Nagpur, day two: India 87-4

After India probably shaded the first day of the Nagpur Test England emphatically won the second. England actually found batting a bit easier in the morning. Perhaps India had been a bit demoralised by Matt Prior and Joe Root playing comfortably the night before and perhaps the pitch was just a tad easier. Prior was ultimately out missing a ball that just went on, but Joe Root continued to bat very well until finally getting a bit too impatient and getting out. It was very similar to the dismissal of Pietersen, actually, and by coincidence occurred on exactly the same score. But it was a very good innings by Root and especially given in how much trouble England were. Perhaps most important was how composed he looked for most of it. It leaves a bit of a selection dilemma for the tour of New Zealand. It would be very harsh to drop Root after this, but Jonny Bairstow had an excellent Test at Lord’s at the end of last summer and the pitches in New Zealand will be closer to that. This is also just the one innings from Root. And then there is James Taylor, who should have been in the squad instead of Eoin Morgan. It is a very tricky problem, but fortunately for England one which can be left for another day.

After Prior was out Graeme Swann came up with a nice reminder of how good a batsman he really can be. A lot of the time when he bats we see him come in at ten with only one of the other bowlers for company and he ends up trying to get quick runs before England are bowled out. This time though he had Root at the other end who was settled and Swann played much more sensibly with him. He still played some shots, but he has the talent to do so within reason and today he had the time to get to 56 before he started getting over aggressive and was lbw reverse sweeping. It isn’t the shot one really minds from a tail-ender, and especially not one batting with Jimmy Anderson, but it is not a shot with a good reward to risk ratio and there was really no need to play it at that point. It was a very good innings overall though and Swann’s first fifty since 2009. Hopefully this innings is enough to ensure that he bats a bit higher up the order next time and has a chance to form a proper partnership.

England’s score of 330 looked like a decent one. India have to win this game and batting last I would estimate they need no fewer than four hundred in the first innings. That did not look like it would be easy to get at the start of the innings and now at stumps it looks very unlikely. I suggested yesterday that the success of Ishant Sharma would bode well for Jimmy Anderson and that is exactly what happened. Anderson was not only the best bowler, he was almost unplayable. He took three wickets and the dismissals of Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir were both set up beautifully. He did not have time to set up Virender Sehwag though: the ball that knocked over Sehwag’s middle stump was only the third of the innings. He beat the bat of Virat Kohli a few times as well and looked an almost constant threat during his spell after tea.

Part of the reason Anderson was so threatening though was the bowling of the rest of the attack. England started off attacking, but eventually settled down into the same plan that India had used. Not only did it have the same effect of building the pressure, but England’s spinners also started to find real turn. With Tim Bresnan getting the ball to move about and Swann and Monty Panesar getting the ball to turn and even bounce a bit there was no way for India to really release the pressure without playing some shots. Anderson was bowling better than the other three, but I don’t think he would have had the same success without the pressure being built at the other end as well.

There was also some very good captaincy by Alastair Cook. Tendulkar had looked uncertain against Panesar, but Cook brought Anderson on to bowl instead and it paid off with the fifth ball. It was the ninth time Anderson had dismissed Tendulkar, giving him sole possession of the record for most dismissals of Tendulkar. It will also bring the questions of how long Tendulkar will stay in Test cricket back to the fore. The ball that got him was a good one that nipped back in, but Tendulkar’s footwork was absent and he seemed surprised that the ball kept low despite almost every ball in the match doing the same. It was a great ball, but he played it very poorly and there was a strong sensation as he walked off that it was his penultimate innings. Certainly it ought to be. He is doing neither the team nor himself any favours by hanging on.

England are in control of the Test. The two batsmen at the crease now for India are out of form and looked very uncertain playing out the rest of the day. The next man in is on debut, though he has had a good domestic season, and after that is only Ravichandran Ashwin and the tail. Ashwin has batted well in the series, but it is not a good idea to put one’s hopes on a number eight, even a good one. Even if he does score some runs again it won’t matter if the other batsmen don’t get some first. India can’t afford to only get up to parity; they have to get a first innings lead which means they will have to bat all day tomorrow and then some. It’s not a task they can leave for the number eight, though may be too much even for the recognised batsmen. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility of course, but it’s less likely than the alternative and at the other end of the spectrum England have a chance to effectively put the match to rest with one very good hour in the first half of the day.

