Adelaide thoughts

The Adelaide Test is over, and I have not watched as much of it as I feel like I should. On the other hand, the bits that I have seen have been pretty much the same as the first three Tests, but there have been some interesting points:

– Most interesting was that Clarke did not enforce the follow-on despite having a huge first innings lead. The only reason for this I can think is that he wanted to rest his bowlers in the heat, but I think it was a bad idea. It didn’t make a difference to the result, but India did get 400 in the second innings at Sydney (their only score of note admittedly) and it seems unreasonable to jeopardise the match by scoring needless runs. It is the last Test of the home series and only Siddle played in the first five. They can (and maybe should) rest in the ODIs, but first they have a Test to win.

– After Clarke did declare, the declaration batting was fairly poor. Most notable was Haddin, who scored so slowly he provoked a seemingly outraged calling of the side in by Clarke. I understand that he is badly in need of runs, but after playing terrible shots for the better part of a year, the declaration was not the time to suddenly start scratching around. It was selfish play, and it in it’s own way was just as bad as his flashes in Cape Town and Hobart.

– It’s no surprise that Sehwag played like an idiot, but as captain some measure of restraint may have been warranted. In the second innings he was opening the batting in a nominal chase of 500, but in practise the goal would have been to bat out the draw and punish Clarke for not making them follow-on. It was a time for the captain to lead from the front and dig in. Instead he continued to throw his bat at everything, rode his luck past fifty (five aerial edges) and finally played a heave to the spinner that was an insult to the game. It was the very antithesis of a captain’s innings and whilst I’m not optimistic, there ought to be repercussions for his behaviour.

Adelaide, day one

There was probably no need to actually watch the cricket today. (And actually I didn’t watch the entire day, I wanted to see some of the tennis too.) India played the same way they did in England and the same way they did for most of the first three Tests in Australia though. Once again they looked like they cared for about a session and after they had bowled for longer than they would in a limited overs match they seemed to give up and wait for the declaration. It was a flat deck, but after they had got the top three out in the morning they had a chance if they had applied some more pressure. It was not on an atypical Adelaide wicket that England reduced Australia to 2-3 and eventually 245 all out. Australia were only 82 runs better off when they lost their third wicket this time, but India never looked like they were going to press home that advantage. Clarke and Ponting deserve credit though; they batted imperiously for two and a bit sessions in an unbroken stand of over 250.

Part of India’s malaise is almost certainly down to the fact that Virender Sehwag was the captain. It rather surprised me when it was announced that he was to captain the side for this Test as it did not require precognitive powers (not that I have them, or that such powers even exist) to guess what was going to happen. They say that a captain sets the example and I shudder to think what sort of example Sehwag sets. He must be one of the laziest Test cricketers in the world, perhaps even one of the laziest cricketers full stop. The Chuck-Fleetwood Smiths once described his fielding as ‘with a deck chair drinking a piña colada‘ and as far as I can tell that’s his default setting. He absolutely failed to inspire the team in any way when they had been in the field all day and I very much doubt anyone is surprised by that.

India have been so poor in this series that I have almost run out of ways to describe them without getting repetitive. Their only hope in this match is that the pitch is so flat their batsmen can get a few runs and they can draw the game. True Indian fans may hope that doesn’t happen though. Despite the multitude of excuses for their poor form, there are starting to be a few high profile voices calling for major change to the side. India must heed those calls if they are to improve and there is no more effective way to make sure they are ignored than for their batsmen to make enough runs to save the game. If that happens then the media and many fans will say that everything is good again in India and they will continue to say so right up until (and possibly after) they are hammered by England in November.

