All comments on today’s play below please. Not going to be around much today.
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All comments on today’s play below please. Not going to be around much today.
Being Outside Cricket 
I don’t see a lot of demons in this pitch, so England will probably pile up a big score – and with Stokes and Buttler, they might even do it quickly.
I’m sure scoreboard pressure will tell on the WI, but I fear it may be a false dawn for our bowling attack.
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Extra prediction – England will make a big score, WI will be bowled out and England won’t enforce the follow-on. Cook will make a pressure-free century and we’ll be treated to an endless chorus of “I told you so” and “he’s back on form” which solidify his place for the year, no matter how it goes against other bowlers later in the summer.
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Can’t see it myself…we’ll be a 9 man batting unit for the tour, unless “brave” decisions are taken. I can’t see that happening either!
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I hope we get to see a bit of Stokes and Buttler batting together today. That could be fun.
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That went well.
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Must have been a cracking team talk prior to start of play…
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Surely a 600 pitch from here?
If I don’t see Tredwell coming out and swinging from the hit I will lose it.
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May be some showers today and Friday, but unlikely to be enough rain to impact on the result in a big way.
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Not looking forward to 75mph Broad and our non-spinning “spinner” trying to bowl on this deck in the 4th innings, especially if Jordan gets the yips. Still, at least we’ll have Jimmy to swear at them with considerable gusto.
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Incidentally, all this talk about Cook ending his career with more Test runs than any other Englishman.
Way things are going, Ian Bell might turn out to be the one. I reckon he’s got at least 3 years left in him, maybe more if he wants them.
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he’s got a mere 5 tons since Cook’s last.
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Root has four, Ballance three, Robson, Moeen and Stokes one (possibly two by later today) and errr Pietersen one – since Cook’s last Test hundred.
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Worse if you add in ODI hundreds – from memory, Morgan and Ali have two each, Root has three (?), Bell has one or two, Buttler and Lumb have one each, Hales has a T20I ton.
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Since 24th May 2013 when Cook scored his last hundred, then in ODIs Root has four, Morgan three, Moeen two and Bell, Buttler, Trott, Lumb and Bopara all have one.
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If Bopara’s scored a ton more recently than you … it’s not a good sign.
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Bell should quietly become the leading test run scorer just for the sheer lols
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Another interesting point about Ian Bell is he was made vice captain of the team before this tour.
There are some interesting views on Bell throughout his career. Too shy, introverted, never pushed himself forward are some of the constant criticisms. Someone on George Dobells piece btl said this …………
” Ignored too often by Flower? KP said that Bell was thoughtful but given no space to speak. He captained Warwickshire to victory in the domestic one day competition and showed real captaincy skills. Bell was kept out by favouritism about Cook.”
They have been very keen to tell us TINA regards Cook. Could it be they never wanted Bell to become a threat to the poster boy as captain? Maybe they thought he was never up to it, but I have become suspicious of the managements motives over everything involving Cooks captaincy.
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Stab in the dark – was that someone jackiethepen?
🙂
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I can’t imagine what would make you randomly guess a name like that….
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Arron, yes it was jackiethepen. I Don’t really follow the comments sections very much. It’s not good for my health!
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Just noticed this from George Dobbel:
“While Bell’s ODI career may well be at an end, it is not ridiculous to think the best years may still be ahead of him in Test cricket. The England management have long hoped to see Bell demonstrate the leadership qualities he displays at county level – where he has been a giant for many years – in the Test dressing room, but have instead found a somewhat reticent, diffident man reluctant to impose himself or even offer his views.”
He doesn’t provide a source for the claim, but he’s close to Trott so I trust on the Warkshire dressing room. It makes me wonder why a ‘giant’ in Warkshire is shy with England. He is the most senior pro now. Me thinks that the dressing room may be a little bit ‘political’ with no space for dissent. Perhaps even run by a bullying clique and managed by petty, box ticking tyrants….
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Well we all know what happens when you express your views in the England dressing room…..
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Bell is 1,100 away from Cook and 1,600 from the record.
Bell scores 69 runs a Test, Cook 77.
