The rain did us all a favour today by deciding to head South rather than sit at its normal location which normally is right above Manchester and to be fair we’ve had a bonus day of good cricket, even if it was cut short abruptly by the Umpires.
England will naturally be the happier team right now even if they were hoping for a bigger score than 369 all out, though they would have bitten your hand off for that score at 280-8 after a significant collapse against the new ball. It is always hard starting again when the bowlers are fresh and have a new ball in their hand and it has to be said that the West Indies bowled superbly for the first half hour; however that being said it was a real shame that neither Buttler or Pope could go on and make a match winning hundred after the graft they put it yesterday. When Woakes and then Archer also went cheaply, the former is really struggling for form with the bat and the latter looks more and more like a number 11, the hearts of most England fans would have sunk. Enter Sir Stuart Broad.
This was not an innings for the purists to say the least and the time when Stuart Broad could be potentially viewed as an allrounder are long gone, but on my was it effective. Whilst Dom Bess played patiently as a proper batsman, Broad was given licence to have a swipe and swipe was exactly what he did with some great and then some fairly fortuitous shots to the boundary. It’s a real shame that Broad is unable to replicate the batting talent he had as a young cricketer, after all he has a higher Test score than a certain Mark Waugh; however when he bats, people watch. He may come off only once a series, but when he does, it certainly is compulsive viewing. England are just mighty glad that it was in this game that Broad managed to come off with the bat otherwise they’d be rueing another costly collapse.
So the West Indies, who had originally thought they’d be chasing under 300, looked pretty deflated when they came off the field and it showed in their batting. The sad thing is that I don’t England bowled all that well, except for Broad’s and Anderson’s spells after tea, which is a weird thing to say when they have a side 137-6. After getting the dangerous Brathwaite out early, England bowled far too short allowing the woefully out of form duo of Hope and Campbell to settle in nicely. Ironically it was a nasty bouncer by Jofra Archer that finally got rid of Campbell and allowed England to open the door. Anderson and Broad then took charge straight after tea, with the former bowling 2 unplayable deliveries that the batsmen did well to nick and the latter celebrating an LBW with an outrageous celebrappeal and probably a trip to the Match referees office too. Blackwood and Holder then looked to gain some semblance of momentum back for the West Indies before the former decided to go for an overambitious drive from a good ball from Chris Woakes that nipped back off the seam.
So we head onto Day 3 with a decent forecast and already talk of declaration speculation, especially as Monday could well be a total write off with the weather. I suspect England will bat again even if they do bowl the West Indies out short of the follow on target, but they probably won’t be hanging about knowing the forecast for Monday and wanting at least a day to bowl at the West Indian batsmen a second time.
One major moan though has to be the continued insistence of the umpires coming off for bad light at around 6pm each night. I even joked that they must have room service booked for 6:15pm every night. The light was murky but no way was it dangerous and we have also invented these crazy new things called floodlights to keep the game going. It’s crazy that in this day and age that we allow cricket to keep shooting itself in the dick and if the light is going to be a problem, start the damn Test half an hour earlier! The umpires are probably grateful that there aren’t any fans in the ground, because if you’d have paid the best part of £70 for the day, you’d be mighty pissed off at seeing the players trudge off the ground with the floodlights standing there. Anyway, slight rant over.
As ever do feel free to share your thoughts on the game or anything else below:
Being Outside Cricket 
So far in 2020, Jos Buttler has a Test batting average of 23.20 and a strike rate of 58.43. Stuart Broad has a batting average of 42.00 and a strike rate of 118.86. One of these two players will almost certainly be selected for the Pakistan series due to his batting ‘prowess’.
In other news: Life is not fair.
LikeLiked by 1 person
George Dobell suggested on Polite Enquiries that under these conditions, the current English seamers were probably as good as those in the 2005 side. That seems a tad over the top to me.
LikeLike
That is really hard to judge. Compared to the 2005 Australian side, the quality of these batsmen is so poor that you’d be wondering if they are even trying to play the same game. The Australians won pretty much everywhere. West Indies have literally not won anywhere in the last decade (their last non-loss was a drawn series in 2010 Sri Lanka, which was held in the middle of the monsoon season – rain played its part in that one).
That is like bowling Zimbabwe out twice cheaply in 2005, and then claim that the victorious side is the best ever …
LikeLike
It’s a good discussion starter, although I think it is over the top.
2005 (Edgbaston): Harmison, Hoggard, Jones, Flintoff, Giles.
Yesterday: Archer, Anderson, Woakes, Broad, Bess.