Why Australia will win at Perth

India’s batsmen are not going to stop struggling overnight, or even over the week they’ve had between Tests. Gambhir may come back into form (but there is no guarantee), but Sehwag does not have the technique to score big runs on a pitch like in Perth, or for that matter anyplace where the ball does not lose all it’s pace off the pitch. Dravid, after batting so brilliantly in England, suddenly has a massive weakness against the straight ball. For someone of his experience to suddenly be unable to keep the ball off his stumps does not bode well. Tendulkar is making decent scores, but he is getting out lazily when he is well set. Whether it’s because he’s bought into the ‘hundredth hundred’ nonsense and is feeling the pressure from that or not he has been attacking with an almost Sehwag-esque abandon in the first two Tests. It hasn’t paid off and probably won’t pay off. VVS Laxman looks like his career is coming rapidly to a close. He had a poor series in England and now he’s having a poor one here. On more than one occasion in the two series he has got out trying to flick the ball off his hip and failing to keep it down. With the extra pace at the WACA, I wold not be surprised if that happens again. Neither Raina nor Kohli appear to be able to play a short ball. They’ve both come in having only played the longer forms of the game on the flat wickets of India and now they are out of their depth. It’s not really their fault, but India should have prepared them better or found batsmen who could handle the conditions. Dhoni is in dreadful form with the bat, only managing a few counterattacking rearguards after the top six have collapsed. He could still come around and play a big innings though.

Overall these are not minor problems, nor are they down to the simple dips in form that occasionally afflict all batsmen. Some of the batsmen may be able to carry on, but I think at least four of them will not be playing in 12 month’s time. Sehwag is unlikely to ever be a force outside the subcontinent. I can’t see them putting up a big total. This will have a knock-on effect, even if they bowl first. India’s attack is theoretically skilled enough to bowl out Australia cheaply, but as we saw at Trent Bridge last summer, that is only half of the job. It won’t matter how well the bowlers do if the batsmen can’t back them up with some runs and I don’t see that happening. India have not shown very much fight in any of the previous six Tests against England and Australia; their body language has been very negative when they’ve been under the cosh. At no point since Broad’s hat-trick have they really looked up for it and I think that will haunt them in this match. At the SCG they let Australia get away from being 37-3 and if they collapse again I doubt they will be able to rouse themselves in the field. Australia are poor enough that they could give India a chance in the match, but India are so out of form and so uninspired that I can’t see them taking it.

Sehwag is not an opener

In my 2011 XI post I remarked upon the fact that there were a dearth of good openers last year. Not only did no full time occupant of the position came close to matching the record of Alastair Cook, but none of them even averaged over fifty. I put it down at first to a statistical anomaly, but watching India ‘bat’ at the SCG I realised that many teams no longer have traditional openers in the mould of Strauss and Cook. Most teams now have at least one opener who tries to get his team off to an ODI-style flier. Sehwag for India is the most notable, but New Zealand have McCullum, Sri Lanka have Dilshan, Bangladesh have Iqbal, Pakistan have Hafeez, South Africa have Smith and Australia have Warner (now) and Watson (prior to his injury). The only team besides England who do not follow this trend are the West Indies, and in their case it is only because of the ongoing feud between the WICB and Chris Gayle.

I think this is central to the spate of collapses and low scores we have seen in Test matches this year. Having an ‘explosive’ batsman at the top of the order is not necessary at Test level and more and more it appears to be a hindrance. New ball bowlers have started to appreciably swing the ball again and especially last year we saw an increase in the number of wickets that helped the bowlers early on. The batsmen trying to hit out and score 100 before lunch are having their technique exposed by the moving ball and are departing early on in the innings. This is borne out by the statistics; through the noughties the average opening partnership was just a shade over 40. In 2011 it was 31.30. Having the number three come in to face a still new ball is obviously far less than ideal, and this is how top order collapses start. We’ve seen it several times this year, and whilst it isn’t all down to the failures of opening batsmen I think that is one of the main culprits. The job of an opening batsmen is to accumulate runs whilst playing the shine off the ball and wearing down the opposition’s best bowlers, not to propel the team to 150-1 at lunch. The teams like England that remember this fact are the ones that will be successful.