It should take Bell another 24 games to reach it. Cook should reach it in 7.
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Because you’re clearly bored, I’ll set you the challenge of working that out based on their performances over the last two years…
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Was during my lunch break, maybe later…
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Going on form since Cook’s last ton, Bell needs 21 games, Cook 10 games.
Pietersen needs 10 games going by career form.
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Cook is ‘an article of faith’ for some highly-placed people in England cricket. Bell is an article of faith for thepoetseye/jackiethe pen. (And of course, for Mrs Bell, who might possibly be the same person).
Actually, I can understand the poetseye’s crusade, precisely because Bell’s contribution as a team member does seem to have been persistently underrated by the Flower regime and its assorted scribes.
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It’s jackiel in the Telegraph.
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First hour: 20/3.
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Funny lookin’ scorecard, that is.
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Does anybody seriously expect Broad to bat agains the Aussies or NZ pace attack?
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He has major problems with batting. Knight on Sky said he sets a bad example to others and should bat at No11 from now on. Think i agree with him.
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Lost 5/20 now. Really should have rammed home the advantage.
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This Broad business is worrying. Yep, getting hit in the face and his toe crusher from Johnson are pretty unfortunate, but he’s become a scared rabbit whereas he used to be a swashbuckling number 8 who could be relied on for some late order runs. What’s the shrink doing and what are the batting coaches doing.
This isn’t like a mysterious case of the yips with no obvious remedy; he has, quite simply, become scared of the ball and needs help from either the shrink or a lot of time in the nets, or both.
Why has nothing been done?
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It’s not just the batting – if he’s not fit to bowl full tilt, I have to question his selection. If he is “fully fit” then he seems to have lost his nip. In a lot of ways Stokes looks a lot more like the young Broad (can bat, bowls at a surprisingly hurry up pace (first ball was 88 mph)) than Broad does…
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England’s number 11 did rather better than the number 1
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Ah, normality is resumed….
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Anderson needs 31 runs more in series to reach 1000, slowest ever in tests
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At least Jimmy is actually relatively free to play his shots when he gets his turn to wield the willow. That puts him ahead of several folk in the England team right now.
Anyhow, some fine swing bowling sees the back of Devon Smith.
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So far Broad is managing a ball an over that is around 86/87 mph. This tends to be complemented by one at around 81 mph and the other four in the 84 mph zone. Overall a bit better than the WC, but still not looking great.
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Can someone explain the whole nightwatchman thing? What is it, why did everyone go “Oh FFS” when Cook put one in, and when should you have one?? Cricket newbie is confused.
Also why is the player with the best strike rate batting last??
This is clearly a lot more complicated than one day matches…
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Maggie – The idea of the nightwatchman is to avoid one of your better batsmen going in late in the day, perhaps in poor light, and getting himself out cheaply in the last over. So the idea is to send in someone you could afford to lose, usually one of the bowlers, to play out the day. However, it doesn’t always work. Often the real problem happens the next morning, when the nightwatchman should ideally score a brisk few runs and then get out, leaving the proper batsmen to take over, but sometimes he gets stuck and stays there, scoring very slowly, and that can alter the whole momentum of the game. In that situation, a crafty opposition will leave him there to stew.
There is a body of opinion that a nightwatchman is usually a pointless exercise and the proper bat should get in there and get on with it. Especially if, as happened in this match, the batsman who’s in keeps the strike for the last over and whoever was at the other end was at no risk at all except perhaps from a runout.
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I am very much in agreement with that body of opinion. From my perspective, the main thing a nightwatchman does is gift the bowling side an extra cheap wicket late in the day or early the next one, in either case conferring a psychological advantage.
Fending off a tricky period late in the day is part of the batsman’s job, not the bowler’s.
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also it means your last recognised batsman has one less tail ender to bat with making it just that little more likely that he will ended up stranded not out.
By the way if night watchmen are such a great idea why do we never see them opening the batting when a side has to start batting late in a day – or are opening batsmen expendable?
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I remember India opening with a nightwatchman a few years ago. I can’t be bothered to check the details, but if my memory serves me correctly, Irfan Pathan went out with a regular opener, possibly Wasim Jaffer, a wicket fell, then Kumble came in at three as a second nightwatchman. It was late on the 4th day and India were trying to save as many batsmen as possible for a fifth day run chase.
