Moeen Ali

South Africa v England: 1st Test day three

thelegglance46 Comments

England should wrap this match up at some point on the fifth day barring something special – and something special is always possible in sport, that’s the point of it – so strong is England’s position.

At the end of day two there was a feeling that England were the side in the ascendancy but that was on the basis of how the game appeared rather than the raw figures of the score, and from there the game could have gone in any direction. But South Africa couldn’t have had a much worse day that they did, from the collapse in the morning which left them 89 behind to the injury to Steyn and dropped catches as England built a lead.

It could have been worse. Dean Elgar carrying his bat through the innings was the only thing that kept South Africa in the game. The deficit was substantial enough but not insurmountable. What lent a feeling of inevitability to proceedings was the injury to Dale Steyn early in England’s second innings. And here we need to be wary of straying into wise-after-the-event territory.   For South Africa lack an all rounder in this post Kallis/Pollock era, and like most teams in such a position, selected a four man attack to try to balance the side. For injury to take out the spearhead is desperately bad luck, provided of course that there wasn’t that risk going into the game, and that’s the question for the South African selectors rather than the four man attack in itself.  To put it another way, England had a four man attack for a number of years and it was rare that they lost a bowler, the same applies to the great Australian team of the first part of this century; in and of itself it’s not flawed selection, but it appears to be when injury strikes. Certainly Morkel did all he could to make up for the shortfall.

And of course balancing a side with only four bowlers becomes difficult, but you do need a keeper who can bat, hence asking De Villiers to do the job. He’s quite clearly a superb player, the question is how sustainable it is to ask your best batsman to do two jobs and whether that impacts on the primary role.  It’s exacerbated when said batsman has to come in at four rather than later, limiting the amount of rest. De Villiers does have a worse record as batsman when he has kept wicket, but it’s hardly a disastrous one to say the least. Yet it’s a huge ask of him, and perhaps his keeping in the second innings is an indication of that.  For while every keeper can and does drop catches, to come in to a Test match having not done it in a while, and to still have to do the primary role, is going to be exhausting, mentally more than physically, though that plays a part as well.  And then we have to consider the first two Tests are back to back.

For England Stuart Broad has been exceptional, but what has impressed has been the back up.  Moeen Ali was excellent, while Woakes was consistently unlucky and Finn cleaned up the tail expertly.

England’s batting too was purposeful. The third innings can so often be one where the side nominally in front can panic and throw away the advantage. After the loss of Cook, Compton set about building the platform, and he did that extremely well. By the time he was out, those following were able to start to increase the pressure on the reduced attack, circumstances that the likes of Root are ideal at exploiting.

England will doubtless look to accelerate in the morning, and wear the pitch a little more. It may not be the worst thing in the world for England to be bowled out, forcing South Africa to go for the win with time left in the game. The danger of batting on too long is an ever present with England in recent times. Tomorrow is not the time to do it again, for here is a chance to pick up an opening Test win away from home, and that’s not a common experience.

The Ashes: A Review

thelegglance45 Comments

This Ashes series was crap.  Bloody awful, one of the worst seen in this country in many years.

There, I’ve said it.  It runs completely counter to the narrative that so much of the media have gone with, whereby for some it was comparable in its wonder to 2005, but sorry it was rubbish.  Not because England won, not for a moment, but because there were five Tests, none of which offered up a contest.

With hindsight, Cardiff was the best of them, and had anyone said after that game that it would prove to be the case, there would have been wringing of hands across the cricketing spectrum.  Yet England’s win by the margin of 169 runs proved to be the closest the sides would be, with every subsequent result being even wider.  Aside from arguably Edgbaston, where the feeling was very much after day one that England had it in the bag, even if the final scorecard didn’t quite reflect that, it’s the only one where the game was in any kind of balance after the first innings were completed.

That England won the series was a welcome surprise, but winning doesn’t mean it was a good series in itself.  The greatest Ashes series of them all is routinely named as 2005, and Australians are as quick to agree about that as the English, even though Australia lost.  Because that series was a slugfest between two teams who fought themselves to a standstill and didn’t give an inch.  This was a series where as soon as one side got on top, the other waved the white flag of surrender and looked to the next match – the lack of fight, the lack of discipline and the lack of gumption was shocking from both teams.  This isn’t good Test cricket, it’s a slaughter.  What made this series a bizarre curiosity was that the slaughter went in both directions, meaning that at the start of every Test the unknown was which team would be wielding the cleaver, and which would be the tethered goat.

