset won the toss against Warwickshire at Edgbaston and chose to bat. Seventeen point four overs later they were 44-5 with Trescothick, Nick Compton and James Hildreth making just 14 between them. Compton at least managed to make his five last 64 balls, which is fairly impressive. I did not think they were going to get to 100, before Philander decided to become an all-rounder and top-scored in the innings with 38. In the end, Warwickshire had to rely on their own tail to get the lead close to 100. Somerset had a chance to set a good total and although they lost their openers cheaply again, they got an excellent hundred (133) from Compton and 93 from Jos Buttler. The pair of them put on 167, but it was a mark of how little help they got from the rest of the batsmen that their joint contribution was over half of the total of 354 all out. With Somerset’s batting, it is probably fair to say that it should have been more. Jeetan Patel’s unbeaten 43 left them rueing that failure. Although Warwickshire had briefly been 190-3, they collapsed in just eight overs to 207-8 and Somerset had a real chance. I think, however, that the more deserving team won.

Derbyshire‘s match against Glamorgan was a case of one semi-competent batting innings winning a match. At the end of day one, Derbyshire had been bowled out for 130 and had reduced Glamorgan to 37-4. They would go on to bowl Glamorgan out for 95 before themselves collapsing (again) to 37-5. Eventually they found some semblance of batting in the lower-middle order, most notably an unbeaten 51 from David Wainwright, and could set Glamorgan over 200 to win. It was not objectively a lot, but in the context of the match all the safe money was on Derbyshire. The extent of Glamorgan’s collapse was still pretty surprising, however. They got off to a decent start and were at one point 92-3. Six overs later, they were all out for 102. Jonathan Clare did most of the damage for Derbyshire, but it was still a spectacular implosion.

Gloucestershire managed comfortably the best performance in the first innings of this round of matches in their trip to Hampshire. They put up 314 all out, thanks mostly to 114 from opener Chris Dent. Despite a solid 74 from Simon Katich, Hampshire’s reply never seemed to really get going and Will Gidman’s 5-48 ensured that they were bowled out 115 in arrears. Gloucs made enough of it, but I’m sure they would have liked to have done more. No one went past fifty in their second innings, and Hampshire were set a not unreasonable 290 to win. Hants’ top order didn’t bother to show up for that chase, however, and found themselves 72-6 at one point. Wicket-keeper Michael Bates and Chris Wood engineered a recovery, but when Will Gidman struck to remove Bates 13 short of the latter’s hundred, the match was all but up.

Kent had the biggest victory of the week over Northamptonshire. Northants won the toss, batted and were bowled out for 132. It was an interesting innings as there were no scores of note and the wickets were shared around the Kent bowlers. Northants possibly scented a comeback when Kent were 35-2, but solid contributions from Ben Harmison, Brendan Nash and Geraint Jones combined with an unbeaten 128 from Mike Powell meant that they trailed by a massive 236 after the first innings. Northants did not make much of an effort to make Kent bat again. Captain David Sales 42 was the highest of only three double-digit contributions to their 116 all out as Matt Coles took 6-51 to achieve the earliest finish (lunch on day three) of the week.

Victory for Notts coupled with defeats for Somerset and Surrey mean that Nottinghamshire now top the first division table with 38 points from two matches. In Division Two, Derbyshire are enjoying one of their best starts to a season in recent times; they sit atop the table with 39 points and two wins from two.

Nick Compton would be a dark horse at best for England’s vacant number six spot, but after two matches he leads the first division in both total runs and average. Jos Buttler’s good, but ultimately just insufficient, innings should also keep him in the selectors’ minds.

Armchair Selector: Australia win by three wickets

This should not have been a close match. It was, in fact, almost a match that refused to be close. After three days and two hours, the West Indies seemed to be in an unassailable position. After three days and four hours, a draw seemed like the most likely bet. About thirty minutes after that, Australia seemed like strong favourites. But these transitions happened very quickly and at almost no point before the fifth day did it seem like the result was in the balance. It was not until the West Indies dug in on the fifth morning and rain delayed the restart after an already delayed lunch that the match seemed close. In the end, Australia won for two main reasons: Continue reading on The Armchair Selector…

The importance of being realistic

This winter has been a good one for the Australians. Not only did they overcome a weak Indian side, they did so comfortably enough that they could mostly brush a loss to New Zealand under the rug. Better still for them, England lost four out of five of our winter Tests. It has prompted a resurgence of confidence from the antipodes and over the past few months there have been quite a few willing to express it. During and immediately after England’s matches I got quite a few messages on Twitter about how England were going to be destroyed in 2013 by the ‘mighty aussies’ [sic]. In particular, there were several assurances that our batting would collapse in a heap against their pace attack.

Today in Bridgetown, the West Indies declared their first innings closed on 449-9.