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Thanks all, so much to learn… 🙂
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Unless Cook starts scoring runs again, then, in effect, England will be opening with a night watchmen for the next few tests. I just hope the experiment doesn’t go on for too long.
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The best comment on yesterdays play via TFT
Pete Cresswell
April 13, 2015 at 2:42 pm
I see Cook has paid a personal tribute to Richie Benaud, letting himself be bowled so that England’s score would be 2 for 22 …
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Any idea about bowling speeds? Not available on Cricinfo, which I guess means not available at all.
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Metatone had some initial stuff on Broad a bit further up
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Broad getting some more 86 mph balls in now he’s warmed up, but I notice Anderson also dropping into the 81 mph zone a couple of times an over in this spell.
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England bowlers definitely pitching it up more.
Can’t be the change in bowling coach though – good journalists have used their contacts to discover the previous bowling coach most certainly did not encourage repeated 84 mph half-trackers.
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cricinfo – over 42: A summit meeting between Cook, Anderson and Broad
Ideas to what was being said?
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and add OBO: “44th over: West Indies 109-4 (Blackwood 8, Chanderpaul 8) Bairstow pops up to the dressing room balcony to have a quick word with Otis Gibson, the England bowling coach. A message will presumably be relayed. At the end of the Tredwell over (a maiden to Blackwood), Bairstow does indeed run in and whisper quick word in Alastair Cook’s ear. Plans afoot.”
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I like the way Cook was trying all he could to not make it seem so obvious that he had delivery from Waitrose. Funny!!!
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I thought Cook asked them if he could have a bowl, but Andy Flower send him a warning that this will appear in his dossier…
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“Cooky, bugger off back to t’slips and let the experts sort out the bowling. Oh, and I’ll give you some tips later on ‘ow to copy me cover drive. Broady….just wang it down will ya?”
(In unison) “Yes Lord James”
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Agghh..agghhhh….Broady, Jimmy…bowling.
Jimmy: What?
Aghh…agh….steel….
Jimmy: Bloody ‘ell. Ask Otis.
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TV just shown Broad’s speed-gun readings:
Fastest 89.4; slowest 76; average 84.
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Ed Smith and Graeme Swann on together *again*.
Almost unbearable.
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I know what you mean. Although when I was listening in the car I heard Swann almost comit treason when he complained (in a very easy going way) that England always have to use the 4 seamers before they try the spinner. Why not let the spinner have the ball when it’s still hard he asked?
Careful Cooky, when you’ve lost Swann you are in trouble.
I believe this is the first Test match of 17 in 9 months. Broad and Anderson will be about 5 feet tall by the time they have finished.
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I thought Swann was ‘outside cricket’ now, and a “so-called friend”
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Woof! That’s a barrel full of smugness and self-regard.
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Both not out batsmen could and should be out:
1) Chanderpaul edged his first ball in the air through third slip. There was no third slip. The score was about 100-4 so England were about 300 ahead at the time.
2) Blackwood was caught at first slip off what turned out to be a Stokes’ no-ball.
I’m sure these will both be mentioned in the match reports. It’s not like one journalist has already ignored one of these on Twitter and referred to the perpetrator of the other as a “total numpty” who “has previous”. They both are and they both have.
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Perhaps this is contentious, but I think that if you accept the logic of the no-ball rule (that releasing from closer to the stumps gives the bowler an advantage) then it’s entirely likely that had Stokes not overstepped then the ball wouldn’t have gotten large on Blackwood and got the edge… Overstepping put the ball 10mm higher on the bat than Blackwood expected, so hitting the edge which Cook can grab from the air. 10 mm lower and it’s a solid cross-bat shot which goes in the other direction completely.
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I keep wanting to ask the Guardian OBOers why they feel the need to insert Selvey’s boring tweet updates into their perfectly adequate commentary of the match every few overs. Is it a contractual thing? Do they think it adds something to the commentary? Or are they just indulging a senior journalist whose reputation exceeds any of his output, and has done for a few years now?
