Author: Sir Ronald

Is Cook Still The Head Chef?

Sir Ronald63 Comments

So we’re almost half way through January and the will he/won’t he speculation is continuing abound with no end in sight.

It seemed clear that at the end of the India Test series, that it was a no brainer. India had crushed England with ease and Cook looked like a beaten man, weighed down by the continued media intensity that always accompanies the English cricket captaincy and by his own mediocre form with the bat. Even a few of the “Alastair Cook saviour brigade” were starting to comment that it would be sensible perhaps for Cook to step down from the captaincy to allow him to focus on his primary role in the team, which is scoring runs. As you can imagine, it was hardly hard-hitting stuff, but it was still a turn in the tide somewhat from the standard media platitudes we have come accustomed to.

Over Christmas, we then had the narrative that Cook had indeed decided enough was enough and that he was going to resign when he met Director Comma in early January with Joe Root anointed to lead England this summer and into the Ashes series. You could (and still can) imagine the tears in Paul Newman’s eyes when he wrote about how Cook’s mind had been made up and there would be no going back (I imagine he has a framed picture of Cook on his desk at the Daily Mail and that he wells up whenever he takes a look into Cook’s eyes). Nick Hoult and Scyld Berry also wrote in the Telegraph that Cook’s tenure was likely at an end.

Yet here we are in the middle of January and we’re still none the wiser. Has Cook changed his mind about the captaincy after being reinvigorated by his Christmas break at the farm? Is Director Comma and the rest of his lackeys, so absolutely determined to keep Cook that they plan to spend the next 6 months doing everything they can to keep Cook at the helm? Are they merely delaying an announcement until after the India ODI series? Has Cook even met with Strauss, who had been holidaying in Australia until early January? We simply don’t know. It’s quite amazing how the ECB can keep quiet when it wants to, but miraculously leaks appear when they have a certain agenda against certain individuals or to take the heat off them when they need it (I still don’t believe that the Leach news coming out on the day of defeat in the final Test was just coincidence, even though Lawrence Booth is a very good journalist.)

So where does this leave us now? Well there are those who believe that Cook is actually being hounded out by the media and may well choose to pack it all in if he is stripped of the captaincy. I personally don’t believe either of these, the criticism towards Cook’s captaincy has been gentle in the extreme and has just confirmed what many of us thought of Cook’s captaincy in the past 4 years, nor do I believe that Cook would use the threat of quitting to keep the captaincy. Whatever I think of Cook the captain, I certainly believe that he wants to keep playing for England, as after all there is Sachin Tendulkar’s Test run record to go after and I think that he genuinely enjoys being part of the England Team, be it with the captaincy or not. There have been those that have said, that England are simply biding their time, with an emphasis on taking the pressure away from Joe Root, who has recently become a father for the first time as well as ensuring that England are able to fully concentrate on the One Day Series in India. Again, I am not sure that I fully believe this either, as although Strauss has put a large emphasis on being successful in the white ball format, I don’t see how various players being trotted out to the media to answer questions about Cook’s captaincy would actually be helping. I mean what they are meant to say?

“So Joe, would you like Cook to remain as England Captain?”

“Nah, not really. His captaincy is a bit of a joke and we’re going backwards in Test Cricket. I’ll tell you what, give me the captaincy, I can easily do a much better job than that chump.”

It would indeed be funny if someone would come out and said this, but the players are far too media savvy to come out with anything but boring platitudes. I mean who is going to come out and slag off their boss and media darling to the world? No one unfortunately. Now it may be that Root, Bairstow, Hameed etc really do want Cook to stay on, I mean I’m sure he is a nice guy, someone who doesn’t seek confrontation and the team looks like it has a good team spirit about it. However I’m sure that many of the team would trade this for winning the Ashes next year under the guise of a different England captain, but again they’re not going to come out in the media and say it. It’s just another example of powder puff guff from the ECB, which anyone with half a brain can see right through.

What I believe is that Strauss is stalling for is time to try and persuade Cook to stay, though I don’t really understand the reasons for it. Strauss has been England Captain, so no doubt, he should objectively be able to see the list of glaring faults that Cook has in the field. Then again, perhaps he isn’t objectively looking at this, as after all Strauss and Cook had a pretty close working relationship in the past and it’s clear that they get on well together (as Cook’s comments about meeting ‘Straussy’ showed in his final interview after the Indian Test series). Perhaps Strauss doesn’t rate Root as captaincy material or at least not yet, and thinks that Cook despite his faults, is still the best man for the job? It also may not be too far fetched to perhaps suggest that Strauss wants to keep Cook as captain for the Ashes in case they bomb and they need a new scapegoat? After all, if England loses 5-0 under Root’s tenure then where do they go next? Would Director Comma be the one to be thrown under the bus? Perhaps that could just be the cynic in me, but don’t underestimate Director Comma’s ruthlessness, there have been many tales when he has conveniently forgotten his ‘trust’ mantra if it allows him to progress with his career. Finally perhaps it’s not Strauss’ decision after all? Who knows what other agendas are lurking amongst the murky midst of the ECB’s leadership cohort?

What I do know is that the longer the speculation continues and the ECB decides to maintain a wall of silence about the captain’s future, the louder the calls will become to let ‘Cook choose to relinquish the captaincy on his own terms’. The Indian Test debacle will be consigned to history and a new narrative will appear in the MSM praising Cook for his tenacity and strength of will against those dastardly ‘outside cricket lot’. After all, Test Matches away in India don’t really count because everyone gets thrashed in India or so we are told.

Cook should resign because he has shown in the four years in charge of England that his captaincy isn’t good enough, that he lets games just drift, that he can’t manage spin bowlers, that he only has a ‘Plan A’ and more pertinently because England’s Test Team is going backwards at an alarming rate. However, don’t be surprised one bit if there is an announcement in the next month or so that Cook has decided to stay on as captain, as we all know that the ECB only does what is good for themselves and not what is good for the state of English cricket.

India vs. England, 1st ODI, 2017

Sir Ronald53 Comments

ODI’s to me, I must admit are a bit like a Victoria Sponge Cake, sure if I’m offered it for free at the end of a meal, then I’ll probably have a bite, but would I order it off the menu, then I very much doubt it. Yet to doubt their popularity away from England would be folly, the Indian public in particular love their white ball cricket and India have become a formidable force in this format.

Regardless of what happened in the match, the build up to the game has very much been Eoin the mercenary vs. Eoin the ‘non national anthem singing,’ well mercenary. The Daily Mail has had it’s xenophobia/brexit mantra right in hand, I mean how dare an Irishman, who happens to be England captain, refuse to travel to a country that might not be safe. I mean Andrew Strauss said it was, yet the so called English ODI captain still refused to travel to Bangladesh and even worse, he still refuses to sing the Queen’s National Anthem, that’s just not cricket. I’m still half expecting an outraged Oliver Holt to fly out with a couple of stocks (not Chris Stocks, though no doubt his coverage will be in a variety of English newspapers) painted in national colours, with rotten apples or any other particularly English fruit at the ready to throw at Morgan.

The thing is, if we do well in this series, then it will be branded as Strauss’ brave new ODI side and if we do badly, then it’s Eoin Morgan’s failing England team with a lame dog captain at the helm. I mean who would want to be an England skipper, unless your name is Alastair Cook, who is supposedly being hounded (their words, not mine) out of a job with the very lightest of criticism if you choose to listen to ‘those that know’. I will freely admit, I’m not Morgan’s biggest fan and I guess you will find very few Middlesex fans that are, still I’m not a xenophobic moron either and I will happily support Morgan on the basis that whilst his batting isn’t the same as it was in 2010, and back then his batting was a revelation, his captaincy is actually pretty good.

Now do I think that Morgan is the next Mike Brearly, well of course I don’t, yet the improvements are there. The batsmen are generally posting in excess of 300 runs most innings, somewhat unheard of if you go back 2 years to the Peter Moores reign and the bowlers, whilst most would agree are somewhat limited in this format, at least have some sort a plan to work with, again a massive improvement on 2015. It does actually seem that the Captain and Coach are working in harmony, unlike the Test team, where Sir Alastair does and says what he wants, and that’s why unlike the Test team, that this team has made pretty good strides in the last 18 months. Long gone are the days where we hoped Ravi Bopara might lift us up to 270 in the final 5 overs. English cricket has shown that it can move forward given the right environment and quite possibly with the right captain too.

As for the game itself, well we gave ourselves a chance by scoring 350 on a fairly flat deck with small boundaries, yet even at half time it felt we were about 30 runs short such are the run fests that are becoming of ODI’s now. Jason Roy played a lovely knock before getting a bit too ambitious, Morgan, Moeen and Buttler had nice cameos and Ben Stokes played an absolute gem of a knock when it seemed that 320 was likely to be at the high end of England’s expectations. The strangest innings of the day was Joe Root’s, which despite Nasser Hussain’s constant praise throughout, seemed a bit of a strange affair when you know 350 is about par on this track. It is hard to criticise a player who has just flown in from England after the birth of his first child and has hit 70 odd, but England’s innings seemed to be sapped of any kind of urgency when Root was at the crease and it was only through the power hitting of Stokes at the end that we came up with something resembling a score that might be defendable. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Root, as it’s important to have an anchor in the innings for others to play around, but equally one could also add that if we had scored another 20 runs then it could have been a tighter match.