Test cricket can be one of the most captivating sports there is, because the timescale involved in each match allows for ebbs and flows, for sides to recover and fight back.  Magnified over a full five match series, it can rise to the heights of the majestic.  Not every five Test series can begin to reach such exalted standards as the very best, and when one side outclasses the other then it can be something of a long haul, even for the victorious supporters, who tend to feel a slight dissatisfaction about the lack of uncertainty about the outcome, but given even a modicum of competition, it is fascinating.

And therein lies the problem.  3-2 looks like it was a good series at first glance, but sport is only ever compelling where there is competition, and in each match there was barely any.  Indeed only one of them had that air of competition beyond the first day.

All of which makes analysing the series somewhat problematic.  Did England win it or Australia lose it?  Given both sides showed quite exceptional levels of incompetence mixed in with occasional brilliance, drawing conclusions from a little over or under half a series means that a caveat must apply in each instance.

For England, only Root so much as managed a century (two of them) in the whole series.  His batting was so far ahead of the rest of the team that when he failed, so did the team as a whole.  To put it another way, only he could look back on it as a batsman with unalloyed pleasure.  His next test will be to see whether he can replicate this kind of run scoring away from home.  There’s no reason to assume he won’t, but at present he is a player in a rich run of form.  If he carries on in the two difficult tours ahead, then he might really begin to be considered the real deal.

Cook had a real mixed bag with the bat.  Two fifties only in itself is a pretty poor return in a normal series, though in this one only Bell and Root passed fifty more often than him.  Yet both fifties were in defeat, and the second of them rather irrelevant given the match situation.  It’s somewhat ironic that in advance of the series this writer was anything but alone in feeling that for England to win, Cook would have to have a fantastic series.  In reality, his contribution with the bat to victory was absolutely nil.  His captaincy in contrast was fine.  Not outstanding, but decent enough.  The problem with Cook is not with Cook himself, it is how the media respond to him.  Competent captaincy is most welcome, he acknowledged himself that he had learned and changed his approach, good on him.  But it is now at the point where such competence is lauded as being worthy of Brearley, and it’s total nonsense.  Cook had a slightly disappointing series with the bat but captained perfectly well.  It isn’t disloyal or anti-England to state reality and not join in the hagiography.  Cook seems immune from any kind of criticism from sections of the press, and it doesn’t do him any favours.

The one thing which is certainly in his favour batting wise is that although he didn’t get the runs, he looks technically much more sound than he did during his miserable run in 2013/14.  At that time his head was far too far across to the offside, which dragged his feet across to the offside, making him vulnerable to both the straight ball and the edge behind.  That particular failing has been corrected, and he appears much more secure in his technique.  To that extent, his quiet series can be put down to one of those things, but given the poor time he had of it previously, he does need to start scoring heavily again fairly soon.

His batting partner Lyth has probably seen his Test career come and go, and the pain etched on his face with his second innings dismissal tugged at the heartstrings.  England have developed a habit of losing openers not called Cook in the last few years, and both Compton and Carberry must feel considerable irritation that they weren’t persevered with, in the latter case in the face of far better bowling than any of the other hopefuls have had to cope with.

Ballance has responded well to being dropped mid series, and time in county cricket getting his game back in order might be just what he needs.  He has plenty of ability, and he’s hardly the first to suffer a difficult sophomore season.

The middle orders of both sides have performed poorly.  Bell seemed to either have a relative feast or total famine, but in the context of the others, those three fifties represent a reasonable return.  There is a real question mark now over his future.  With the exception of the pleasure that was evident from his contribution at his home ground, he has cut an unhappy, if not a detached figure for a little while.  Some with a poor grasp of grammar might have described it as “disinterested” even.  If that is to be Bell’s last appearance in an England shirt, as seems possible from his comment about deciding his future in a couple of weeks, then it’s a loss to England, and one that smacks of carelessness.  He still has much to offer, and he’s only 33.