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This. Is exactly why I went off the OBO completely. For example, you read the books based on the 2005 and 2010/11 Ashes OBOs, and you’ll barely find any mention of the journalists. Because hey, the OBO was founded on democratic principles, was it not? Then they started featuring his comments more and more frequently, and now it’s the pointless tweets.
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Because a) he works for the paper and b) he’s a little beleaguered right now.
His interventions have been popping up for years, circumstances have changed: they were inoffensive in the past.
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I’ve also completely stopped looking at the OBO now that it’s polluted with Selvey’s ridiculous tweets.
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It was a minor harbinger of “inside and outside cricket” for me. If he disagreed with Rob Smyth, say, or he wanted to put a commenter right about something, not only would he persist and start a chained conversation within the OBO (never what it was for), but the whole tone of the feature started to change from “healthy light-hearted debate” to “deference”.
By August 2012 I think the damage was irreversible, as you saw from the way Rob ended up defending the media’s hopelessly one-eyed coverage of “textgate” and surrounding issues, and blithely publishing emails that described the likes of us as “conspiracy theorists” and “nutjobs”.
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That’s a shame. I liked Rob. OBO was a great little community for a while, genuinely warm and funny. The assaults on Pietersen have really poisoned the well: Selvey really seems to be a toxic influence; a dark Svengali.
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Selvey ignores the first ball edge through slip completely.
Newman mentions “the evergreen Shiv Chanderpaul, who could easily have gone to his first ball”. So why didn’t he? Silence.
Still, only another 2-3 years of this captaincy to go……
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Brenkley’s report mentions Chanderpaul edged his first ball “wide” of slip and that’s all.
Either there’s a conspiracy of silence to protect Cook’s captaincy or the senior press corps genuinely don’t think it is noteworthy that with the opposition 89/3 chasing 399 the captain didn’t have a third slip. What would Clarke or McCullum have done?
The first BTL comment accusing this of “hindsight” has, like the first swallow of summer, appeared.
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What a sentence this is:
“It was his only success of the day however, for it was Jordan who removed Darren Bravo, and Broad who cleverly did for Marlon Samuels for 33, a dismissal involving pegging him on the back foot and then pitching one up, a neat little genuine leg-cutter, a tactic that had all over it the fingerprints of Ottis Gibson, the former West Indies head coach but England’s bowling coach here, who would know the batsman’s game inside out.”
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It reads like a dull academic translation of Husserl, if Husserl wrote about cricket.
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Marlon Samuels is pretty much done, and hasn’t done anything really significant since Malinga fractured his eye socket a year ago. He also seems to have approximately zero game awareness. I don’t believe that either he or Gayle will do anything significant (and I’m counting a 50 as significant) in Tests against any opponent not Bangladesh or Zimbabwe again.
I’m particularly sad that Brathwaite got out. I like the truculence of Brathwaite a lot. Collapse-insulation at least. At least he got his Cowan. There’re still 5 more chances for a 400 ball double-century partnership between Chanderpaul and Brathwaite.
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And I can guess why that sentence wound up stretching on interminably too. He suddenly saw the chance to big up Ottis Gibson, because…. who appointed him? All together—-!!!!
His own private political agenda is stamped all over his writing.
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I posted sometiing similar on TFT but:
I must also add that I thought that Ian Bishop and Jeffrey Dujon made the best commentary pair I have heard since Laker and Benaud in the 70s. Dujon is so full of insights. It is no wonder that the WIndies were such a great team, with his insights behind the stumps.
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I believe they had a couple of bowlers who could work up a bit of pace, too…
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I’m not a Yorkie, and I’m not a cheerleader for county cricket. But this just depresses me no end:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/west-indies-v-england-2015/content/story/861563.html
Not least because of the way certain journalists fell right into line on the Tredwell/Rashid decision, writing off an entire season of Division One performances because of one meaningless warm-up. Doubtless they will do so again.
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Quite predictable I’m afraid in Cooks England. Taking wickets is seen as secondary to keeping the runs down. Cook is not an imaginative captain. He handles most spin bowlers with distrust. Even Moeen last year against Sri Lanka was the bowler of last resort. Either when the seamers were tired or a partnership had developed. And when he got a wicket he was taken off and replaced with a seamer.