Yet despite achieving a par score on this pitch, England’s bowlers gave us some hope by reducing India to 63-4 with some fine bowling from David Willey in particular; however England once again made the fatal mistake of not getting Kohli out early. Of course, I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, as Kohli is batting on a different planet to everybody else at the moment. His partnership with Yadav was a pure mixture of outstanding timing, outrageous shots and total skill from both batsmen to put England’s bowlers to the sword. I’m sure that one or two of our media chums will no doubt put the blame at the door of England’s spinners and I agree they didn’t bowl well, but they were never allowed to settle due to the skill of both Indian batsmen. Perhaps if Moeen or Rashid had managed to get a couple of cheap overs in early then they might have been able to settle into a routine, but that’s by the by as India attacked both with glee and no little skill, which basically forced Morgan’s hand to remove both spinners from the attack and stick with the seam bowling attack in a futile effort to stop the runs from flowing. By the time England had managed to take the wickets of both Kohli and a limping Yadav, each for a fine 100, the game was pretty much up, the run rate was under 6 and India bat pretty deep. There was the odd moment of panic in the final stages from India, but all in all, they won the game pretty comfortably with nearly two overs to spare.

So onto the next ODI game on Thursday on the same sort of pitch at Cuttack no doubt, with the question being will England have learnt anything from this game or will we see more of the same from India? An equally pertinent question may be, does the English public actually care about these ODI’s, but we’ll leave that one for another time.

The Outside Cricket 2017 Predictions

Sir Ronald81 Comments

At the start of every year, every newspaper, magazine and website worth its’ salt often comes up with a list of their predictions about the upcoming year from an array of supposed experts in this field.

However, as we’re just ‘little bloggers’, who are continually told by a number of the big beasts in the national press (though they are rapidly declining) that we know nothing. We thought that we would come up with an alternative set of predictions for 2017.

The below is meant to be taken in jest and we refuse to be held accountable if any of the preposterous predictions that are written below actually happen. If anyone is remotely offended by these predictions, well good, stop being so thin-skinned.

Happy (belated) New Year!

January

After intense speculation around the continued captaincy of Alastair Cook, Cook finally meets with Director, Comma in a 5 star hotel in Mayfair. After some intense and forthright discussions between the pair, Andrew Strauss finally calls a press conference outside the Ritz to reveal the decision. Clutching a white piece of paper in his left hand, the Director Comma announces that

“The settlement of the Cook captaincy problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which English cricket may find success. This morning I had another talk with the England captain, Alastair Cook and here is the paper, which bears his name as well as mine. Alastair Cook, or Lord Cook of Essex as he will now be known, will continue to the lead the English cricket assault to be the number one team. I have returned from the Ritz with success for our time”.

The press are unanimous in their support for Cook, with Newman stating “how only a true English great would put their country ahead of themselves”; Scyld Berry comments that ‘without doubt Cook is the finest leader that English cricket has ever seen”; whilst John Etheridge is reported to have written that Cook “is truly a man of the people”, however no-one is able to corroborate this as no-one has ever read a cricket piece in the Sun.

Meanwhile, England’s one-day team travel to India as underdogs against their strong hosts. After losing the first ODI by 5 wickets, Two Eoin Morgan centuries in the final two matches guides England to an unexpected 2-1 victory and an even more impressive whitewash in the T20’s, thanks to Morgan’s clever use of his spin options and clean hitting at the death. Whilst most of the press are subsequently impressed with both Morgan’s batting and leadership of the team, Oliver Holt calls it an “absolute disgrace from a fraud of a man” and demands that he resign immediately. Paul Newman’s subsequently retweets this 4 times.

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February

 As part of the expected England reshuffle after the heavy Test defeats in India, Andrew Strauss announces that Mike Newell, James Whittaker and Angus Fraser are to step down as England’s selectors, subsequently adding in “well it was all their fault anyway”. In a somewhat surprise decision, Michael Vaughan is elected as Chief of Selectors with input from Andy Flower and Lord Cook of Essex into the final selection panel. A clearly delighted Vaughan describes this “as a fantastic opportunity for ISM’s members, sorry I mean England’s young players, to play a vital part in English cricket in what will be a defining year for England.”

There is also some sad news, when John Etheridge announces that he has been made redundant by The Sun in a series of expletive ridden Tweets. A slightly embarrassed Chief Sport Editor of the Sun admits that they thought they’d gotten rid of him five years ago and that he thought the columns that kept appearing in his paper were from a new unpaid intern called John. An outraged Etheridge, with some support from Derek Pringle and Mike Selvey, launches another vicious attack on the Sun’s decision before flying out to Bangladesh on holiday to let off a bit of steam.

Mike Selvey also launches his blog “Uphill into the wind” amongst much fan fare from himself; however things quickly turn ugly when he doesn’t get the 500,000 views in the first week that he’s expecting and a couple of mildly critical comments appear below the line. A raging Selvey states this blog was “not a vanity project” and how dare “those bilious idiots and little bloggers dare to question his unrivalled cricketing knowledge?” Selvey immediately shuts down the blog and spends the rest of the year posting bitter Twitter comments whilst sat in various pubs in Suffolk. We at BOC are devastated at this news as this was likely to form most of our material for the coming year.

March

England begin March with a ODI tour to the West Indies in preparation for the upcoming Champions trophy. In what proves to be a tight and low scoring affair, the series is played in a downright spikey spirit with Marlon Samuels continually goading Ben Stokes. Going into the final game at 1-1, The series finally culminates in a West Indies win with Samuels hitting Stokes into the stand needing 4 off the final ball with only 1 wicket remaining. A clearly delighted Samuels sets off on a lap of honour whilst revealing a T-Shirt claiming that Stokes has a tiny manhood. Unsurprisingly Ben Stokes does not take this slight in good humour and unfortunately breaks both of his wrists whilst trying to hurl his locker from the England changing room at the gloating Samuels below. A giggling Paul Farbrace comments that “boys will be boys”, whilst confirming that Stokes will miss this summer’s cricket for surgery on both his wrists.

There is widespread condemnation of the behavior of both teams by the press, so much so, that Oliver Holt flies out to Barbados demanding that Eoin Morgan is sacked immediately as only a “cowardly captain would allow a great Englishman like Stokes to have to protect himself from these foreign savages”. When the English captain refuses, Holt and Newman return home and organise a ‘live aid style’ concert to demand that ECB removes Morgan called ‘Times up Eoin, it’s time to get going’ in reference to his refusal to sing God Save The Queen. The concert is a somewhat sparsely attended affair with various B-List acts and some rousing faux patriotic speeches from Piers Morgan, George Galloway, Nigel Farage and Michael Gove; however this is enough for Colin Graves to decide that he needs to act immediately and Morgan is swiftly relieved of the England ODI captaincy with the full consent of Andy Flower.

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April

April begins with various strange sightings of Andy Flower dressed up as the Grim Reaper standing outside Adil Rashid’s house with a sign declaring ‘you’re next sunshine’. When a clearly confused Rashid complains to the various authorities about this harassment, England’s Chief of selectors, Michael Vaughan declares in various newspaper columns that only a ‘weak minded and fragile individual such as Rashid would be bothered by this type of attention’ and vows never to pick him for England again. A clearly exasperated and downhearted Rashid retires from cricket completely and takes up a surprise position as Head Coach of Leeds Football Club stating that he feels “he will get far more support from Massimo Cellino than he ever did from Alastair Cook”.

The commencement of the County Championship starts under a cloud when the English County Chairmen refuse to endorse the newly proposed, 8 team T20 Franchise competition that the ECB has been pushing for. A clearly angry Colin Graves blasts all the counties as ‘mediocre’ and states that he “didn’t need their support or their grounds to launch such a forward thinking and money spinning new competition”. In a surprise move, Graves announces that the T20 Super Bash will still go ahead with the franchises being held in Beckenham, Luton, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Scarborough, Rochdale, Eastbourne and Aberdeen. A suitably impressed executive from BT Sport immediately bids £35million for the rights.

After vowing to watch more county cricket, there is a disaster when Trevor Bayliss mixes up Middlesex’s and Surrey’s fixtures and turns up at a deserted Lords. In private conversations, Bayliss is heard saying “jeez, there are two teams in London mate, why didn’t anyone tell me that, I mean London isn’t even a county!” Thankfully Bayliss has enough nous about him to report back to Director Comma that he witnessed a couple of decent young players from South African descent who should be ripe to play for England in the next year or so. Strauss remains impressed.

May

After a string of low scores in Division 1, Lord Cook of Essex declares that he is going to miss the next county game to play for Norfolk in order to get his eye in. Cook proceeds to make a chanceless 300 not out, which immediately prompts Peter Miller amongst others to declare that this clearly shows that Cook is better than Bradman and will easily smash Sachin Tendulkar’s record for the most amount of Test runs scored by a player. Meanwhile in Division 2, Ben Duckett records his 3rd double century of the campaign followed by another 184 not out as Northants storm to the top of Division 2; however many of the media are left unimpressed as Division 2 runs don’t really count (unless you play for Essex).