LV=CC week one roundup

In a pretty good start to the County Championship, six of the seven round one matches had positive results with only Kent’s trip to Headingley ending in a draw. The full results were:
Nottinghamshire beat Worcestershire by 92 runs
Somerset beat Middlesex by six wickets
Surrey beat Sussex by 86 runs
Derbyshire beat Northamptonshire by 202 runs
Essex beat Gloucestershire by an innings and 38 runs
Leicestershire beat Glamorgan by 52 runs
Yorkshire drew with Kent

I mostly listened to the Kent match this weekend (in the hope that the White Rose would lose) so I’m hoping that it is not a sign of things to come as I turn my attention to Lancashire from next week.

The Notts and Leics matches were similar, both times the home side lost the toss and were put into bat (which actually happened in six of the seven matches, Kent winning the toss and batting being the only exception). And in both matches they collapsed dramatically. In Leicester the hosts lost wickets to the first two balls of the season and were 1-3 at one point with each of their top three making ducks. The fact that they made it to 249 all out was a dramatic recovery then. Notts did not start out quite as badly, but they did not recover as well either and succumbed to 118 all out via 34-5. Both sides were able to instigate collapses in their opponents though, Glamorgan were at one point 34-7 en route to 124 all out and Worcestershire simply lost wickets at regular intervals in getting a first innings lead of 12. This is where the matches diverged sharply: Notts proceeded to bat Worcs out of the match with 403, whilst Leics collapsed to 110 all out. Both were enough, however.

Whilst I did not get to watch Yorkshire lose (I would have been pretty surprised if I had) I did get to see Kent rack up 537-9 against them before declaring. Amazingly, that included a ninth wicket stand of 157 after Kent had been 374-8. A century by Jonny Bairstow was not quite enough for Yorkshire to avoid the follow-on (though probably gives him an early lead in the race for number six), but an opening stand of 115 in the second innings mostly ended any hopes of a positive result in that match.

If I had to pick one match that I thought would be drawn, I would have guessed Somerset v Middlesex, after the start was badly delayed by rain. Somerset never let Middlesex build a big partnership in the first innings, though, and then their strong batting order got them a lead of 104. George Dockrell took 6-27 to give Somerset an easy target of 72 with plenty of time. They lost four wickets en route, but made it pretty easily in the end.

Surrey did not get much of a contribution from their batsmen, only three went past fifty in both innings, but a very good group performance from their bowlers made sure it was enough. Sussex were bowled out for 196 in the first innings and the only bright spot as they tried to chase 342 was 108 by Luke Wells. Once again Surrey’s bowlers kept them in check and shared the wickets around and Sussex never really looked like getting the runs.

Derbyshire’s match at the county ground against Northants was very close after the first innings. Derbyshire lead by 22 at that point on the back of 110 by Dan Redfern and 83 by Ross Whiteley. The rest of the batsmen contributed only 87 between them. The second innings was completely different, however. A Martin Guptill 137 anchored a score of 314-3 from Derbyshire and although Northants managed to bat until late on day four, they were bowled out for 134.

The most one sided match of the first round was at Chelmsford. Essex were put into bat and responded by scoring 364. One hundred thirty of those were from opener Billy Godleman and Gloucestershire simply had no response. They collapsed to 180 all out and were asked to follow-on. Second time around Graham Napier took 5-58 as Gloucestershire could only make 146 and succumbed to an innings defeat.

Four sides are still yet to play, but so far Somerset have the early lead in Division One with 22 points from their first match, whilst Essex lead the second tier with 23 points.

England win by eight wickets!

It’s been a disappointing winter, but England have finished it on a high. Chasing 94 to win at an absolute canter with KP hitting the winning runs with a six of none other than Dilshan (who conceded 16 to that man off four balls in the final over). I could not have asked for any more from the end of the match, really. It means that England cling onto the number one Test ranking still and will have a bit of confidence going into India this winter. It was straightforward in the end. Sri Lanka never developed a really threatening partnership and only the early wicket of Strauss threatened to disrupt England’s chase. KP took the bowling by the scruff of the neck again, however, and England ended up chasing the target in just 19.4 overs. KP got a deserved Man of the Match and almost did enough to back up his statements about not having a problem against left-arm spinners. Almost.

For now though, attention can shift in the short-term for the County Championship, and the battle therein for the number six spot in the English batting order, and the Test series in the West Indies as a good build up to their tour of England in a couple of months. Both promise to be fascinating, but I think the battle for number six will be more so. Samit Patel acquitted himself well in the second Test, but always looked like a horse for a course and it seems unlikely that he is in England’s plans for the summer. That would mean back to Bopara, back to Morgan, Bresnan or a Lions player. Simple. Morgan and Bopara should be discounted by the selectors, however. The former decided to play in the IPL rather than bat himself back into form for Middlesex and Bopara is Bopara. Bresnan seems unlikely as a six/seven batsman and given the recent preferences of the selectors will probably be the third seamer, batting at eight, or not play at all. Which would leave a Lions player. Which one will probably be down to LVCC performances, though it is interesting that James Taylor was not included in the England Performance Squad.