Bairstow and Stokes both did OK on occasion, and in the first instance deserves persevering with.  In the second, Stokes tended to show the difficulty faced by so many all rounders over the years of trying to get both disciplines functioning at the same time.  He is a player of immense promise, and at the stage of his career he is at, his ability to bowl wonderful spells as well as play match changing innings is as much as should be expected of him.

The same could be said for Buttler, who after coming into the side as someone who had batting talent but whose keeping needed a lot of work, proceeded to turn that on its head by keeping extremely well throughout (the legside catches standing back were good, the one standing up was outstanding) and being barely able to score a run.  His final innings of the series did appear to show a degree of learning from experience, and in itself that’s a promising sign.  The improvement in his wicketkeeping too implies a player willing to learn.

The final member of the middle order, albeit one who batted as low as nine when a nightwatchman was employed was Moeen Ali.  Like with Bell over the years, there is a predisposition to be both frustrated by him and to make excuses for him.  He is simply unutterably gorgeous to watch; his strokeplay is entirely reminiscent of Gower, and when his batting is flowing, there are few players in world cricket more enjoyable to witness.  His position in the batting order often meant he had to go for his shots at the end of an innings, and that’s probably the best way for him to bat, as his technique isn’t a tight one.  Of course, in his case there is a problem, which is that his primary role in this team is as a bowler – something that may be considered unfair on him.  He didn’t do badly in the series overall, looking back at previous posts in advance of the series, his final average of 45 with the ball was even a prediction for being considered adequate.  There are two issues here though, firstly that he was comprehensively outbowled by Nathan Lyon, and secondly England’s refusal to pick Adil Rashid, seemingly under any circumstances.

It’s doubtful there is a much better finger spinner in English cricket, and having gone with Moeen, he should receive sufficient faith for him to continue working on his game.  He will get better.  However, it is becoming ever more difficult to see a justification for Rashid’s continuing exclusion, and even harder to see why so many of the press are so dead set against him.  Moeen was tried out as being far from the finished product, and given time to develop.  Rashid seems to be expected to be a hundred Test veteran on debut.  Surely he will get his chance in the UAE, and long overdue.

Of all the bowlers, Broad was the clear stand out.  Given his record over the last few years, he’s in serious danger of being consistently underrated.  Barely a series goes by without demands for him to be dropped, yet he’s one of England’s most consistent performers with the ball, even without the stunning spell of 8-15 at Trent Bridge which was truly wonderful.  He even did well in the horror tour of Australia last time.  When he’s not bowling through injury, he’s a serious threat to any side in world cricket.  As long as he’s told to pitch the bloody thing up.

Anderson will most of all benefit from the break enforced by injury.  That he was even considered for the fifth Test is concerning.  He’s an exceptionally fit athlete, and could go on for several more years yet, if properly looked after.

The return of Steven Finn has to be the most welcome sight in the England team.  He’s still not back at the pace he was, no matter how much he tries to deny it.  Perhaps the confidence gained from being an integral part of the attack will allow him to up that pace, because a bowler of that height consistently bowling high eighties is going to be a difficult proposition anywhere.  What happened to him in the past is a matter of deep frustration, but looking forward he is still young, still taking wickets at a truly remarkable strike rate and needs to be allowed to just bowl.  If England have changed one thing in regard to their approach to him, then let it be to focus on his wicket taking ability, not how many runs an over he goes for.

Mark Wood is something of a conundrum.  He clearly has a lot of talent, but his injury record isn’t a good one, and there have to be concerns about managing him properly.  Australia did point the way there with Ryan Harris, who they wrapped in cotton wool and as a result got at least two more years out of him than anyone could have hoped for, including him.  Seam bowlers are almost always carrying some kind of injury, so it isn’t a matter of plucking him out of the team at the first sign of trouble, but it is one of ensuring he doesn’t suffer a major injury.

For Australia, this is the end of an era for many of the squad.  Harris finally succumbed to his troublesome body before it even began, and perhaps more than anything that proved to be the ultimate difference between the sides.  He has been an outstandingly good bowler who had an Indian summer to his career.  When he broke down in the 2010/11 series, the sadness was the feeling that would be it, a career over before it had even begun.  He may not have played 80 Tests, but he played a lot more than he had any right to, given his physical problems.