England meanwhile start their ODI series against South Africa, with Jos Buttler now leading the side in place of the demoted Eoin Morgan, who doesn’t even make the squad. In an exciting series where both sides post scores upwards of 320 in each game, South Africa pinch the series after England fall 8 runs short of chasing 370 to win in the last ODI at Lords. Jos Buttler makes the third quickest hundred in history in that game but England fall just short after a wonderful inning of 189 from Quinton De Kock. In the post series press conference, Director Comma comments that things may have to change in order for England to win the Champions Trophy and orders that all of the games for that Tournament be played on uncovered pitches to “preserve the old-fashioned values of the game”. Paul Farbrace sat beside him just chuckles.

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June

After Strauss’ shock decision to play all of the Champions Trophy game on uncovered pitches, England decide to make some last minute changes to their squad. Out go Buttler, Roy, Hales, Willey and Bairstow and in come Cook (cpt), Vince, Bopara, Anderson and Read, with Michael Vaughan declaring that they ‘were looking for some solidity’ at the top of the order. The tournament is somewhat of a let down as no team is able to post more than 150 on the green, swinging surfaces; however England progress to the final thanks to some fine swing bowling from Jimmy Anderson and 200 runs from Cook at a strike rate of 48. England play India in the final and despite restricting the hosts to 148, England fall 5 runs agonizingly short despite a fine 24* (62) from Ravi Bopara.

In the meantime there are shock call-ups for Scott Borthwick, Joe Clarke and Ajmal Shahzad for the upcoming England South Africa Test series. There are a few murmurings around a potential conflict of interest for the Chief of Selectors especially when he is heard off camera stating that ‘he should get a decent commission cheque this month’. These rumours are further substantiated when Vaughan is found to be posting contracts under the door of each of the England squad with a post it note attached to it stating ‘sign this or you’ll never be picked again’. Andrew Strauss is forced to act and fires Michael Vaughan ahead of the first Test claiming that his job at ISM was potentially influencing his selection thoughts. An incensed Vaughan issues a statement through his lawyers that he has had no commercial interests with ISM since 2013 and threatens to sue the ECB. A spooked Colin Graves immediately offers to settle for £20million, which Vaughan accepts and he immediately retakes his spot on TMS and BT Sport using them as platform to promote ISM’s latest roster of talent. Andy Flower meanwhile is named as Chairman of Selectors and is solely responsible for selection at all England levels.

In other news, the first day-night County Cricket fixtures get off to an inauspicious start when play is delayed at the Essex vs Middlesex game as someone at Essex Cricket club forgets to order the pink balls. In another turn for the worse, 30 spectators are treated for hypothermia at the Emirates Riverside during the Durham vs Worcestershire game as temperatures drop to minus two during the evening. An unrepentant Colin Graves declares that the games are an unmitigated success whilst imposing another 48 point fine on Durham for insubordination and playing the game that far North.

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July

England’s First Test of the summer results in a draw, thanks to a fluent Joe Root ton in the first innings and a battling second innings 100 from Lord Cook of Essex. Commenting on the draw, Cook remains in full belief that this “group of young guns is the best team he has ever coached, I mean captained”. The remaining Test’s do not bear this out though, as two second innings collapses means that England lose the series with one to play. A tetchy Alastair Cook loses his temper with Ian Ward when asked about what this series means for his captaincy by replying “I’ve got 10,000 runs more than you, how dare you ask me these difficult questions on camera.” Cook immediately declares in a press conference that as the Lord of Essex, he is not willing to put up with subordinates asking such impertinent questions and resigns the captaincy immediately as well as making himself unavailable to play in the final Test. The ECB immediately declares that this is a time of national mourning and demands that all flags are let at half-mast. Meanwhile, the ECB also declares that they are retiring the English captaincy as an honour to the great Alastair Cook, Paul Newman writes a 1,000 words in support of the former Captain and the ECB’s stance. A bemused Joe Root goes out to face the media declaring “I’m not sure what’s going on really, I’ve been playing on Fifa17 with Jonny Bairstow for the last 24 hours, but I’m sure Cook’s spirit goes with us or something like that”. In the last Test of the series, Root and Hameed both score a double ton, whilst Moeen Ali bags 10-78 in the match as England rout South Africa by an innings and 155 runs. England’s vice captain Root declares that ‘this was for the honour of Alastair Cook’, whilst trying not to crack up whereas Faf du Plessis admits the South African side lost some concentration having pissed themselves with laughter for the last 3 days at the state of English cricket.

There are some sad scenes at the end of series press conference when Director Comma announces that they have decided to let Trevor Bayliss go in order to “progress English cricket moving forward”. A clearly inebriated Bayliss attends the press conference demanding to know ‘which one of you w*nkers is George Dobell’. A slightly embarrassed Dobell sitting in the front row is thankfully saved by Melinda Farrell after Bayliss comes windmilling towards him, when she takes downs Bayliss with a swift uppercut. Paul Farbrace, sat at the press conference table, chuckles heartily.

In other news, Ed Smith is once again in hot water when it transcribes that he has copied the whole of Jonathan Agnew’s commentary from the first day of the First Test at Lords. Smith might well have got away with it until one attentive TMS listener pointed out that Smith was commenting on how well JP Duminy was batting during the England first innings. Smith refuses to comment on Social Media and instead writes a 5,000 essay in the Spectator comparing fielding to life in the pre-Raphaelite era; however embarrassed TMS officials are forced to quietly fire Ed. In a surprise move, TMS hire disgraced ex-football commentator Andy Gray as his replacement; however this ends predictably badly when Gray launches into a diatribe during the 2nd Women’s ODI when he constantly refers to them all as ‘a bunch of swamp donkeys’ and repeatedly asks ‘what they’re doing on a cricket pitch in the first place’? The BBC sensibly sacks Gray and headhunts Nick Knight to restore some calm order into the TMS commentary box, when asked about how he feels about the move, Knight admits that “he had never come across TMS before”.

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August

In a move that shocks the whole cricketing world, Andrew Strauss announces that the ECB have hired the first female Head Coach of a male International cricket team. Sitting alongside the new hire, Mandy Flowers, Strauss reiterates that England are “consistently pushing the boundaries and that Mandy comes highly recommended with sustained experience and success of coaching at both a National and Youth levels”. Dressed in a slightly ill-fitting tracksuit with what appears to be a long brown haired wig on, Mandy speaking in a soft Zimbabwean accent emphasizes the need for discipline within the England team as well as being able to consistently ‘build pressure and squeeze the opposing teams’. The English press are somewhat surprised by this ‘bolt out of the blue’ appointment but are unanimous in their praise for both Mandy and Strauss with Scyld Berry calling it “a match made in heaven” whilst Derek Pringle states that “only Andrew Strauss would be so forward thinking in hiring such a successful coach, irrespective of gender, to drive England to the very top of international cricket.” George Dobell bucks the trend by stating that he has some suspicions that “all isn’t quite what it seems”.

The first success of Mandy’s reign is to track down Lord Cook of Essex and persuade him to retake the England captaincy. After a 3 hour meeting at Cook’s Palace, I mean farm in Essex, Mandy declares that Cook, who has now had the title the ‘patron saint of English Cricket’ bestowed upon him by the ECB, will be fully focused and in charge of England’s upcoming series against the West Indies. A delighted Paul Newman pens a 1,000 word love ode to Alastair Cook. Indeed, the Flowers and Cook partnership gets off to a wonderful start as they decimate a somewhat disinterested West Indies 3-0. Flowers plan to bowl 2 foot outside the off stump to the West Indian batsmen completely flummoxes them as they chase wide delivery after wide delivery and keep nicking off to 2nd slip. England’s batsmen also make hay against the West Indian bowlers, who seem to have their minds elsewhere with Cook, Root and Bairstow each scoring two hundreds in the series. A triumphant Flowers states that “this is the perfect tonic for the upcoming tour of Australia” whilst Paul Farbrace chuckles next to him. The English media also don’t hold back in their praise with Victor Marks boldly predicting that “Cooks young warriors are now in prime position to conquer Australia”.

In other news, there is controversy in the Sky commentary box, when Shane Warne mildly criticises Alastair Cook’s captaincy during the 2nd Test. Warne is immediately dropped by Sky and deported back to Australia and is replaced by the North Korean news anchor from their state TV. On this surprise announcement, a Sky spokesman comments “that they are consistently trying to broaden the appeal of cricket and that through this appointment we have an experienced operator who is not afraid of praising the patron saint of English cricket, Alastair Cook, fulsomely.” Nasser Hussain in his column for the Daily Mail praises the appointment as ‘forward thinking’.

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September

There is some controversy in the world of English cricket when the Cricketer Magazine launches it’s annual ‘Top 50 most powerful people in English Cricket list”, with Editor in Chief Simon Hughes naming himself as the most powerful 25 people in English Cricket. When pressed about some of the glaring omissions from the list and why he saw fit to nominate himself 25 times, a somewhat perplexed Hughes simply stated that there were 25 reasons why he was more powerful than anyone else, hence the 25 consecutive nominations. Hughes then goes onto to patronise anyone who disagrees with this selection, including a slightly disbelieving Lawrence Booth, who had questioned his motivation behind this, apart from Hughes being an arrogant fool.

England’s decision to continue playing the ODI series on uncovered pitches in the middle of September comes a cropper when play is abandoned for the whole of the scheduled ODI and T20 series against the West Indies due to rain. The Director Comma comments that whilst this is an “unfortunate situation” he would make the same decision again, having agreed with Mandy Flowers to prioritize the upcoming Ashes tour and having already been vindicated by England’s strong showing in the Champions Trophy.