Nagpur, day one: England 199-5

India are probably on top after a very interesting first day of cricket. Certainly they have played much better today than we saw for most of the last two Tests; they had a clear plan when bowling and some much sharper fielding kept England tied down. But they do appear to have missed a trick with the selection; their most dangerous bowler all day was Ishant Sharma who bowled quite well at the start of the day in particular. But he is their only seamer and they have four spinners. It is hard to say that it has failed given the position in which England find themselves, but one gets the impression that India might be in an even better position if they had backed their seamers more. They did not even give Sharma the second new ball right away.

England’s score looks worse than it actually is, however. The pitch is very slow and it is very hard to score runs. India had a very defensive field all day and they did an excellent job of keeping England tied down and with the variable bounce on offer it was very dangerous to try to break the shackles. It also meant that it was hard for new batsmen to come in and we saw a couple of collapses because of this. It is actually a very poor Test pitch; there is nothing wrong with turners and there is nothing wrong with giving something to the bowlers in any country, even quite a lot to the bowlers, but this had nothing for the bowlers and nothing for the batsmen. It was just slow and low and will probably get even worse as the match progresses.

But although England’s position looks worse than it is, it is still not a good one. Of the five wickets to go down at least four of them were avoidable. The one that was not was Alastair Cook; he got an absolutely shocking lbw decision on a ball that struck him outside the line of off stump and was actually going even further away from the stumps. It was possibly (possibly not definitely) the worst decision I’ve seen so far in this series and that is saying quite a bit. It is yet another example that DRS, even with its flaws both real and imagined, is preferable to having an umpire standing alone. There was a suggestion that Jonathan Trott should have been out a couple of overs before to the same umpire, but the ball actually struck him just fractionally outside the line of off stump and was correctly given not out. The umpire appears to have ‘made up’ for a decision that he got correct in the first place and it could really hurt England on a pitch that would have suited Cook’s patience.

Of the other dismissals, Nick Compton’s early dismissal is borderline. He played at a ball he could have left, but it was in the corridor of uncertainty and bounced a lot more than the previous delivery. It was good bowling as much as it was bad batting. Jonathan Trott grafted hard for 44 before losing his concentration and his off stump. It was a poor bit of batting, but that is the sort of dismissal that becomes more likely on this pitch. Scoring is so slow that any lapse in concentration is magnified. Kevin Pietersen was out in a similar manner; he grafted past tea before losing his patience and slapping a catch to mid-wicket. It was an innings of the sort of ‘new KP’ we saw in Mumbai and to an extent in Calcutta, the KP that can actually construct an innings by playing sensibly for a time and then upping the rate, finished by a return of the classic impatient Pietersen. It is at least a start though and if Pietersen can continue to bat properly after he leaves India his average will end up closer to where it probably ought to be instead of below fifty as it has been.

Ian Bell’s dismissal was the worst. It wasn’t stupid, but it was careless. He pushed tamely at an utterly innocuous delivery outside off and just pushed it straight into the hands of short extra cover. It was the first ball he had faced from Piyush Chawla, but it wasn’t anything to do with the spin. He didn’t misread the delivery in any way; he actually middled it. It was just lazy and it could have happened to any bowler. It’s that which has really been the problem for Bell recently. He has not played poorly by any stretch; he made runs pretty consistently over the summer and even in this series has not looked in poor form at all. He has got in more often than not this year and whilst he has been unlucky at times not to get a hundred (he was stranded by rain and by England winning) he has also got careless and has got himself out between fifty and a hundred no fewer than four times. He needs to find a way to stop doing this because although he should not be dropped in the near future there is an increasing amount of competition for middle order spots.

It is hard to judge what a good first innings score is on this pitch. As much as England wobbled in the afternoon, they have had two good partnerships: Pietersen and Trott and then Matt Prior and Joe Root have both been much more settled and have accepted that they cannot score quickly. It shows how comfortable the latter pair were that by the end of the day India were trying not to bowl any more overs despite needing to win the Test! In a way it is similar to what we saw at Mumbai when India scraped past three hundred and it looked like a very good score before England easily went past it; we won’t really be able to judge this pitch until India have had a bat. There are no demons in the pitch, but nor are there runs and England do still have some advantages in reserve. Sharma got reverse swing very early today and Anderson will be a threat if he can do the same. The pitch will also probably deteriorate a lot at the match progresses and it may be very hard to bat last. It may become a battle of patience and if that happens I think one will have to back England. But that is a long way off as is England’s desired score of over three hundred. They need Prior and Root to get themselves in tomorrow morning and ideally get enough to render the discussion of three hundred irrelevant.