Australia’s top three all had decent enough series, with the proviso that like everyone else, when they were bad, they were very, very bad.  Chris Rogers was outstanding throughout, and probably wishes he could have played his whole Test career against England.  Oh hang, on he more or less did.   Warner in contrast made lots of contributions without ever going on to get a big score.  It means that his figures are decent enough, but lack a match changing or match winning innings.

Smith had a similar series to Bell in some ways, the difference being that when he did get in, he went on to a very big score indeed.  His idiosyncratic technique makes this quite likely, and with him it’s a matter of accepting that, and knowing that when he does get in, he is going to seriously hurt the opposition.  His batting went a fair way to winning two Tests, focusing on his troubles in the other three is somewhat harsh.

Clarke’s retirement at the end of the series broke the last link with the great Australian side of the first decade of this century.  He had a poor series, without question, but very few players call it a day in a blaze of glory, not least because of the need for team mates to do their bit to provide the correct result.  McGrath, Warne et al managed it when they whitewashed England, but that truly great side is an exception.  Few decide to retire because they’ve been playing so well, and Nasser Hussain’s beautifully timed retirement winning a Test match and series with a superb century simply shows he had a sense of timing with his career that wasn’t always present with his batting.

England gave Clarke a guard of honour, and predictably enough (and more than welcome) the English crowd gave him a standing ovation on his approach to the crease.  Sometimes English crowds make you feel quite proud of them.  Clarke deserves it.  He’s been a terrific player, a terrific captain, and for those of us lucky enough not to be Australian, he was our leader in cricket too in the most tragic of circumstances.  His honesty in the face of defeat, and refusal to hide behind platitudes also marked him out.  It has been nothing short of a privilege to watch him play, and to leave the game of cricket having made a positive contribution is as good a cricketing epitaph as there can be.  To lose him in the same week as the peerless Kumar Sangakkara is undoubtedly a blow to the game, and the ICC could do worse than listen to what they say about the future of cricket.  And pigs might fly.

Just like England’s, Australia’s middle order had a woeful time of it.  Ironically enough that failing was just as prevalent in the 5-0 last time, but they were bailed out repeatedly by the lower order.  Not this time, though Johnson and Starc had their moments with the bat.  The jettisoning of Watson was possibly premature, his trials with the lbw law are hardly new, and at Cardiff he was the recipient of a couple of decisions that were fairly questionable, particularly the first innings one.  His replacements didn’t do any better, although his career is now probably at an end, distinguished by being one of the great unfulfilled talents.

Voges made a late bid to extend his Test career, Mitchell Marsh shows a lot of promise as a true all rounder given that bowling was thought to be his weaker discipline (he didn’t bat well), Shaun Marsh showed again – and probably for the final time – that he simply isn’t quite good enough at the very highest level and Brad Haddin also reached the end of the road.  The manner of the conclusion to his Test career seemed to cause some discord in the Australian camp amongst the senior players.  It’s a difficult one.  His batting and keeping had both deteriorated to the point his place should have been in jeopardy even if it wasn’t.  Perhaps it should just be put down to being one of those terribly unfortunate instances where they were faced with two wrong choices, and went for the better cricketing one.

Peter Nevill looks a decent enough replacement anyway, although he didn’t contribute with the bat too much more than the rest of that middle order.  His first class batting record is a very good one though, and he looks a perfectly competent gloveman.

Of the bowlers, given the loss of Harris, Siddle did seem the obvious replacement.  With hindsight.  It is all too easy to look at his performance in the final Test and say he should have been there all along, but there weren’t many calls for him to be in the side at the expense of anyone else, and in advance it was felt that Johnson and Starc’s pace would be more than good enough for England anyway.  Both were intermittently major threats, and the rest of the time expensive.   Ironically enough, it was Josh Hazlewood who made way for Siddle, despite having a better record than either of them, and for reasons hard to fathom bore the brunt of the criticism of the seam bowling selection that saw Siddle called up.

Nathan Lyon too had a good series, and showed what he is – a very fine orthodox finger spinner.  He’s every bit the equal of Graeme Swann, and perhaps at long last Australia will be content with their lot in the spinning department rather than harking back to the days of Warne.

Given how the series unfolded, in this one perhaps more than any other, it can be said that 3-2 was a fair result.  Three times England hammered Australia, twice Australia hammered England.  If there was a sixth Test, it could have gone either way, probably with a hammering.