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October

In a quiet month for Cricket, Mandy Flowers announces that England will start preparations for their Ashes tour with an extended fitness boot camp at Sandringham at the end of October, as this will ensure that they are in the right frame of mind for the upcoming tour. When a fit again and slightly perplexed, Ben Stokes questions on Twitter the decision to prioritize fitness over playing skills, Mike Selvey writing in The Cricket Paper comments “that Stokes’ is sailing close to the wind with his career; there are sceptics about, some with a greater knowledge than most, and his card has been marked”. Selvey naturally refuses to name any of these sceptics, though England chairmen of selectors, Andy Flower who has hardly been seen for the past couple of months, is said to be one of them. England’s decision to hold this high fitness, high intensity camp so close to the Ashes seems to backfire though, when they finally manage to break a stricken Mark Wood for good.

Colin Graves also appears back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons when he declares that the Australian Cricket team are a “bunch of mediocre convicts and bums” whilst also stating that ‘England should win the Ashes convincingly’. A predictably outraged Australian national press pick up on this immediately labeling English Cricket as an “outdated and arrogant institution” whilst a fired up Mitchell Starc starts to grow a handlebar moustache and is seen in the nets bowling at 95mph at the head of a cardboard cut out of Alastair Cook. When pressed by Ali Martin during an interview, Paul Farbrace chuckles and says that no doubt the Australians will have “taken these comments with a classic pinch of Australian humour”.

November

Andy Flower announces the tour party to Australia, with a number of surprise selections on the bowling front. Whilst Anderson, Broad and Finn travel as suspected, there are call ups for Oliver Hannon-Dalby, Reece Topley and Jamie Overton as Flower comments that they are looking for tall bowlers “who can really dig it in at the Australian batsmen”. In a press conference just before the players fly out, Mandy Flowers praises Flower’s selections and confirms that she is happy with the bowling arsenal at her fingertips, stating the need to “bowl dry” and be up and at the Australian batsmen. When the players finally land in Australia, Mandy organises another fitness drill at a local Australian army base before they play a 3 day warm up game against the New South Wales under 12’s 2nd XI, which they comfortably win thanks to a double hundred from the Patron Saint, Alastair Cook and the fact that none of the oppositions batsmen are above 5’5. Chris Stocks states that England should comfortably retain the Ashes on the back of this performance.

England arrive at the Gabba in confident mood and despite losing the toss, Cook maintains that this England team are “ready for anything that the Australians throw at them”; however things don’t start well for the tourists when Stuart Broad bowls his first delivery to 2nd slip, whilst Jimmy Anderson is forced to leave the field complaining of soreness after bowling only 2 overs. Much to the glee of Denis Freedman (one n), who launches into a record 96 hours of “Overratedson” banter on Twitter, Anderson is unfortunately unable to return to the field for the rest of the series. Freedman’s Twitter banter is only cut short, when Cricket Australia announces as part of it’s strategic programme for keeping players at the top of their game, that Steve Smith will be rested for the rest of the tour after Brisbane. At this point, Freedman spontaneously combusts. Back to the Gabba, England have a torrid time in the field with Topley and Hannon-Dalby leaking runs as David Warner hits a double ton before tea on Day 1 before Australia finally declare on 635-3. Australia then proceed to find holes in the English batting unit as a mustachioed Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood rip through the English batting unit twice to win by an innings and 170 runs. In the post match interviews, Cook insists it “will be a good learning experience for our young team” and that he is confident about “bouncing back in Adelaide”. KP meanwhile does a tweet about Alastair Cook’s captaincy, which is panned by the ‘pearly gates brigade’ and is subsequently told that his UK visa has been revoked permanently. Andrew Strauss denies any involvement in ‘getting rid of that c*nt’.

Meanwhile, there is tragedy in the BT Sport’s studios when Graeme Swann’s smugness reaches unprecedented and dangerous levels and he wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a clone of Simon Hughes. Swann subsequently refuses to watch any of the action for the rest of the series but constantly exclaims that “he would have bowled out this Australian team on his own”. Greg James eventually does the humane thing and suffocates a writhing Swann with a cushion live on TV.

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December 

England are humiliated in both Adelaide and Perth as the moustachioed Starc in particular, continues to torment Cook, who has only managed a high score of 9 in the series so far. Despite battling performances from Joe Root who makes a glorious 150 in Adelaide in their 8 wicket defeat and a 2nd innings rearguard of 173* from Ben Stokes, who nearly salvages an unlikely draw in Perth, England’s batch of tall, floaty bowlers are unable to contain the Australian batsmen, who continue to pile on the runs with glee. Hazlewood and Lyon also competently back up Mitchell Starc, who with his new found confidence and continued hostile bowling, terrorizes an increasingly brittle English batting line up. Steven Finn is unfortunately sent home from Australia after being declared as “unselectable” by Mandy Flowers, whilst Moeen, who has been unable to deal with the short ball, and with only one wicket in the series, is also dropped for the rest of the series. Liam Dawson is bought in as his replacement owing to his ‘understated character’.

After defeat in Perth and with the Ashes having been surrendered 3-0 to a powerful Australian team, a tearful Alastair Cook laments the fact the Australians refused to “honour the gentleman’s agreement that they would only bowl slow long hops on his pads, for the sake of the health of the international game”. Cook confirms that he is resigning from the both English captaincy and from the game at the age of 33 as “it isn’t fair”. Cook is last reported some 25 miles from the WACA helping out at a centre which deals with injured Kangaroo’s. Paul Newman describes this “as a brave and heartfelt decision from one of the most talented and courageous player’s ever to have worn an England shirt.” Meanwhile in England, a stone-faced Colin Graves announces that Andrew Strauss has been “relieved of the position of Director, England Cricket”. Graves confirms that they have an appointment in mind and that once this is ratified, the new man will conduct a root and branch review. Three days later, Dominic Cork is confirmed as the new Director of English Cricket and he vows to fly over to Australia to get a first hand look at the England team.

A depleted and dejected English team head to Melbourne, with Mandy Flowers confirming that they are looking for a couple of replacements who are already out in Australia to compliment their batting and bowling in time for Sydney. There is a recall for Alex Hales who is playing for the Sydney Thunder at the time, whilst there is a shock call up for Chris Tremlett, who happens to holidaying in Adelaide at the time. There are positive signs in Melbourne, as Joe Root, who is now captain in place of the newly retired Alastair Cook, wins the toss and England post 400, thanks to centuries from Hameed and Jonny Bairstow, whilst a 5 wicket haul from Ben Stokes limits Australia to a 50 run deficit. Things go wrong in the 2nd innings as England’s batting once again collapse in heap, with Nathan Lyon taking for 6-32 as Australia easily knock off the 160 runs needed for victory.

Sydney proves to be even worse, despite the introduction of Hales and Tremlett into the side and England crash to an innings defeat, despite two fifties and seven wickets in the match from Ben Stokes. England has once again been whitewashed in Australia much to the glee of the home fans. Meanwhile, Dominic Cork, who has now landed in Australia launches an astonishing attack on Ben Stokes claiming that he has “never seen anyone so disengaged from what was going on” despite being England’s highest run scorer and wicket taker in the series. Cork states that this will be reviewed with senior management on his return to England. Paul Farbrace, who is sat alongside Cork, lets out a chuckle. In better news, Alastair Cook is eventually found wandering through the Perth wilderness and returned to his rightful owners, the ECB. Mandy Flowers and Andy Flower meanwhile, are somewhat surprisingly, nowhere to be seen.

Of course, none of the above is likely to happen when we have such a competent and well run Board as the ECB, one that is completely in touch with the feelings of ordinary fans!!

Thanks again for your continued support moving into 2017, we’ll be here again for every England batting collapse, every screw up by the ECB and every bit of sycophantic journalism praising our ‘dear leader’.

Sean, TLG, Dmitri

India vs. England, 5th Test, Day 1

Sir Ronald51 Comments

That we were able to witness any cricket today, a few days after the cyclone that hit Chennai so badly, is of true credit to the ground staff and no little luck that the pitch itself wasn’t badly damaged during the storm.

As for the game itself, I think even the most one-eyed and optimistic of England fans would’ve struggled to build up their hopes of an England victory in this Test on what has proved to be a chastening tour for the tourists. This coupled with the fact that England have proved time and time again that we simply don’t do dead rubbers, certainly led to fear that the players, with their minds on returning to England, would simply collapse in a heap at the hands of a strong Indian batting and bowling attack. That we head into Day 2 marginally ahead of the hosts, is something most of us would’ve taken happily when we woke up this morning.

England won the toss and chose to bat on what looked a like a fairly slow, low and placid wicket. The fact that Cook has won 4 out of 5 tosses on this tour, simply negates any excuses around ‘win the toss, win the game’ that members of the touring party and media occasionally like to trot out, we simply haven’t bowled or batted well enough, end of story. Both teams made 2 changes to their teams with Woakes and Anderson being replaced by Broad and surely the new one cap wonder Liam Dawson for England and Sharma and Mishra coming in for India replacing Kumar and the unlucky Yadav, who surely must have had an injury to be left out after his performance in Mumbai.