There is also a smaller battle to be had now for the third seamer. Bresnan would appear to be the first choice, as almost a proper all-rounder, but Finn seemed to outbowl him in the final Test. As I said above, I don’t think Bresnan will play as a sixth bat/fourth seamer (though I think he is well-qualified to do so). Once again, performances in the LVCC might make the difference, but right now I think Finn would get the nod.

Those are all things on which to keep an eye over the next six weeks. For now though, time to celebrate a much-awaited victory and the retention of the number one spot!

Colombo, day four

England are well placed to win tomorrow and they mostly have one man for whom to thank for that: Graeme Swann. He struck twice in the penultimate over to not only break a stubborn partnership between Samaraweera and Jayawardene, but also sending the nightwatchman back to the hutch two balls later. England might have fancied their chances of winning today, but will probably be happy with having Sri Lanka effectively 33-6 at stumps. Mahela Jayawardene is still in though and we already know just how troublesome he can make batting with the tail.

They day may have looked a bit dull on paper, 214-6, but in practice it was anything but. Prasad started the day by looking less like a nightwatchman and more like a replacement opener. He had a few lives, but comfortably outlasted his partner. The first wicket belatedly brought Dishonourable Dilshan to the crease and the England fieldsmen wasted no time in letting them know exactly what they thought of his antics yesterday. Dilshan responded by suggesting to the umpire that Cook had tread on the protected part of the wicket. (He had actually extended himself to stride over it.) It was all quite feisty for a while; the only thing it missed was KP bowling to Dilshan, which I would have loved to see. It did settle down, at least until Dilshan was dismissed. He got a good ball from Jimmy which he edged into his pads and from there into the hands of Strauss at slip. He immediately reviewed and the only evidence either way was a small red mark appearing on the bat as the ball went by. Given the technology, it was not going to get any clearer than that: with nothing to suggest that the umpire was wrong and a bit to suggest that he was right, Dilshan stayed out. He then threw a bit of a tantrum, but that was to be expected. The Sri Lankans both in the booth and in the dressing room proceeded to then display a complete ignorance of how the DRS actually worked. Michael Atherton had to explain it in the booth to an unhappy Sanath Jayasuria and the Sri Lankan management later expressed confusion about why Dilshan did not get the benefit of the doubt.

It is remarkable just how much gamesmanship Sri Lanka have managed to squeeze into the Test as they try to cling on to the series. It really is quite ugly. They have been repeatedly crossing the wicket when celebrating dismissals and when taking drinks, Samaraweera stood his ground in the first innings, the entire team went into a strop when they ran out of referrals and then there is Dilshan. His antics bowling to KP, appealing excessively (for which he was fined), hiding behind a nightwatchman and then the entire scenario of his dismissal are disgraceful and hopefully he parts with a bit more than just the ten per cent of his match fee he has already lost. I know most of the world wants to see England lose and slip off the number one place, but I think that those who do should also ask themselves if they really want to encourage this sort of behaviour from Sri Lanka.

Whilst all that was going on, it must be pointed out that Sangakkara has now edged the ball four times in this series and has walked straight off every single time. Most of them were pretty obvious, yes, but given the way the rest of his team were behaving I think he deserves praise for playing the game properly. It is too bad that he is no longer the captain.

At the end of the day, England are probably only a couple of early wickets away from levelling the series. Both Jayawardenes and Angelo Mathews are not yet out and can score runs, but if England can pick up where they left off (and they still have a new-ish ball) they will be well set. Sri Lanka have no choice but to score slowly on this pitch to try to keep their last wickets in hand, and as a consequence it will probably not be until past tea interval that the match is completely safe. If they can last almost that long though, there could be a scenario in which England have to chase about 160 in forty overs or so. It would be interesting to see how they would go about that, but it is probably confined to the realm of fantasy. Sri Lanka have batsmen left who could do that, but most teams would still rather be in England’s position.

West Indies v Australia preview

Almost lost in the glare of the start of the County Championship (it was a very exciting first day) is the three Test series in the Caribbean between the West Indies and Australia. It should be interesting; the tour was finally scheduled properly ,ODIs first, and the West Indies emerged with a very creditable 2-2 draw. It sets things up well for the Test series, the West Indies looked much better than I think most were expecting and Australia are still in a state of flux.

The rest of this post is now on The Armchair Selector! I’ve explained why here, but if you already know or don’t care then continue reading…