The England players will rightly look back on the achievement with great pleasure, for they were the underdogs in the eyes of everyone.  The win is there to be enjoyed, but these are two teams who are very much at the crossroads.  Australia will largely need a new one, and will have to spend quite some time rebuilding and finding the right combinations.  England are at least playing a much more positive style of cricket, but they look a deeply flawed side at this stage.  There are plenty of players in that side in the early stages of their careers, and there will be ups and downs in their own performances.  What is more worrying is the collective implosions they seem so prone to.  They have two very difficult tours ahead, and as a young side may well rise to the challenge.  But they are going to have to, because otherwise they are in trouble.

This wasn’t an especially enjoyable series.  When third day tickets become something of a risky purchase not through it being a poor pitch, but because either of the sides are incapable of lasting that long, then there is both something wrong with them, and something extremely wrong with the series.  Some of the batting was genuinely second rate, in shot selection and execution.  It is to be hoped this is something of an aberration, because more of the same is going to pall very quickly.  Recent history around the world suggests winning away is becoming ever more rare, in which case England will face both the next 9 months and the next Ashes series with considerable trepidation.

The most damning indictment of this Ashes series is that the two Test version against New Zealand offered far more entertainment, far more sporting hazard, far more tension that anything the five subsequent games did.  England won, and to that extent it was great.  But Test cricket supporters have always had one eye on the team and one eye on the wider game.  The game itself in this series was dreadfully poor.  Pointing to the other eye and ignoring that is simply refusing to see evil.

@BlueEarthMngmnt

The Ashes: 2nd Test preview

thelegglance32 Comments

Brad Haddin won’t be playing in this match for personal reasons – there’s nothing else that need be said about that except to wish him well.  Cricket is just a game.

Few realistically expected England to arrive at Lords 1-0 up, and even fewer to have been so dominant at Cardiff, a venue where Australia were thought to hold all the cards before the game.   Reports indicate that Shane Watson will be jettisoned from the team, and if so it is hard to escape the feeling that it will be the end of his Test career.  It seems exceptionally harsh to do so after one match, given he was downright unlucky in both innings but especially the first.  Selecting Mitchell Marsh for the first Test would have been a perfectly reasonable choice; but having gone with Watson, to then drop him after a single outing carries the whiff of panic about it, both scapegoating him for the team’s failings and effectively an admission it was the wrong call in the first place.

Furthermore, it is hard to see a way back for Watson now, meaning a player who is likely to be somewhat disgruntled is in the squad for the remainder of the series with little chance of selection ever again.  It’s the kind of muddled thinking that we’ve seen all too often from England in recent times.

Peter Nevill will make his debut as ‘keeper for this match, and by all accounts is a batsman/keeper rather than a wicketkeeper/batsman.  Lords has made more than one highly competent wicketkeeper look foolish with the ball moving after the bat, so it will be a tough challenge for him to start his international career there.  Perhaps many England supporters too will hope he has a decent game.

It seems likely that Starc will play, demonstrating that Cricket Australia now operate a Mitchell quota system.  There’s been little said about continuing to bowl him so extensively at Cardiff, but there must be question marks about his fitness over five days.  The enforced retirement of Ryan Harris was clearly a blow, but the ineffectiveness of the seamers has produced ripples of concern about the depth of the Australian bowling stocks.  More than anything, it is a response to the result on a very slow pitch rather than a real problem, Starc, Hazlewood and Johnson remain a major threat.

The same can be said for the batting, and it is striking how a single result can change the perception and the reading of the two sides.  Australia’s batting is now fragile, Warner is having difficulty with the pitches and the swinging ball (as an aside, it is quite impressive how Warner can so consistently say the wrong thing – why on earth would he come out with that?), Chris Rogers’ failure to score a century is reaching crisis proportions, Clarke is all over the place against Broad, Steve Smith’s technique is questionable in English conditions, while for England Cook has become a great captain, Root is the best batsman in the world, Bell is back, Stokes is devastating, Wood is the heir to Simon Jones and so on.

It’s nonsense of course, Australia’s batting isn’t necessarily their strong suit, but little has changed since before the series began except that they played appallingly in one match – more than anything, getting in and getting out is something batsmen view as the ultimate crime, and they did it spectacularly across the board.  What has changed is that they’re under a little more pressure to perform than before, because defeat at Lords and the prospect of the team unravelling comes into view.  The records of the players involved means there is no reason why they shouldn’t come back with a vengeance, and although the Lords surface is likely to be fairly slow again, it’s usually an excellent batting wicket and one they should find to their liking.