Indeed it was Sharma who struck first getting Jennings to play an ill advised waft outside off stump before Jadeja once again snared his bunny Alastair Cook, with a delivery that went straight on. I naturally warned caution in my review of Day 1 of the last Test around hailing Jennings as the answer to England’s top order challenges, as one swallow does not make a summer and he has struggled in the last couple of innings with two failures. I would certainly give him the summer to prove himself as I personally think that it takes at least seven Test’s to fully merit judgment on a player’s suitability for Test cricket and with Jennings potentially coming in at first drop this would then allow us to move Root back to number 4, which I still think is his best position. I for one, have never understood this macho ‘you’re best players needs to play at number 3’ malarkey, I would simply let them bat where they feel most comfortable and build a batting line up around them.

So with both openers back in the shed early and an impending feeling of doom for those that had roused themselves at 4am to watch the game live (I wasn’t one of them), England set about the rebuilding job to try and allow themselves to have a chance in the Test. Root played a typical Root innings, in that he didn’t seem to be in any trouble during the whole innings before getting out. Root is without doubt, England’s best batsman, with the range of stroke play to be effective on any type of wicket and has a beautiful knack of being 25 not out before you even realise. However the one aspect of Root’s game that frustrates us and I know massively frustrates him is the relatively poor conversion rate from 50’s to 100’s. Once again today, he did all the hard work, played some sumptuous shots including a very effective slog sweep and looked completely in control before he got out under-edging an attempted sweep off Jadeja. Yes many could say it was slightly unlucky and it is probably was, but if Root rightly wants to be regarded as one of the top batsmen in world cricket, then he needs to find a way of converting these 70’s & 80’s into big hundreds, ones that in turn win matches for England. This is what Kohli has done for India over the past 18 months and this is what Smith is doing for Australia, so in turn this is what England need Root to do for England. Who knows, perhaps the captaincy might allow him to kick on with this respect.

As for Moeen, it was a tale of two halves once again. He looked all at sea when he first came in and should really have been caught on 0, in fact it was a minor miracle that he survived until lunch. However after lunch, he looked a completely different player. We all know that he is likely to give the opposition a chance, that he likes to drive in the air and that he likes to use his feet to the spinners, but no-one can deny, there is certain thrill in watching him bat. The languid cover drives, beautiful on drives and dancing down the pitch to the spinners were all in splendid view today and he scored a vitally important hundred to give England sufficient hope of putting on a big first innings score. Whether he is the long term answer to our middle class travails, that I’m not so sure about; however he has scored over 1,000 runs this year at an average of 45, so there is definitely hope that he can kick on and continue to make runs with more consistency than we have seen before. Of course, a settled position in the side might help Moeen, but as we have seen the only consistency that England have employed over the past two years is the staunchest of defence of their captain.

With Moeen and Bairstow at the crease and the ball doing very little, England seemed to building towards a strong position on Day 1. It can be argued that Bairstow gave his wicket away with a lack of concentration and a rash shot and without doubt he was furious with himself for losing his wicket; however one also has to give Kohli and Jadeja some credit with coming up with a plan to get Bairstow driving with a short cover waiting for the catch, which duly came. The ploy wasn’t exactly subtle, but it did show that the Indian captain was willing to try different things when the ball wasn’t do anything off the pitch and not willing to just let the game drift. Something that many of us agree that the England captain could learn a thing or two about.

So we go into Day 2, with the score on 288-4 and surely the aim needs to be to press on to around the 500 mark, to give ourselves a fighting chance in this game. The Chennai pitch looks pretty placid and slow with even Ashwin struggling to get any purchase out of the pitch, which does not bode well for our spinners (oh to have a fit and well Panesar in this team, as this seems to be the type of pitch where you get some reward by fizzing the ball off it). This coupled with the fact that India have Kohli and a batting line up who are all seeing the cricket ball like a football at the moment, therefore anything less than a score of 500 from England could easily see a repeat of the Mumbai Test, as the Indian batsmen make hay whilst the sun shines.

England have batted well today and have at least shown some fight in this dead rubber, but they are going to have to do the same again tomorrow to make a proper game of this.

Day 2 thoughts and comments below:

India vs. England, 4th Test, Day 3

Sir Ronald136 Comments

Well let’s not make any bones about it, that was a complete and utter horror show from England and for all true purposes we are now out of this game and out of the series.

First of all, lets give credit where credit is due. Vijay played a brilliant knock to get to a hundred in a typically understated way and that innings from Kohli was a class apart from anything I’ve seen in a long time. It may be that Kohli hasn’t ever really performed in England, but his last series here was 2 years ago and he looks like he has matured immensely as a batsman since then. This innings reminded me of the KP knock in Mumbai 4 years ago, a difficult pitch, a supreme knock and a batsman that looks a class apart from anyone else on the pitch. Without doubt Kohli has raised his game to reach the echelons of becoming a world class batsman and one can only applaud him for this, his batting has been one of the major differences between the teams in this series.

As for the ugly, well where do you start? It is rare for me these days to actually rage in front of the TV, older age has mellowed me somewhat; however what I saw from England after tea has more than got the blood going. I have rarely seen a team that is supposed to be aiming for the top echelons in cricket, try and play cricket with no clue and no game plan whatsoever. I mean it was just embarrassing and surely heads (or more precisely the captain) need to roll after this game. How do you even try to analyse Cook’s captaincy? Bowling a leg spinner for 28 consecutive overs so that he is completely cooked, not taking the new ball until 42 overs after it was due, refusing to rotate the quick bowlers at one end to see if they could get a breakthrough, employing negative fields whilst letting the game drift and wasting a review on a desperation hunch knowing that it could (and did) come back to haunt you later on in the game. I mean it’s all there, the idiots guide around how not to captain a cricket team. I used to think that Dhoni was the worst captain that I had seen in my lifetime, but his performances don’t have a patch on Cook’s performance in the field today. No doubt the sympathisers and the MSM will absolve Cook of blame and apportion it to others such as the spinners, the Bairstow missed stumping, the Rashid missed catch or whatever else they can find to take the heat off Cook, but that simply doesn’t wash. The blame has to lie at the Captain’s door for the most listless captaincy performance I can remember in a long time.

Ok rant nearly over, the fact that I am so annoyed about today is that we actually dragged ourselves back into the match at one point. The match looked like it was drifting until Root, who had bought himself onto bowl in Cook’s absence (says it all really) took 2 wickets in 2 overs to reduce the Indian team to 307-6. This was our chance, if we could dislodge Jadeja early and who knows, even lull Kohli into a false shot, then we could end up with a small lead and this game could end up as a one innings Test. A challenge on a difficult pitch against a top spin bowling attack; however one that we could give ourselves a chance on, if we managed to set a target of around 250 for India to chase on the last day. The problem though was we had a tiring spin bowling attack, one that had bowled nearly 80 overs between them due to the fantastic selection committee who decided that 4 quick bowlers was the way to go on this pitch. I said on Day 1 that this might come back to bite us on the arse and boy has it done so big time. You may have well as given Chris Woakes a lounger for all the bowling he has done in this Test, but I’m still sure it’s definitely the spinners fault! Anyway I digress, when Jadeja came out to bat, that was the time to take the new ball, give Moeen and Rashid 15 overs out of the attack to rest up and give our fast bowlers (yes we have 4 of them) the opportunity to each have a short spell of hostile bowling at the Indian batsman to see if we could get a wicket; however we didn’t, Cook left a tiring spin bowling attack against 2 good players of spin, and wondered why we didn’t blow them away. It wasn’t until Jadeja eventually whacked one up in the air against a tiring Rashid that we finally got a breakthrough, inspiring captaincy, I think not.

Yet the day somehow managed to get worse, when captain clueless finally took the new ball, we managed to drop Yadav early in his innings and then waste a review off Jimmy’s bowling that any child could’ve seen was nowhere near out. It would have been extremely unwise to use a review on this if you still had two left, but to waste your final review on that was simply criminal. Perhaps Jimmy now tells Cook what he can and can’t review these days in Stuart Broad’s absence. Now we all knew what was going to happen next and lo and behold, Yadav edges Moeen down the leg side, which is subsequently given not out and guess what, we have no reviews left. It was comical. The picture that will stay with me for a long time was the media’s favourite son, asking for a review until the umpires politely told him that he had already burnt them on two spurious appeals. You simply couldn’t make it up.

So where are we now, well the game has gone in my opinion. India are 51 ahead going into Day 4 on a pitch that is starting to resemble a minefield. It would not surprise me if they end up extending their lead to a 100+ before rolling out England for very little. They may have to bat again, but I can’t see them having to chase more than 50 runs if I’m honest. We had a chance, we blew it and I’m sure we can all look forward to a 4-0 defeat now.

As England fans we’ve all experienced pretty horrendous days (as Dmitri’s Adelaide piece particularly highlights, which was obviously the nadir) but today is up there with all of them. Quite simply, if Cook doesn’t resign after this Test, then I may as well cancel my Sky subscription and tickets to the Oval next year. Cook has never had it as a captain, good family or not, and it’s more than time to hand the reigns over to someone else. There is an alternative, even if it means giving the captaincy to the Investec Zebra, as right now, few others would have been able to give a worse example in the art of captaincy as we witnessed today.