Second warmup selection

England started their second warmup match, this one against Mumbai A, early this morning/late last night. Most of the regulars sat out this time, but there were a pair of battles of note. Joe Root and Nick Compton went head-to-head at the top of the order as they each vied for the now-vacant spot alongside Alastair Cook and Jonny Bairstow and Eoin Morgan both batted in the middle order as they looked to get the nod to replace Ian Bell when he returns to England for the birth of his child. Graham Onions also played, but Tim Bresnan did not which suggests that Bresnan already has the last bowling place.

There have been some oddities in the selection for this match, chief amongst them Alastair Cook sitting out. I can understand this from the standpoint of wanting all the players to get a match at some point and wanting the likely Test team, or most of it, to play in the final warmup. This means that Root, Compton, Morgan and Baristow all have to play in this match which in turn means that some of the regulars have to sit out and it is better that the centurion does so then someone like Ian Bell who made only five in the first warmup. But at the same time Cook is a new captain and it is important that he stamp his authority on the side. I think it is a bit early for him to be sitting out matches, even if there is a good reason. I would rather see him getting used to his new charges and possibly more importantly making sure that they are used to him. There is also the fact that Broad sat out the first warmup and will likely sit out the last one as well since England will want Stuart Meaker to get a game after being drafted late into the squad as cover for Steven Finn. This means that Cook will not have a single warmup match with his vice-captain before the first Test. This is not a disaster, certainly, but it hardly seems ideal either.

As far as actual selection issues, we have learnt a bit from the first day. Compton failed again, making only one, but Root did not really make the most of this as he fell for only 28. By all accounts Root did look the more settled and composed, but given that he started out as the second favourite he probably needed a big score to put him in front of Compton. England batted first this time, so they each should get another chance in the second innings as well. Bairstow made a century to advance his claims for the reserve middle order spot, but Morgan made 76 as well so it is not fully settled yet. That said, unlike Compton and Root there is previous Test history to consider with Morgan and Bairstow and that also favours Bairstow. Morgan really should not have even been on the plane. The selectors have been inexplicably favourable to Morgan, but Bairstow should have done enough today to secure the spot as Bell’s deputy. Tomorrow/tonight we should see England bowl and see if Onions and Monty Panesar can put any doubts in the selectors’ minds about Bresnan, as well as just how bad an idea it was to let Broad be vice-captain.

England’s selection a bit clearer

I’ve said a few times before that I don’t think England are well advised to select bits-and-pieces players just for a special occasion like India and that therefore Samit Patel should not play. I stand by the first part, but Patel has furnished solid evidence in the first warmup that he could be able to hold his own in the side as a batsman and if he can do that then there is no reason he should not play. He scored 104 in England’s first and only innings and came in when England were under a bit of pressure. Only Alastair Cook made a higher score. I would not say that this guarantees him a place; we still have yet to see what Jonny Bairstow can do and it is a bit harsh to drop him after the excellent innings he played at Lord’s. But Patel made his century against a fairly strong attack and certainly a stronger one than Bairstow will face when he gets a chance. I think Bairstow will have to be very convincing to force a place from here and given the selectors’ clear preference to having someone who can bowl a bit it may already be an impossible task.

The warmup match also clarified the bowling selection, albeit in an unfortunate way. Steven Finn started as the favourite for the final bowling position, but he picked up a thigh injury early on and missed the rest of the match. He is not a doubt for the tour as a whole, but there is little chance of his playing the first Test unless he can guarantee to Flower and Cook that he is one hundred per cent fit and I doubt that will happen. With Patel looking very likely to play that also reduces the chance that England will try to give Monty Panesar a game as a second spinner, meaning that the last bowling place appears to be down to Tim Bresnan and Graham Onions. Bresnan is certainly the initial favourite, as evidenced by the fact that he was chosen ahead of Onions to play in this match in the first place. He also took 3-59 and scored 33 not out to put Onions in a very similar position as Bairstow with two warmups remaining.