For England, it is likely they will name an unchanged side.  Moeen Ali was the big doubt, but Adil Rashid’s endless wait for his debut will continue, as he has been ruled out by injury.  That Moeen was set to miss the match clearly means he isn’t going to be completely fit, and thus his selection is a considerable gamble.  From this distance it’s impossible to know how serious it is, but for a player to be considered unfit to play, and then magically sufficiently fit when his replacement is unavailable hardly seems like good management of resources.  It should also be remembered that if the injury flares up during the game, England will not be entitled to a substitute fielder, and one would imagine Australia will be very aware of that – of course the same applies to Starc.

Although England’s batting performed very well at Cardiff, they have been prone to falling over in recent times, and not always in hostile conditions.  Early wickets were lost in the first Test for not very many, something that they have become rather prone to, and they aren’t always going to recover from that.  Cook had a quiet game with the bat, and despite Root’s heroics, he remains instrumental in drawing the sting from the seamers.

It’s extremely hard to call this game.  It will likely go near the distance, as Lord’s is the epitome of a chairman’s pitch.  Australia have a slight hint of disarray about them, but that will be swiftly put aside if they play well here.  England have the opportunity of opening up some major cracks in the opposition, but they will have to play better than they did at Cardiff to do that.  Should they do so, then all bets are off for the remainder of the series, and the howls of protest from Down Under will be loud and long.

I’ve said before that you don’t know a team is past it until it actually happens, and they often spectacularly implode when it does (viz. England 2013/14), but equally one defeat doesn’t for a second mean we are there yet.  For that reason, this Test is completely pivotal.  An Australian victory sets the expected balance of the world back on its perceived correct axis.  An England victory, and it’s crisis point.  It will be a fascinating five days.

@BlueEarthMngmnt

Warping out*

thelegglance49 Comments

One of the differences between those who write on cricket in the media and the poor blogger is that they get to see all the play, are spoiled rotten in the media centre, and are paid for the privilege.  In contrast, the likes of us have to work for a living – and that’s why the dire quality of some of the output from the usuals is so deserving of contempt.

To that end, I was away all of last week, didn’t see a ball of the first three days, saw only the highlights on Friday and finally got to watch some play yesterday.  I did get to listen to a fair bit, while driving around the country, but it’s not quite the same.  And so following the match was somewhat awkward, lots of reading of reports and updates, and generally trying to keep abreast of what is happening.  Since then I’ve gone back and reviewed the highlights to try and get a proper feel for the Test.

I can’t say I’m totally surprised that England won the match, it very much depended on whether England played in the same manner as they’d indicated in the New Zealand series for both Tests and ODIs.  The scale and dominance of the victory on the other hand, that was somewhat unexpected.

Australia’s performance was dire throughout.  More or less anything they could get wrong they did.  As ever, the question is how much of that was their own doing, and how much was down to England’s performance.  What can be said is that after a single Test conclusions shouldn’t be drawn, and yet again we see the crowing from certain quarters.  We’ve been here before, in the last two Test series there was exactly the same arrogance (from the press, not the team), only for England to fall flat on their faces the following game.

First let’s take England.  Cook unquestionably led the side well and captained well.  Good.  Very, very good.  If this is the new captain Cook, then there won’t be too many complaints, he was proactive in the field, changed his bowlers well and generally looked in command throughout.  And this is the point – when the facts change, so does my opinion and perspective, and I don’t have the slightest issue recognising it.  It’s those who blindly insist on a particular view in defiance of what is in front of them that have the problem.  It’s true too that generally there’s been an improvement in how he’s managed the side over this summer.  Quite why that might be is somewhat curious, in terms of what has changed, the only thing that stands out is the replacement of the coach.  I’ve long called for Cook to be in control of the side and live and die by his own actions, not fall back on the backroom staff.  If he’s doing that and doing it well, that is great news.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the various meltdowns in Australia and here can be forgotten, no matter how some like to pretend they didn’t happen, preferring to stick their fingers in their ears and say they weren’t listening.  What it does mean is that he can look back on this Test with a fair degree of pleasure.  And if continues to captain in that vein then he will reap the plaudits and rightly so.  It’s a matter of whether he does or not that is the question.  He won’t ever be a great captain, but if he’s an adequate one then that is good enough, because up to now he hasn’t been.  Plaudits for this one Mr Cook.