First and most glaringly, Bess is nowhere near the finished article yet, even if he will one day be better than Giles, he isn’t yet.
Similarly, Archer has more talent than Harmison, but Harmison 2005 was at a peak, Archer has more to learn and he hasn’t even been at his own peak in this series.
Anderson now is better than Hoggard 2005.
Broad vs Flintoff – Broad is the better bowler overall, but Flintoff was again at an epic peak. I’ll give this one to Broad though, just because it doesn’t matter.
And it doesn’t matter because Jones was frighteningly good in 2005, he could move it as much as Woakes and significantly more quickly.
So: 3 – 2 to 2005, as I see it.
LikeLike
You’re absolutely right in that it’s a moot point given this West Indies side is so poor, and that Australia dude was a juggernaut.
However I do think it worth mentioning that Harmison at his peak, even if it only lasted a couple of years, was better than anyone else we’ve had since I can remember. His unusual bounce on all surfaces was a real game changer.
On a sort of related note, I was considering Jofra yesterday and wondering if he might well be best off trying to replicate Glenn McGrath. Both are tall and bowl stump to stump. McGrath has a reputation as a metronome but also had a really sharp, surprise bouncer. I dunno, maybe it’s stupid to suggest trying to be like one of the best seamers ever, but I just see quite a few similarities.
LikeLike
The 2005 side had Simon Jones so end of discussion. (But they also had Harmison and Flintoff at their peak and the always underestimated Hoggard. That was the best English attach I have seen.)
LikeLike
Archer bowling with 2 gullies and no slip. Not sure I like that field much,
LikeLike
I’ve been unable to comment recently. Just seeing if I can now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t recall ever setting up a word press account, but after resetting my password I now seem to be able to comment. I’m very confused as up until a few days ago I didn’t need a word press account, and still don’t think I ever created one. Now I need to enter a password in order to comment.
Anyone else having similar problems?
LikeLike
I tried to post this before the start of the second day’s play but couldn’t and then tried again later towards the end of Broad’s innings. Sorry, it’s late, but am still curious about Rashid.
Well, I will admit that I didn’t think England would do this well in their first innings, currently 350-8. All I saw was a massive precipice after the number six batting position and when England lost five wickets I thought they would do well just to add another 50 runs or so. It seemed my prediction was reasonable at first with the loss of Pope, Buttler, Archer and Woakes and didn’t even consider Broad would play as well as he’s doing right now.
I have one question for those in the UK – is Rashid still available for test match cricket? I see him as more of a wicket-taker than Bess or Leach as well as a decent batsman and am wondering why Bess is still being picked.
LikeLike
Rashid is unavailable for tests at the moment because the ECB have a policy that you can’t be considered for tests unless you have a red-ball contract for your county. Rashid doesn’t–at the moment. However, he hasn’t officially retired from f-c cricket (although my hunch is that de facto, he has) so, at least theoretically, this could change in the future.
I have a feeling that his non-selection–even when he was available–also had to do with the composition of the bowling attack. They were more in need of a spinner to complement their other bowlers who had a lower economy rate than Rashid, regardless of his strike rate. Btw, your feeling about Leach isn’t borne out by statistics–his strike rate is several balls better than Rashid’s, although it’s (fractionally) worse than Moeen’s.
LikeLike
Rashid certainly isn’t available this summer. The white and red ball England squads are completely split, with players not being able to move freely between them. For Rashid to play a Test would require some stretching of the bio bubble rules in place, which I doubt the ECB would do.
More generally, I think he’s come to terms with the idea that England won’t pick him for Tests again (apart from in Asia as a third spinner, perhaps).
LikeLike
As for posting issues, who knows what the issue is. WordPress is funny like that. I had to drop my apostrophe to prevent every single post that I make going in the spam folder. No idea why WordPress does that. It just does.
LikeLike
I would guess that symbols in display names are something that a lot of spammers use when posting WordPress comments.
Looking through the spam comments tab, there seem to be two main methods spammers use. A generic comment (“This is a good post!”) with a link to a dodgy website in the poster’s ‘website’ field or a link to said dodgy website in the comment itself. This is why comments with links in tend to go to spam (which we don’t always check).
LikeLiked by 1 person
So Holder off injured while fielding. As if it was not clearly a massive mismatch already. Hope it is nothing too serious.
LikeLike
Anyone even thinking that West Indies will post 100 in the fourth innings?
LikeLike
I might not go that far, but I can’t see them reaching 200.
LikeLike