By the India series Cook had become slightly more trusting of Moeen. So if he is available Cook will jump at the chance to have him back. He can dispense with all other spin bowlers. Moeen is a top order batsman as well so he gives extra conservatism to the line up.
If a batsman starts to hit fours Cook panics very quickly. The notion of using that to get a batsman out seems lost on the management. Finn used to be a wicket taking bowler, but then they tried to make him a “dry up the runs merchant.” Any young or debut seeking spin bowler is going to find it a very difficult environment to thrive in.
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Added to that, I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to blood some squad players given the forthcoming schedule. If you can’t do that in the West Indies, you can’t do it anywhere. You *will* have key players unavailable for Tests against major opponents, and at this rate you will be asking untried players to step up. I’ve heard the argument that we need to ensure a series win in order to boost morale, but how does that stack up when the same people remind us that we won our last three Tests and are still ranked third in the world?
(Also, I think Moeen is going to have second album syndrome on a Stone Roses level this year)
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Broad and Anderson could be knackered or injured by the time the Ashes comes round. So blooding new players is very important.
The reason for the “we need a series win” argument is because our captain is drinking in the last chance saloon. And his backers and courtiers know this. His interests are put above the long term interests of the team.
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Yes, but by blooding youngsters you’d be acknowledging that the WI are, after all, a mediocre team. We can’t have that kind of thinking though, can we? Because Cap’n Cook will have nowhere to hide if its true.
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As I said before – similar to the lead up to the WC, Moores and Cook are under pressure to perform, so they need to WIN (see also Strauss on this issue). So they need to always field a strong team, and not take risks. For fear of losing (See Strauss on this issue). Therefore they keep to the tried and trusted.
Someone should put them out of this misery or the result will be same as the run up to the WC – 2 series to prepare for the Ashes: Drop the captain last minute, our main front bowlers disintegrate on the eve of the Ashes, Trott in any case, Lythe comes in without any CC or test cricket, we do not know who our front line spinner is, etc etc.
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Not all that impressed with the notion that we should keep Plunkett out there just to get Broad to do his job properly…
As a Yorkie, I can candidly admit that Rashid is not the bowler we all hoped he would be.
But I do think a lot of that is down to mishandling by England.
There’s no way any spinner less talented than Swann really fits the England strategy (unless, like Moeen he can argue a place on batting as well) – but that inflexibility is all the more insane given our complete lack of any truly threatening seamer (away from Trent Bridge…)
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Just read Agnew’s comments on the match. Bloody hell!! Colin Graves threat of an enquiry is the last thing they need??
A rocket up their arses is the first thing they need…they’re professional cricketers, representing their country. Should we just tell the chaps to just go and enjoy the tour, it’s not the winning that counts but the taking part!!
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Couldn’t agree more. Complacency and groupthink have set in. They’ve forgotten they’re in the results business.
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and another thing…now I’m wound up..again!! Broad!! What the hell is he doing in a cricket team if he’s pissing his pants and pooing his nappy when he comes out to bat?? I don’t go for all this bloody psychobabble..he got his nose rearranged by a cricket ball…so what? It’s happened to plenty others. He should be wearing it as a badge of pride, get a spine, grow a pair, but fffs man up at least!! To confess to the world that he’s fearful is bloody shameful, and to spin it that it’s brave to admit is equally bloody shameful!! They should give Plunkett a go, he’s already admitted he’s got pace and aggression this season and more than ready to use it…how hard can it be??
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Makes a joke of the argument that we can not play Monty because of his batting. Monty faced Mitch with a lot more courage than Mr Humble is facing any bowling.
The Aussies bowlers must be licking there lips: Cook, Trott, Broad….
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Sad to see the usual England carrying on in last hour or two just waiting for something to happen. Can imagine clarke bmac dhoni moving field around changing bowlers more but not us. Looks a bit like someone says these are field placings and that’s that. Not surprising England accused of managing by data because it sure looks like it. Blackwood good player.
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