Unfortunately life does get in the way of blogging at times. My laptop is desperately trying to recover stuff on life support mode, Chris is out infecting West Sussex with a pub crawl (probably) and Danny has gone fishing in the North Sea for Haddock (probably)…
Unfortunately this means we can’t easily do any reviews this evening. In short, England played well at times, threw away some soft wickets, played well again and then collapsed. You could time your watch to it, as if it’s not something we’ve seen before repeatedly.
So all in all, unless the English tail miraculously wags or Jimmy Anderson somehow rolls back the years, then the West Indies must be favourites to chase down a score likely under 200, despite the pitch taking spin and being a bit up and down.
Still Hugh Jardon 😂
Being Outside Cricket 
In the days before everything was computerised and laminated, and in the days before he could get into bars in the US legally, I once met someone who had had considerable success getting into those bars with a fake student ID (complete with official stamp, which was actually a coin, with the document run through a photocopier so many times that you couldn’t see what it was…)
He said that no-one had batted an eyelid at it in several weeks. I did know his name, and I’m usually really dense about these things, but even I would, I think, have suspected that his name wasn’t really Hugh G Rection.
He said, though, that people had been charmed by his British accent and just gone “Hi, Hugh….”– just in case Athers is reading this and needs some moral support. Still, if it’s a good enough club to produce Ben Stokes….
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It has to be galling for Stokes. Quite possibly the greatest all round cricketer in the world right now, but still only the second most popular player from his old club…
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England get close, leaving WI 200 to win, which they should get, but being last day there might be a bit of drama first.
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Jofra having a good day so far – let’s hope it gets even better
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Talking of which, I’m still not unhappy with the selection of seamers for this game. I wonder if it’s much more than that Archer and Wood simply didn’t bowl that well in the first innings. That happens–it’s happened quite a lot to Anderson and Broad in the last few years.
I think Archer (unlike Wood) is rather mischaracterised as an out-and-out fast bowler. Sure, it’s one aspect of his game, but there’s a lot more to him than that–as he’s shown several times.
I also feel Broad’s up-and-downness has been a bit underplayed, and I wonder if in the first innings he was benefitting a bit from “you play best when you’re in the pavilion” syndrome. He’s been very good in the last year, so I can understand why he was gutted to be dropped…but then so have Wood and Archer, high pace through the air should always stand you a good chance of getting wickets if you’re international standard, and in the three years preceding last summer Broad was taking less than three wickets a match in England and had got more than three in an innings once.
But, with caveats about getting obsessed with pace (this doesn’t make Jamie Overton a test-quality bowler!), I’m also glad that England are trying out the Anderson–Archer-Wood-Stokes combination. I’d far rather have that–and if you can’t try out something for the future against the no. 8 team who have a top order with the solidity of a melting sorbet, when can you?–than go into the Brisbane test next year (or for that matter, the subcontinent this winter) still pretending that 31-year-old Chris Woakes (overseas average 52 and overseas strike rate 97 over five different countries) is likely to be a match-winner.
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I’d add that while they didn’t bowl well in the first innings overall, I think there’s a danger of letting our own melty batting order off too lightly. Yes, conditions were difficult, but if we aspire to be a top test team then you have to be able to do a bit better when times are tough. After all, these are our home conditions, if we can’t tough them out a bit, how likely are we to tough things out in unfamiliar difficult situations?
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The main problem for me with this bowling lineup is the condensed nature of this series. It seems risky to play fast bowlers in back-to-back games after a shorter than typical buildup, which would leave you without both Archer and Wood at Old Trafford. I also generally support rotating bowlers (and batsmen) whenever possible to provide greater depth of experienced options when you need them.
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They’re going to break Archer again
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There’s a 95 at the Ageas that deserves a standing ovation.
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Have you checked whether he’s from the right kind of family? We can’t have any old pleb getting a standing ovation for a 95, you know old boy…
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Haha, brilliant…
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Great effort by the Windies. Perhaps its time we stopped underestimating them.
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They are getting better and better, slowly.
Still vulnerable to the odd batting collapse, but the bowling (injuries permitting) is turning into a very solid unit.
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