Australia win by 122 runs

It wasn’t nearly as close as I expected. Yesterday I thought that 250 was the magic number, and that it would be a very close finish. I did back Australia to win, but I was thinking by about 15 runs. I had forgot, however, about India’s almost complete abandonment not just of technique but of common sense. I’m pretty hard on Brad Haddin for playing stupid shots, but this isn’t the first occasion where India have looked like a team of Haddins. (Except Dravid, I should specify.) Australia’s young quicks did well to move the ball a bit and put it in areas where it could not easily be slogged, but that should not be enough to cause some of the most successful batsmen in history to completely lose their heads as the Indians did.

India actually never seemed to show up at the MCG. Despite starting the day with a clear chance to win (a lot of people considered them favourites) they didn’t seem interested as they tried to finish off Australia. Hussey was struck in front very early on in the innings and whilst India appealed it was very half hearted, despite the fact that the replay showed that it was plumb! The fact that it wasn’t given was not India’s fault, but their reaction showed how uninspired they were. Their fielding continued to be poor as well. Zaheer Khan failed to get into position to catch a top edge skier that was in the air for so long one thought it might have been sucked into a jet engine. Australia took well judged singles and quick twos almost at will and added 61 to the overnight score. India were clear second favourites by this time and it was almost entirely their own doing.

As they came out to start the chase I got to see the usual buzz on Twitter about how Sehwag could take the game away from Australia and get half the runs by lunch or whatever hyperbole is favoured amongst Indians now. The same thing happened in England over the summer and he made a king pair, but no one seems to have noticed. He’s probably the most overrated player in international cricket at the moment, averaging 37 outside the subcontinent. With his feet rooted to the spot he wafted at the first ball he faced and was lucky to miss it. The camera then cut to a sign in the crowd saying that Sehwag didn’t care about footwork, complete with a drawing of him batting sat in an armchair. It was being held by an Indian supporter and appeared to be meant as a compliment, which goes a long way to explaining the form in which India’s batsmen find themselves. Needless to say it wasn’t long before Sehwag made contact with that shot and hit it straight down the throat of Hussey in the gully. I assume as he walked off he thanked Haddin for all the batting tips he’d apparently received. I understand the notion of that being how he plays, and he probably would not score any more runs if he changed his game, but chasing a tricky 292 to win it was probably the worst thing he could do. If India are going to work their way back to the Test summit, or even Test respectability, they are going to have to find a way to rein him in, or simply drop him for overseas tours.

Sehwag’s opening partner, Gambhir, was almost as bad. He went the same way he did in the first innings, hanging his bat outside off. His dismissal also said a a lot about the Indian mentality. Hawk-Eye showed that the ball had moved after pitching, but not much, almost exactly half the width of the bat. Gambhir would have middled it, but did not adjust at all to the seam movement. I understand that it is harder to play the moving ball (that’s the point) but for a Test batsman to be so careless ought to be unacceptable. The vast majority of the Indian batsmen played in a similar style, however. Only Dravid kept his dignity intact; he merely misjudged the line of a Pattinson delivery and was bowled through the gate. Tendulkar edged a ball half a metre outside off to gully; Laxman was caught in the same way that he was twice at Lord’s, trying that hybrid pull/flick; Kohli went across his stumps and was plumb LBW (and then stood there a bit before going off muttering and shaking his head, for no reason that anyone can fathom) and Dhoni inside edged the ball onto his stumps playing a horrific mow across the line, though it was over by then anyway.

India have two young batsmen who are good in ODIs, but do not appear to be Test quality, Raina and Kohli. The culture of the Indian team is such that those two aren’t going to have a chance to improve. The ten batsmen bar Dravid went out and played like it was a fifty over match. They seemed incapable of just leaving the ball when it was not in a position to hit. After the 4-0 whitewash last during the summer I read and heard a slew of excuses for the Indian team’s performance. The point about injuries was a reasonable one, but this match shows how specious the rest of them were. India refused to learn the lessons of that series and this is the result. They have only themselves to blame.