What was particularly striking about the approach was in the second innings.  England were determined to get to a 400+ lead as quickly as they possibly could, and continued to attack even as wickets began to fall.  The sheer jaw-dropping astonishment of seeing an England team do that can’t be overstated.  It certainly seemed to take Australia by surprise.

Initially it didn’t look that way, as England got off to a somewhat sedate start and lost wickets.  In a single Test, that can happen, but it’s something that has occurred a little too often for comfort.  The dropping of Root by Haddin (more on him later) turned out to be fairly critical, as Root took the game to Australia in a way that’s now becoming somewhat familiar.  Before the series began Root was largely written off in much of the Australian media, based on his troubles down under last time.  It was a strange rationale, given that on the same basis Steve Smith could be written off for his performances to date in this country.  I rather doubt it came as a great shock to the Australian team just how good he is looking, but it certainly seemed to elsewhere.  Root’s success has led Ian Chappell to call for him to be pushed up to number three at the expense of Ballance.  I never see the case for this.  If a player is performing outstandingly well in the middle order, where is the benefit in moving him?  It’s treating a symptom rather than a cause and risking weakening the batting if the player doesn’t have the same success in a higher position.  It doesn’t matter where Root bats if he is going to average nearly 60, wherever he goes in, he is going to drag the side to a higher total.  Leave him where he’s comfortable.

Ballance himself scored a fairly scratchy 60 in the first innings, but that will do him the power of good.  An ugly knock does more for the confidence than anything else, because the time at the crease allows the player to rather literally find his feet.  Of course he needs to kick on, but that innings was deeply valuable both to him and the team.

Stokes and Moeen also contributed, and the latter case is important.  He certainly bowled well in the match, but having a batsman of that quality at number eight is a major strength for England.  It has been argued it’s a waste, but it makes for an immensely powerful middle order, IF he can hold down his place as the spinner.  Previously I’ve argued that Moeen is being unfairly compared to the best spinner England have had in the last forty years, and I maintain that he is doing well enough in his primary role to more than justify his selection.  He isn’t going to run through too many sides, but he is certainly useful and his batting frees up an additional spot in the side.  His bowling is improving, but like anything it isn’t a linear trend, there will be peaks and troughs.

Stokes himself is contributing too with both bat and ball.  Both will improve over time, and the very selection of Moeen creates the space in the team for what might be called a luxury player like Stokes.  Patience is required, but England have a genuine five man attack with this line up, and that is a major advantage, perhaps best seen in the way that despite so many fears about it, Anderson is not being bowled into the ground thus far.

Bell scored a few runs in the second innings and looked much more like himself.  Yet it is indicative of the knee jerk response that his 60, a well constructed and fluid innings, was treated as though it was 150 and justification for keeping him in the side.  Personally, I don’t believe there was ever a case for dropping him, and certainly not after the selectors maintained faith with Cook for two years.  But as ever, a single innings proves nothing at all except that if you keep them in the side long enough they will eventually get a few.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely welcome, and nor does it mean that he didn’t look much better.  It does mean that trumpeting success on the basis of a single fifty is as downright idiotic as it ever was.  He will want more, and hopefully this innings will have got the monkey off his back to the extent he can get more.  It’s no more or less than that.

Jos Buttler failed both times with the bat, which is neither here nor there in a single match, but he did keep very well, and the only reason for mentioning it is that every all rounder who has ever played the game will talk about how difficult it seems to be to get both disciplines operating at full capacity at the same time.  It seems to go this way mostly – one works very well, the other malfunctions a little.

As for the bowling, Wood looks a threat every time he bowls, and perhaps more importantly, for all the wishful thinking about getting a left armer into the side, he provides balance.  Anderson, Broad, Wood and Stokes are all different kinds of bowlers.  That they’re right arm doesn’t in itself matter, it’s not a samey attack.  And while on this subject, it didn’t go unnoticed that it was mentioned as a problem that England have seven left handers and thus provide Lyon with a line of attack given the rough outside off stump.  It’s quite true, but the same applies the other way around given that Australia have two left arm seamers.  Sauce for the goose.