Right, I may need a lie down now, comments and thoughts on Day 4 below:

India vs. England, 4th Test, Day 1

Sir Ronald39 Comments

If you’d had offered most England fans the opportunity to win the toss on a turning pitch in Mumbai and then finish 288-5 before play, then I’m sure most of us would have snatched your hand off; however the prevailing feeling amongst most fans is one of mild disappointment and thinking about what might have been today. England whilst not in cruise control at 220-2 were certainly laying down a good platform for what could have been a match winning innings, but one daft shot and one decent delivery in an Ashwin over changed the course of the innings on a pitch where it seems increasingly difficult to start on. The old adage that one brings two was perfectly highlighted in that last session and means England, from being firmly in the box seat, are now only slight favourites to win this Test.

As for the batsmen, Keaton Jennings had a day that he is unlikely to forget, scoring a magnificent hundred in his debut innings. Things could have been very different had he not been dropped on 0; however you have to make the most of any good fortune you get at international level and he looked far and away the best of the English batsmen. As I mentioned in yesterday’s preview, I haven’t seen much of Jennings during the last season and from memory he used to be a bit of a stodgy batsman by all accounts; however there was no hint of stodginess during this innings with the ability to play shots on both sides of the wicket and a highly effective traditional and reverse sweep able to keep the scoreboard ticking. He may well have had a few nerves coming into the game but you can certainly tell that he is in prime knick and high in confidence. The fact that he reached his hundred with a reverse sweep for four only highlights where he is with his game at the moment and the selectors should be praised for bringing him to open at the top of the order. I’m not going to go overboard with the praise after one great innings (I’ll leave that to the hacks who are always happy to build someone up and then knock them down); however if he continues to perform well over the next 3 innings then England are going to have some searching questions at the top of the order with Hameed returning from injury, come the first Test against South Africa. My guess is that one of Hameed or Jennings may well end up batting at number 3 but it certainly heaps a bit of pressure on Cook to start scoring some consistent runs.

As for Cook himself, he looked in better knick than he has done in the past few innings with both him and Jennings both scoring at 3.5 runs per over in the first session to lay an impressive platform for the innings. The thing with Cook in this series compared to 2014 is that his technique hasn’t looked all over the shop as it did in 2014. Yes his technique is fairly ugly with a number of moving parts and it of course only takes one of these to become out of sync to affect his balance but I haven’t seen too much wrong with his trigger movement in this series, it’s just that he keeps missing straight balls that haven’t turned or played down the wrong line to the fast bowlers. Perhaps it’s more mental than physical with the effects of the captaincy debate and being away from his newborn playing on his mind, certainly the ugly heave that got him out stumped seemed to suggest a slightly frazzled mind. Moeen played as Moeen does, playing and missing at a number of deliveries, playing the odd shot of beauty and then playing an ungainly heave across the line to get out after scoring a half century. This is Moeen in a nutshell I’m afraid, there will always be some breathtaking shots and there will always be some fairly loose dismissals as part of his modus operandi, as a bowler and a captain, he is someone who always keeps you interested in the field as a dismissal could always be around the corner. The fact that Moeen copped a load of flack for his dismissal (especially from Boycott) whilst the captain hardly got a mention for his equally ugly dismissal, speaks loads about our commentator’s and media’s mindset. Cook the captain might be fair game to have a gentle pop at but don’t ever have a pop at Cook the batsman. Ca plus change. As for the rest of the batsmen, Bairstow got out to an over ambitious sweep shot and Stokes and Buttler with some skill and a large amount of luck got us to the close without any other damage being down on a wicket where the ball is already starting to turn square.

With regards to the wicket, it was obviously vital to win the toss first and have first go on this surface; however I think the fact that the ball is going through the surface on Day 1 has really surprised the English team. I did mention last night that England may have to counter their initial thoughts about playing 4 seamers if the pitch looked like it was going to turn; however they still stuck with their initial plan of picking 4 quicks. Now whether this is simply a misreading of the pitch or a stubborn insistence that they go with their original plan, I’m simply not sure about; however I believe they have put themselves at a disadvantage bowling at India as the match goes on. You would think that Moeen, Rashid and probably Joe Root are now going to have to get through a lot of overs when India get their turn to bat.

So where does this leave us after Day 1, well the game is certainly delicately poised and England will know that they will need to bat well in the first session tomorrow to win this game. England as a minimum need to score 350+ and will probably be aiming at 400, but with Ashwin and Jadeja bowling superbly added to the fact that the pitch will continue to turn square throughout the game, this will be no easy task. England had a good day today but they will also need to have a good day with the bat tomorrow to have a chance, as put it this way, I certainly wouldn’t fancy England’s chances if they end up with a first innings deficit.

On a final note, it was again heartening to see the full allocation of overs being used with an added bonus of 4 extra overs for those watching the game. It really shouldn’t be that difficult for a Test team to bowl 90 overs in a day and it is something I believe that the ICC should be clamping down on more.

Thoughts and comments on Day 2 below:

India vs. England, 4th Test, Preview

Sir Ronald77 Comments

So England go into this Test 2-0 down and in desperate need of a victory to keep the series alive against a buoyant Indian team; however it hasn’t been this game that has lit up the back pages over the past week rather the constant murmurings about Cook’s position as captain in this team from the majority of the MSM that has been of most interest in the days preceding this Test.

I don’t want to go into too much detail as this was covered in depth in by Dmitri’s ‘What’s Cooking” post but with Newman, Pringle and a few others daring to question Cook’s position as Captain within this team, then it certainly feels like something has happened behind the scenes and that change may be afoot in the not too distant future. As has been mentioned before on the blog, why it has taken our beloved hacks nearly 4 years to work out that Cook is a limited Captain, one who has always been too cautious, one who has never really known what to do with our spinners and one who the word ‘drift’ seems to have been invented for is quite beyond me. We’ve all known this for years, except one can guess that now the ‘KP Brigade’ has all but been silenced, the Director Comma has now realised that he might actually win some games to deflect any criticism coming his way. He may well have privately decided that Captain courageous may not be the best personal to help achieve this moving forward and a change is needed, although it would have been nice if this message had reached Andy Bull, whose nauseous piece yesterday would have had Selvey no doubt purring in approval (For the record, no he shouldn’t bloody relinquish the captaincy on his own terms, he’s actually not part of the monarchy and should be judged on the team’s results, whether you would like him to be or not).

Whether or not Cook does retire as England captain at the end of the series and I think the recent negative chirpings from the Media have been designed by the powers that be to suggest to him that he does, I have no doubt the selectors will be the ones in the firing line for picking such a strange and unbalanced squad. I still can’t get my head around the fact that we picked an out of touch batsman with a dodgy technique, a wicket keeper who hadn’t played a red ball cricket game for over a year and also included 6 fast bowlers in the party, where did they think we were touring? Australia? Oh and don’t even get me started on Liam Dawson! There were rumours last summer that Messer’s Whittaker, Fraser and Newell were likely on the way out as Director Comma looked to reshape the selection process and my guess is that they were kept on with the whole purpose of taking the heat off him when we likely bombed in India. So I wouldn’t suggest that Whittaker, Newell or Fraser pay too much attention to the county fixture list (obviously apart from Fraser, who needs to look at Middlesex’s fixtures) as we all know now that Andy Flower picks the team on character anyway. I’m personally looking forward to the LOL’s when James Vince is picked for the First Test against South Africa next summer.

As to the game itself, it’s good to see Keaton Jennings get an opportunity at the top of the order, and whilst it’s certainly not ideal to have another left hander in the squad, the sheer weight of runs that Jennings scored in county cricket last year meant that the opportunity is very much merited. I haven’t seen too much of Jennings myself (without wanting to sound like Nick Knight) as obviously there is minimal coverage of county cricket on TV; however I’ve heard that he has a decent technique, solid defense and the ability to make ‘Daddy Hundreds’. It is perhaps not ideal that he makes his Test debut in India as I’m unsure about his pedigree against spin (you don’t get too much of that at the Riverside); however it will be interesting to see how he goes on debut. As for the make up of the England side, I still think that they will try and shoehorn 4 quick’s into the bowling line up after misreading the pitch in Mohali, even if Broad is injured. The curator of the pitch reckons it will be the same sort of surface as Mohali meaning that the pitch will play well for the first couple of days and then start to break up on Day 3. Whether or not that is the case, I hope England actually take a proper look at the surface before making the decision on their bowling attack, as if the pitch is a complete Bunsen, then having 4 fast bowlers virtually hands the victory to India.

As ever, England will need to bat well in the first innings to set a competitive total whether they win or lose the toss, although this is something that they’ve spectacularly failed to do in the last couple of games. There has been much talk and some criticism of Bayliss’ request for England to become more aggressive with their batting, but in my opinion that simply means that the team needs to bat with a bit more intent, take the ones and twos on offer and punish the bad ball when it comes along. In a sense I agree, after all if you let Ashwin just bowl to you in the second innings of a game then he is going to get you out sooner rather than later; however that also doesn’t mean that our batsmen should be trying to plonk India’s bowlers into the stand every other ball as that has got batting collapse written all over it. It certainly will be interesting to see how the England batting unit responds to Bayliss’ request.