Ten best sporting moments of 2011

I know the sporting year isn’t over yet. I actually had a conversation on Twitter about whether I ought to write a ‘year end’ style post or save it for after the Test. I decided to save my full year in review post for later, but at the same time I would be very surprised if anything happened that warranted an inclusion on this list. If I’m wrong I can always write a revision as well, so with that in mind here are my top ten sporting moments of 2011:

10 – New Zealand winning the Hobart Test
I know my Aussie readers won’t like this, but it was a pretty important moment. New Zealanders probably care more about winning the Rugby World Cup, but they had not won a Test in Australia for 26 years before this. Doug Bracewell may be a great find for the Kiwis and the conclusion of the match was one of the most thrilling you will see.

9 – Tigers winning Game 5 of the ALDS
I love watching the Yankees lose. I love watching the Yankees lose deciding games in the playoffs even more. But most of all I love watching Alex Rodriguez strike out to lose a deciding game in the playoffs in front of a very put out Yankee Stadium crowd.

8 – Royals winning a three game series in New York
The Royals spent most of the month of April this year in or near first place. (It’s true, look it up.) Whilst losing six in a row to the Rangers and Indians at the end of April basically put an end to any notion of contending, there were still bright spots after that. In the second week of May the Royals travelled to New York and won two out of three against the Yankees. The deciding game of the series saw the Royals score six runs in the second inning, including Eric Hosmer’s second major league home run and some terrible defensive mistakes by the Yankees. It was the Royals first series win in New York since 1999.

7 – Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City
It was the match that that caused the media to accept City as genuine title contenders. More importantly it was the match that made United supporters very cross and thus made Liverpool supporters like myself very happy.

6 – Australia reduced to 21-9 at Cape Town
With apologies to my Australian readers. Though as much as I enjoyed this I was more astonished to watch the innings unfold. On no fewer than three occasions I thought there must surely be a recovery, surely they couldn’t lose another wicket. I was wrong on all three occasions, as by the time the recovery did come I had stopped expecting it. Almost as amazing as the innings itself was the shot selection of Brad Haddin and the fact that he wasn’t immediately dropped because of it. Both defy belief.

5 – England winning the Cardiff Test
I already used this in my best moments in English cricket this year, so there isn’t a lot more to say. Nonetheless, it was incredible watching England go from just wanting a few wickets to Sri Lanka not even coming close to saving the Test and certainly belongs on this list as well.

4 – Virender Sehwag making a king pair at Edgbaton/Stuart Broad’s Trent Bridge hat trick
I’ve included these together for their similarity, not only because they both involve Indian wickets falling cheaply. Broad’s hat trick marked the end of the last time India would have an advantage in the series, but I think Sehwag’s king pair marked the last time India had any real hope. It was also a moment of personal pleasure, because Sehwag is massively overrated. He has a good record on the flat pitches of the subcontinent and that is it; his aggression is not suited for English conditions or anywhere the ball does a bit. After the second Test I read about and saw Indians claiming that he would save the series for them and I rather enjoyed being vindicated.

3 – Cardinals winning Game 6 of the World Series
I’m a Royals fan, but years of living amongst Cardinals fans in Kirksville made me rather sympathetic to them. (Though I always hated when they would gripe about ‘barely being .500’ or some such.) Add that to the fact that I hate the Texas Rangers and I was definitely cheering for the Cardinals in the last World Series. Even if I hadn’t, however, I think their multiple comebacks in Game 6 would have had to rank high on a list of best sporting moments, as it was absolutely astonishing.

2 & 1 – Lancashire winning the County Championship and England winning the Ashes
How could I not copy these from my first list? England winning the Ashes in Australia is the only thing that could possibly trump Lancashire winning the title outright. Neither had ever happened before in my lifetime and for them both to happen this year is almost an embarrassment of riches. I have little doubt they will be on a list of best moments in the decade should I make one in 2020.

Edited to add: The Guardian have produced their list of cricketing moments, but there is a lot of World Cup stuff at the expense of Lancs.