The only selection issue that was opened up more was that of Cook’s new opening partner. Nick Compton was given the first crack at the role, but lasted just three balls and failed to score. Unfortunately for him, since India A batted first he did not get a second chance in the match. He likely will in at least one of the remaining warmups, but Joe Root will also get a shot to prove that he is the best option instead. Compton is still probably the favourite until Root makes a strong case otherwise, but I actually would not be surprised to see Cook sit out one of the next two warmups and have Compton and Root go head-to-head.

There was other bad news for England as well. They did manage to put up a good score overall, but five of their wickets fell to the part time spin of Yuvraj Singh. Singh is rather better than Kevin Pietersen’s memorable assessment of him as a ‘pie-chucker’, but it is still a touch worrying that England still pick out the spinner to whom to give their wickets. The good news at least for England was of Singh’s five wickets one was a tailender, one had a century and one had fifty. The dismissals of Pietersen and Ian Bell are both issues that will need to be addressed, but it is at least not as panic inducing as a proper collapse.

England squad in India

With the retirement of Andrew Strauss, there now another aspect to the question of how England will look when they play India on the 15th of November. England need a new opener in addition to deciding how they want the middle order to look and deciding on the balance of the bowling attack.

As far as an opening partner for Cook goes, there are three main possibilities: Trott could be moved up a spot with someone like Nick Compton coming in to the middle order, Joe Root of Yorkshire could come in or Michael Carberry could come in. Of the three, I think moving Trott up would be a very bad idea. He has batted at three for almost his entire career and despite being a bit short of form at the moment he has had great success at that spot. To move him would also necessitate moving Ian Bell up to three and them possibly leaving three batsmen at four, five and six with only six caps between them. I would rather break up the inexperience. Choosing between Root and Carberry is interesting because a couple of years ago there really would not have been a choice. Carberry was the heir apparent and was even given a Test against Bangladesh when Strauss was rested in 2010. But he suffered from a blood clot in the lung and although he has fought back from that his form has fallen off this year and Root has had a blinder. (Both have been in Division Two.) I’d be quite tempted to have them both on the plane to India and see who looks better in the warmups. I’d have Root as the favourite though and (with a couple of LV=CC matches still to come, of course) if I had to pick just one right now it would be him.

With the bowling attack, England still have the ‘problem’ of having more Test quality bowers than they can fit into a single match. There is also the added problem in India of whether to play two spinners and if so how many seamers to play alongside them. The received wisdom is to play two spinners in India and indeed anywhere on the subcontinent. It is important as it provides a threat when there is not a lot of help for the seamers as well as a way to keep the scoring tied down. But England’s strength is seam bowling. We have seen in New Zealand’s series in India that good seam bowlers can get help from the Indian pitches and can make life difficult for the batsmen, at least in August. I think England would be well advised to play three seam bowlers, but that does not rule out two spinners. England played three seamers and two spinners in the one match they won over the winter last year, so Flower is clearly not impossibly set against the idea and it has been successful. I favour five bowlers anyway, but especially in conditions such as in India that can be quite draining on the bowlers. To play three seamers and two spinners would give England ample options for both attack and defence and I think they will need that.

The most obvious second spinner would be Monty Panesar, though Samit Patel does offer more with the bat and acquitted himself decently in Sri Lanka. He did not, however, look Test quality and England may need a bit more in a four Test series. There is also the matter of Swann’s elbow to be considered. He is being rested from the ODIs against South Africa, but it is not at all clear how fit he will be in India. England could not afford to have just Patel and a half-fit Swann, I think, which would mean an almost certain recall for Monty Panesar. He didn’t look great in the one match he played in Sri Lanka, but he was very good in the UAE before that and his nearest competition, James Tredwell and Simon Kerrigan, are a bit short of international quality and still too inexperienced respectively. At least one of them (and with an eye to the future I would have it be Kerrigan) should be in the squad as backup, but I would not expect them to play unless Swann is so injured he has to miss a Test.