As for India, they rightly remain the favourites to win the game. Kohli and Pujara are in a rich vein of form and are quality batsmen, they have a lower order that can add valuable runs and take the game away from you (I would certainly class Ashwin as a true all rounder these days) and a potent seam and spin attack that knows how to utilise these conditions well. They will have some concerns about Rahane’s form as he has looked out of touch all series, but with this batting and bowling attack aided by some clever and combative captaincy from Kohli, I doubt they will have too many concerns over whether they win or lose the toss tomorrow.

So will we have a competitive game or simply more of the same? As ever Day 1 thoughts and comments below:

England’s Missing Lions

Sir Ronald30 Comments

As TLG so eloquently covered in his last few match reports, it was very little surprise to see England lose the last Test, the moment that we let India score close to 450 meant that we were always likely to be playing catch up. We had 2 particularly poor sessions with the bat on Day 2 and then on Day 5, where we again capitulated against the spinning ball contriving to lose the last 8 wickets in a little over 38 overs. We can all laugh about Australia’s batting woes and believe me I have, but whisper it quietly, this England batting unit can collapse in a heap just as often. That this has basically been written off as a ‘lose the toss, lose the game’ shows how good we’ve all become at writing off loses in the subcontinent as ‘one of those things’, something to be endured in the travails of English cricket with the result in Rajkot proving to be a nice surprise so that we don’t have to endure another whitewash at the hands of a sub-continental team.

I clearly remember the nadir that was the 1993 India tour, where we weren’t just beaten by India, but absolutely crushed into the dirt and in the build up to this series, I must admit looking at this squad and fearing something similar. The line from the England camp at the end of the Visag test has been the standard ‘take the positives’ and that ‘we’ve competed with this Indian team for 10 days of the tour so far’, yet we’ve got a batting line up that is likely to collapse in a heap as soon as the ball starts spinning. In reserve, we have a woefully out of form batsman who has done nothing to improve his technique since he was dropped and a wicketkeeper that hasn’t played a red ball game in over a year. That I can tell you doesn’t really fill me with immense confidence. The fact that we also have 3 highly inexperienced players thrown into battle against a strong Indian side in both hostile and alien conditions, is also very much something to be concerned about. Australia might be playing tombola with their selection process at the moment but we had four players with under ten caps start for us in Visag.

Now the last thing I want to write is about individual selections for the tour for it’s a well trodden path now that some individuals like Cook and Root thrive when thrown straight into the deep end, others like Bairstow and Woakes struggle at first when thrown into the Test arena but go away, reassess where it went wrong and come back to the team stronger. There are course those that struggle and never see the light of day in England colours, but again that is par for the course, Test cricket is not meant to be easy. However the one thing that really strikes me is the question around why are our young players, who have been identified as the potential players of the future, are not being given experience of different conditions before they’re thrown into the deep end in Test cricket? Scoring a lot of runs in English conditions is about a 1,000 times different to having the technique to score a lot of runs in both the subcontinent and in Australia/South Africa. It would be fair to say that this is where my major gripe lies, with how we are using the England Lions and the complete lack of exposure our next generation are getting to play hard cricket in different conditions before being thrown into the Test arena.

If I gave you the chance to guess how many four-day games the England Lions had played since 2014, what would your guess be? 10? 12? Well actually it’s 3. I mean 3 games in over 2 years, that is simply astounding for a team that is supposedly striving to be number one in the Test arena. Of the 3 four-day games we’ve actually played in the last two and a bit years, 2 of which were against South Africa A away (both draws) and another first class game against another South African team (can’t easily find out which one), with the last one being over 18 months ago. Seriously no wonder the likes of Duckett and Ansari (and you could include Rashid & Moeen in last year’s UAE tour too) have come in and struggled against spinning tracks, as they’ve never been properly given exposure to them before. It would be like promoting an England under 21 footballer to the main team after he’s only played 5-a-side for the past two years, that simply wouldn’t happen in that sport, yet it’s fine for our England cricket team to do something similar with our next generation of players and then wonder why most don’t make the grade. It’s all fine and dandy to give our Lions team more experience in white ball cricket, which they have done a lot of recently, but where has been the exposure to red ball cricket to fill some of the gaping holes we have in our line up (apart from the middle order, as we all know that there are no vacancies there)? Well the Mood-hooverer in chief had this to say:

“The purpose of it is bridging the gap between the county game and the international game,” Flower says. “The county game is an excellent breeding ground for our international cricketers but we believe there is a gap that exists in a number of areas and our purpose is to bridge that.”

“It did mean that we haven’t given them any red-ball exposure,” Flower admits. “In the Test side we know there are a couple of positions up for serious debate in the selections for the winter and in a way, we don’t have the in-depth knowledge that we want because we haven’t exposed these young guys to any red-ball cricket over the last year to 18 months at Lions level. That severely affects our understanding and knowledge of our young red-ball cricketers.”

So even the top brass (and make no mistake Andy Flower is certainly one of them) have realised that this team is at best average, with holes in most positions, but rather do anything about it, they’ve chosen to simply stick there heads in the sand and hope that they can find another Joe Root behind the sofa. Way to go chaps, I can see why they pay you the big bucks, that’s obviously a winning strategy in all types of businesses. Yet what is the answer the brains trust have come up with? Well obviously the first thing to do is to have a nice re-brand with the England Lions now being known as EPP (The England Performance Programme in case anyone is too bothered) because that’s obviously a key to success; this has then followed by a training camp in Loughborough where the England bods can make fatal amendments to our bowlers actions, finally followed by a trip to the UAE with three one-day games against the UAE and a three-day game against Afghanistan thrown in for luck. Seriously am I missing something or somebody at the top having a monumental laugh? The one bit of red ball cricket that the Lions are going to play this year is a 3-day game in Dubai? I bet Afghanistan are mightily pleased too, to be offered one whole 3-day game by their paymasters, another sign of England’s commitment to growing the game!

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I would also question, quite fairly I would hope, the reasons why we are going to the UAE in the first place to get some experience of sub-continental conditions. Does Mrs F need a new suntan or some expensive Christmas gifts from the Dubai mall? Perhaps the squad needs to have a nice team-bonding trip by heading up the Burj Khalifa? I ask this because the pitches in Dubai will be nothing like a pitch in Sri Lanka or in India. The pitch in Dubai has always been flat and certainly wouldn’t deteriorate to anywhere near the extent the one in Visag just has (you could have a 8-day game there instead of 3-day game and it would still do nothing), in fact the only reason we lost the Test there last year was from a fantastic session of fast bowling from Wahab Riaz on the morning of Day 3 of the Test, I know as I was there. As you may have worked out, I’m struggling to grasp how this is going to give our batsmen and bowlers the experience they need when the ball turns square from Day 1. I have seen that the Lions are due to tour Sri Lanka in February time, yet the ECB have once again been very vague around the exact number of competitive four-day cricket they’ll play there, only confirming that there will be a ‘mixture of red ball and white ball cricket’.

This brings me onto my final question around how this is meant to have helped our cricketers in this tour of India? I mean this piece of crazy scheduling has been available as part of the FTP for years now (I believe David Collier signed this off when he was still in tenure). Surely it would have made some semblance of sense to organise a Lions trip to India or Sri-Lanka last winter, where we could have looked at some of the players on the fringes of the national team and worked out whether they had both the techniques and skill sets to be successful in this part of the world, just as they should have been sending the Lions this winter to either South Africa or Australia to see how they handle the extra bounce. I fully accept that this may be unlikely to change the results of this series, but then at least you would have had a benchmark as to how certain players can play in these conditions, rather than tossing them into the heat of a Test match and hoping for the best. England have a huge reserve of cash, so where is the issue in offering incentives for other national team board’s to allow us to play us to play their A-teams in their countries over the winter (and we know money talks more now than ever), even Giles Clarke’s lunches surely can’t even eat that much into the £75 million pounds they have got stored away in the coffers.

This is not 1993 anymore, but 2016 and the reality is that there is simply no excuse to not nurture those who have the promise to go on and play for the national team. The fact that we are still suffering from the same old tired excuses around the fact that we’re inexperienced in these conditions shows that the ECB is still the same old one-eyed lot of incompetent fools it always has been, quite simply they are happy with average. As long as the money still comes in and we can still fill Lords on a Saturday with the right type of people, then consistently average is perfectly fine with them. However many of us are getting bored with our national team consistently being average, despite what the mainstream media like to tell us, and I fully hold Clarke, Harrison, Strauss and Flower to account on this, because with these self interested individuals in charge, then this team will never be anything other than an average one; however Andy Flower as you may have guessed puts it a slightly different way:

“How to measure [success] is a challenge. We’ve talked about measuring it against how successful they are initially when they move in, or how successful they are over a long period of time. To be quite frank with you, we haven’t found the answer yet. What we do want to do is to make sure that we are challenging ourselves to be as good as we can be, just like we ask the players to be. Part of that will be getting independent views of our system. Dave Parsons and I have discussed our plan to bring in a critical friend, someone with experience in these areas to assess what we do and to make observations and be really honest about what they see.”