Turning to Australia, this one is a match for them to forget.  While refusing to form definitive views after one match, I hold by the view that you never know a side past its sell by date until they actually become so – just as with England in the last Ashes.  There might be cracks, but complete collapse isn’t anticipated.  This game Australia were truly awful.  Most batsmen are far more annoyed at getting in and getting out than they are being dismissed cheaply, which is considered an occupational hazard.  And yet for the first time in Test history, all of numbers three to six were dismissed in the thirties.  This is both good and bad for Australia, good because all have had time in the middle to get used to conditions, bad because they then got out and mostly to poor shot selection.

Much of the talk around how Australia move forward has centred on the future of Shane Watson.  His playing around the front pad has got him into trouble throughout his career, yet in this game I have a mite of sympathy for him.  The first innings decision was a rotten one, made worse by a proper understanding of how Hawkeye works.  It didn’t show the ball clipping the leg stump, it suggested it was possible it might have done, and at a low probability.  Yes, by all means uphold that decision from the umpire, I don’t have a problem with that; I do feel sorry for Watson because when he gets hit on the pads now, umpires are seemingly predisposed to giving him out when they likely wouldn’t give out another player.  His second innings dismissal was certainly closer, but still an umpire’s call.  Another player would have got away with that one probably, the first innings one certainly.   He may be facing the end of his Test career, and while that may be the correct decision for the Australian team, he was thoroughly shafted in this match.

Warner and Smith both exhibited signs of where they are likely to be vulnerable in English conditions.  Warner’s style of stand and deliver batting is always going to be vulnerable to the ball seaming or swinging.  This isn’t new, and it isn’t in itself the end of the world, because he showed in the second innings that he can fight through the hard times.  Smith has a quirky technique and that is why he finds it more difficult in English conditions, something he’s struggled with since he first broke into the side.  He is more than talented enough to learn how to cope.

Haddin looks like he is reaching the end of the road.  Both his keeping and his batting look frayed and have done for a little while now.  Of course, he could just be out of form, something rarely granted to older players, but this series could well prove decisive for him unless he improves significantly.

As for the bowling, the surface effectively nullified the pace of Starc and Johnson.  Despite some whining in the Australian press, it was a fairly typical Cardiff surface.  What did surprise was that England’s attack handled those conditions so much better.  Johnson had fairly miserable figures for the match, but didn’t bowl too badly.  Starc looked a fine bowler, but I can’t be alone in struggling to understand why when he was clearly injured Clarke insisted on bowling him again and again.  By the second innings the game was already disappearing over the hill, it seemed bizarre to watch him limping over after over and still being kept on.  If he isn’t fit for Lords some questions need to be asked about why they made it worse.  If indeed that is the case, then all of a sudden Australia have some problems.  Siddle is an honest enough workhorse and won’t let anyone down, but he’s not in quite the same class.  Cummins is highly promising, but hasn’t played a first class match in two years, and it’s asking an awful lot for him to come in and play a Test.  Hazlewood on the other hand, looked very good indeed, and will be a handful on other pitches.

Nevertheless, Lords should be a little more conducive to the pace bowling than Cardiff was while not exactly a seamers paradise, and thus triumphal writing off of Australia is highly premature.  It is hard to believe Australia will be so poor in the next game, but if they are, then this tour could go horribly wrong for them.

After one game England will feel it went about as well as it possibly could have done.  Australia will feel it went about as badly as it did in their worst nightmares.  They are more than good enough to step up their game, while England have flattered to deceive on more than one occasion.  What it does though is to provide the most perfect start to the series from the perspective of the spectacle.

One other thing I noted: At the conclusion of the Test, the England players made a point of going around the ground and signing autographs and posing for photos with the supporters.  I don’t remember them doing that before, so whoever has come up with it as a means of engagement deserves a pat on the back.  Is it lip service?  Maybe.  Is it welcome anyway?  Definitely.

*It’s always amused me that this term immediately makes people think of Star Trek and high speed.  In times past, warping out of harbour involved rowing the anchor out ahead in a boat, and winding the capstan in to make progress when there was no wind.  It was backbreaking work and an incredibly slow process.  It seemed appropriate.

@BlueEarthMngmnt