This just leaves the middle order. Right now it is Trott, Bell, Taylor and Bairstow, but if England do play five bowlers than one of them would have to miss out and it’s a fair assumption that it will be one of the lower two. (Though if Trott is moved up to open then that would no longer be the case.) Bairstow is probably the favourite to stay in the side after his heroics at Lord’s, but Taylor looked very talented as well and should at least be on the plane. He can push for a spot in the playing XI during the warmups. There will also be no doubt suggestions of recalls for Eoin Morgan and/or Kevin Pietersen. Neither should be seriously considered, however. Morgan did well by announcing that he wanted to focus on his Test career, but he still has to back that up by actually refining his technique and improving at the first class level. He may get back in the test side at some point, but he is behind both Bairstow and Taylor now and will need to prove himself over most or all of a season with Middlesex. Pietersen should simply never be considered for England again. Most of his actions this summer have been unconscionable and although he was not the main reason for Strauss’s departure there can be little doubt that he does carry some of the blame. As Rob Smyth put very well in the Guardian: ‘if he cannot see “Straussy’s” blood on his hands, he has an even bigger lack of self-awareness than we feared’. Pietersen threw England into disarray at the end of 2008 and he is having a go at doing so again. Regardless of how talented he may be, it is time England got shot of him for good.

With all of the above in mind, my touring squad to India would be: Cook*, Anderson, Bairstow, Bell, Bresnan, Broad, Carberry, Davies†, Finn, Kerrigan, Panesar, Prior†, Root, Swann, Taylor, Trott

The playing XI would depend heavily on the results of warmup matches, but I would lean toward: Cook*, Root, Trott, Bell, Bairstow, Prior†, Broad, Swann, Anderson, Finn, Panesar

LV=CC week eleven roundup

It seems like it has been ages since there has been any Championship cricket. In fact it has only been a month, but a month of only white ball cricket at both the domestic and international level is a long time. Unfortunately it ended up a fairly uneventful week with all four first division matches finishing as draws and so far two of the three second division matches have also been drawn with Northants’ match against Glamorgan only through the second day.

There has been some movement in the tables, however, with Warwickshire getting enough bonus points to move into the top spot of Division One. The Bears have managed this with a match in hand against second-placed Nottinghamshire. Middlesex also picked up enough points to become the third side to 100 in the year, despite being bowled out for an Australia-esque 98 in their first innings. Whilst still outsiders for the title; they remain in the hunt. There was no movement at the bottom of the table with Worcestershire drawing with Durham and both sides remaining in the relegation zone. Division Two leaders Derbyshire did not play this week but Yorkshire, despite a brilliant 222* from Joe Root, did not have time to significantly close the gap. Their draw against Hampshire coupled with Kent also not playing this week was enough to keep Yorkshire in the promotion zone, though they are not secure there. Kent are only seven points behind having played one fewer match and both Hampshire and Northants (who are 336-5 after two days against Glamorgan) are also within a victory of going second. That should make for a very interesting battle over the last two months of the season.

For Lancashire it was another week of disappointment. There was some worry that the month long break may have broken the good form that they had started to show, but fortunately this proved not to be the case. Lancashire put up their highest score of the season with 485-7 against Surrey at Guildford including centuries from Paul Horton and Steven Croft, the latter an unbeaten 154. Lancs made a good start to the bowling as well, with Chapple hitting Rory Burns’ off stump with the first ball of the innings. But with Surrey on 49-2, Lancs ran into Kevin Pietersen. With a fairly flat pitch and small boundaries he hit an absolutely staggering 234* off only 190 deliveries. Whilst Lancashire have had some trouble finishing sides off this year, this time it was not something that can be put at the feet of the bowlers; Pietersen was simply in unbelievable form. It is still a bit troubling for Lancashire, however, that we have now been in very good positions in each of our last four matches and have only managed to win one of them. The weather has been a factor, but our bowling has been surprisingly flat and it has cost us a good chance to move up the table. We still have some good opportunities coming up, but there are now only six matches left in the season and we still sit sixth in the table (and have played more matches than every other team).

KP’s knock was, of course, the highlight of the week, but it was a good round overall for England players. Andrew Strauss scored exactly fifty of Middlesex’s 98 all out in the first innings (the only other double digit score was Gareth Berg’s 32) and 127 not out in the second. Certainly worrying form for the South Africans ahead of the first Test. Ian Bell also scored 57 for Warwickshire.