With the ECB team struggling to measure success and Andy Flower bringing in an old mate mate to assess this, then I guess what hope is there for the rest of us?  Well i’ll give them a helping hand, how about we win some Test matches away from friendly green seamers, fill the gaping holes in our batting line up, find a spinner, accept that Alastair Cook isn’t the messiah and try and form a team to eventually become number one. It’s not that difficult to measure success surely?? Except if you’ve been promised a job for life because you’re one of us, not one of them, then I would guess success is perhaps a little more difficult to measure. Answers on a postcard…

 

India vs. England, 2nd Test, Day 1

Sir Ronald82 Comments

So after the initial wave of unbridled optimism after Rajkot and the need for some of the media to compare a batsman in his first Test to one of the all time greats, a more crushing reality was played out in Vizag today. It was perhaps all unsurprisingly ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’ once again from England, just as it was in Dubai after Abu Dhabi last year. That isn’t to say that England were particularly bad, they stuck to their game plans on a Day 1 pitch that wasn’t offering much in terms of assistance to the bowlers, but you do feel that this was a toss that the Captain needed to win in order to give England a fighting chance of winning this Test. The pitch is already starting to wear as the odd delivery in the final session started to misbehave and I don’t think our batsmen will fancy batting on this pitch last even if we have the Bradman and Sangakkara elect in our line up!

It will have been of surprise to no-one that Jimmy Anderson started in place of Chris Woakes today, the fact that the ECB’s prime cheerleader had been banging on about it all week suggested that the decision had been made some time ago, though they also nicely added that Woakes had also picked up a niggle, which was highly convenient. That being said, Jimmy by far and away was England’s best bowler of the day by doing what Jimmy does. He got enough shape to trouble both the openers and then came back late in the day to snare both Pujara, who played magnificently again and an oddly out of sorts Rahane. As for England’s other quick bowlers, Broad looked to be suffering with a niggle from the start, which does beg the question why Woakes was binned (sorry rested) for this Test, and despite producing a good ball to get rid of Rahul, he again looked fairly innocuous on a flat sub-continental pitch. Stokes bowled with aggression but again bowled far too short on what is a very slow pitch and whilst he was unlucky with the dropped catch (more on that a little later), he never really looked a threat in these conditions. There is much to admire about Stokes with both bat and ball as he is a naturally aggressive cricketer, but it must also be quite infuriating knowing that if he doesn’t click with the ball, then he’s very unlikely to be able to build pressure from one end as a four ball always seems around the corner. I am probably nitpicking here, but I do think he needs to have a slight change of plan for when he has to bowl on these types of pitches.

As for the spinners, well Rashid aside, it was very much a day to forget. Rashid bowled well and offered control, which is something that he has been criticised for many a time in the past and it was also heartening to see Cook actually have some faith in him by bringing him on before Moeen and then sticking with him, although some of Cook’s fields didn’t exactly smack of total confidence. Whilst Rashid didn’t manage to get any wickets, he was by far the most effective of our spinners though I have no doubt whatsoever that his dropped catch off Stokes, which I thought was a pretty difficult chance, will have the media sharpening their knives. Agenda? What Agenda? As for Moeen and Ansari, the former is cursed with a consistent inconsistency whereby he can look an International class spinner at one moment and then a county trundler the next and the latter looks an average part time spinner being thrown in against one of the best attacks of spin in the world, which without trying to be harsh, he is. Ansari comes across as an intelligent and well-spoken guy in his interviews, but he doesn’t give the appearance that he has the skills and aptitude to play Test Cricket. His action certainly isn’t smooth, in fact I would say it’s as jerky as Simon Kerrigan’s and his batting doesn’t seem like it gives enough to warrant his place as a batting all-rounder. I can understand that England have a desire to get a left hand spinner into the side for variety, even if Kohli averages 161 against them at home, but I feel it would be better to at least have plumped for the Surrey number one spinner, right handed or not.

As for India, Kohli and Pujara once again showed them to be class acts in conditions that they are familiar with. Kohli will get all the headlines and rightly so as it was a quite sumptuous innings, but Pujara seems to be the glue that holds this Indian batting line up together. He isn’t as fluent as Kohli or Rahane, however he has a stout defence, the ability to milk the one’s and two’s and then put the bad balls to the boundary. He slightly reminds me of a wristier Jonathan Trott, and what we would all give to have a Trott type player in this England line up at the moment, despite having the media proclaimed “one of the greatest batsmen to ever play the game” opening the batting…

As for the rest of this Test, much will depend on the new ball and how much damage Anderson can inflict. If we can somehow keep India to under 420, then there may be a sniff of a chance as batting should still be fairly favourable on Day 2; however if we concede 500 or more, then I would certainly start to fear being rolled out cheaply twice as the pitch starts to wear more and Ashwin comes into his own. Let’s hope it’s the former rather than the latter!

On This Day….

As ever, thoughts and comments on Day 2 below:

Bangladesh vs. England, 2nd Test – Day 2

Sir Ronald67 Comments

So advantage Bangladesh. The fact that they were able to quickly score against the new ball has in all likelihood put them in the driving seat to win this Test. Despite Ansari getting rid of Mahmudullah at stumps, England will need a number of quick wickets in the morning to give them any hope of winning the game, as I feel that anything above 220 on this pitch is likely to be too much. Whereas England tried to be positive against the new ball and got out, Tamim in particular, showed why it is such a pity that we don’t get to see him bat more in Test matches. There is a skill in taking on the opposition opening bowlers on a pitch that as an understatement, is conducive to spin and whilst he may have only made 40 odd in this innings, what he did do was wrestle any momentum away from England.

To be fair to the England team, that we even got past the Bangladesh 1st innings is an achievement in itself. With the team hovering on the wrong end of another bating collapse at 144-8, Woakes and Rashid showed the top order how it’s done by producing a partnership with a lot of guts and no little skill to get England to what we hoped was a priceless first innings lead. The fact that Rashid, despite batting quite beautifully, was still the target of a number of MSM snipes clearly shows there is still very much an agenda:

https://twitter.com/JohnSunCricket/status/792270005668753408

https://twitter.com/JohnSunCricket/status/792276534866214921

Now it’s fair to say that Rashid hasn’t come on as we hoped he would have, he can bowl brilliant wicket taking deliveries but amongst those, he is likely to bowl some dross and half trackers along the way; however we’re not exactly enamored in the spin bowling department at the moment, so the criticism that has been aimed at him during his Test career so far is far from helpful. One can only look back at this piece of gold, from our favourite ex-Chief Cricket Correspondent to work out that Adil Rashid is not likely to be getting a seat at the Alastair Cook table anytime soon:

“Rashid, though, is sailing close to the wind with his club and career: there are sceptics about, some with a greater depth of knowledge than most, and his card has been marked.”

Of course having a captain that accepts that he will go for runs but take wickets if you give him the support and field that he needs would be nice. Unfortunately the ‘bowl dry’ mentality of past eras still is at the forefront of English cricket’s mindset. The fact that he came on so late for a bowl in the 2nd innings today shows quite clearly that Cook has either no faith in him or simply has no idea how to utilize him.

As for the batting, it was the same old story. The top order has failed more times than a Southeastern train at rush hour and yet again it was the lower order that tried to dig them out of a hole. Gary Ballance is the man getting the most heat from our beloved national press at the moment, and on this occasion I can’t really disagree with the MSM here, as his technique against all forms of bowling looks all over the place. I was surprised they picked him for the subcontinent tour as he looked all at sea against an admittedly world class spinner in Yasir Shah in England over the summer. However the fact the Ballance keeps failing with the bat nicely takes the heat away from another batsman who has struggled for form over an even longer period. 4 tons in the last 42 Tests is a pretty damning statistic for any batsman who is proclaimed to be world class, and you could guarantee that if this was for example Ian Bell, the MSM would be queuing up to demand that he is dropped; however this is not Ian Bell, this is captain fantastic and I have yet to see even a murmur questioning Alastair Cook’s form. The thing with Cook is that unless he is contributing with the bat, then he isn’t contributing at all. His captaincy is a mixture of conservatism combined with an inherent streak of stubbornness and inflexibility. Unless England are able to get a first innings lead and then squeeze the opposition, he seems completely lost. There is no plan B apart from hoping that Stokes, Anderson or Broad suddenly deliver a world-class spell out of nowhere. I’ve occasionally commented that the Investec Zebra would be more proactive in the field and certainly in conditions that don’t favour our seam attack, this seems like a fairer and fairer reflection of Cook’s tenure. A funky Captain he is not.

Of course, many will counter this argument by pointing out the number of runs that Cook has scored over the course of his England career and he does indeed have an impressive record; however the Cook of pre-2010 and the Cook of post 2010 are two completely different animals. He has been worked out by opposition bowlers, they know where to bowl at him and how to keep the pressure on him, there simply is no fear from the opposition side when he comes out to bat. The MSM will continue to laud him as the great new hope, the leader of our group of up and coming band of warriors and there is absolutely no chance that he will dropped until after the next Ashes series (and even then it is likely to be a polite ask as to whether he would care to step aside); however Cook to most unbiased observers, seems to be slightly lucky that we simply have no other options at the top of the order. It all reminds me of Mark Taylor when he was coming to the end of his career (except Taylor was a better captain), a very good player once, but one that was struggling to justify a place in the team on his batting alone.

The clocks go back tonight, so who knows what time Day 3 is likely to start in the UK tomorrow but I can guarantee that I’m likely to be in bed for most of the action. For those that are far more committed than me, please post any comments on Day 3 below before another cretin appears on Twitter or WordPress try to shut us down again: