We all know how important it is to look to the positives. England’s players and coaches have taught us this for years now.
Ian Bell batted at five and made a three-ball duck. Paul Collingwood batted at six and made a four-ball duck.
England’s middle order batsmen are making tangible progress in terms of occupation of the crease.
Well played England!
Fortunate to be given the opportunity to do so, Andrew Strauss saved his Test career with a whopping 177 in the third and final Test of the tour of New Zealand. Since then, he’s hit 63, 60 and now 106 and suddenly there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Such is cricket.
This was an almighty fightback by England - one we didn’t think they were capable of. They’ve been a slightly inspid outfit of late, inclined towards mediocrity, but for the last four sessions of this Test, they were sublime. That shouldn’t obscure the unpalatable truths that were apparent on Sunday morning though.
England’s middle order seems to be providing ever-dwindling returns. It seems like someone’s going to go before too long. Paul Collingwood, while currently the one-day captain, has some surgery in the offing and would appear to be bottom of the pile.
England’s seamers lack a bit of pace. It’s the fashion to say that bowling’s all about experience and guile now - largely thanks to Ryan Sidebottom - but just as the previous obsession with pace was misguided, so this is. Pace is still an attribute - one that should be allied to accuracy and intelligence.
We’d also like to have a minor pop at the sacred cow that is Stuart Broad. We’ve written before about how we want Stuart Broad in the England team for years to come, but his batting competence and bowling promise seems to be obscuring the simple fact that at present he’s not taking too many wickets - 12 at 47 in five Tests, to be precise.
We’re not saying drop him by any means. We’re saying: ‘Get some wickets, Stuart’. With only four bowlers, that’s mandatory. He’s not the third best English seam bowler and he needs to get closer to being that.
England v New Zealand, second Test at Old Trafford - day four
New Zealand 381 all out (Ross Taylor 154 not out, Jamie How 64, Kyle Mills 57, James Anderson 4-118)
England 202 (Andrew Strauss 60, Daniel Vettori 5-66, Iain O’Brien 3-49
New Zealand 114 all out (Monty Panesar 6-37)
England 293-4 (Andrew Strauss 106)
England win
It’s been three years since we last went to the Old Trafford Test and didn’t see Monty Panesar take five wickets. Actually, that’s not strictly true. We went to two days of last year’s West Indies Test and on one of the days he only took four wickets.
In 2006 we were at day three when Monty got five of Pakistan’s top six batsmen. We’ve never experienced such affection for a cricketer from a crowd as we did that day. It was sky-high from the outset and with every subsequent wicket, it went up a notch.
Affection didn’t end five notches above the sky when he polished off the West Indies last year on day five, but it can’t have been far off. After four wickets in the first innings, Monty took 6-137 in the second innings and England won.
Yesterday there were six further sightings of the Monty Panesar celebration. When England had lost six wickets in the first hour, we’d mentally prepared our tirade about how England’s bowlers had lacked the same killer instinct during the Kiwis’ first innings.
That update won’t be appearing on King Cricket after Panesar lacerated their second innings, taking 6-37 as New Zealand stumbled to 114 all out. Monty would surely have bagged seven but for Daniel Flynn’s absence.
The 25th over was his finest. Panesar pinned Marshall on the back foot with his first ball before nearly getting McCullum with each of his next two deliveries: an lbw shout and a turning lifter which had a Curtly Ambrose delivery for a mother and a Shane Warne leg break for a father. McCullum swept wildly at the next ball and was lbw.
McCullum looks frazzled when he faces Panesar right now. In the first innings, he slogged him for a four and a six off consecutive balls, but Panesar got him in that same over. In all, Panesar’s taken McCullum’s wicket six times in ten innings and if he carries on like this, things aren’t going to change.
Monty Panesar has now taken 25 wickets in three Tests at Old Trafford at an average of 16.72. Unfortunately, he won’t be adding to that record for at least another three years. But that’s a different update. One that might appear later in the week.
England v New Zealand, second Test at Old Trafford - day three
New Zealand 381 all out (Ross Taylor 154 not out, Jamie How 64, Kyle Mills 57, James Anderson 4-118)
England 202 (Andrew Strauss 60, Daniel Vettori 5-66, Iain O’Brien 3-49
New Zealand 114 all out (Monty Panesar 6-37)
England 76-1
Jacob Oram and the short ball: You pair are going to be great friends.
It may have been Daniel Flynn’s tooth that James Anderson removed with a bouncer, but Jacob Oram looked the more uncomfortable against short-pitched bowling.
Of course Flynn’s bloodied mélange of flesh and teeth went way beyond being uncomfortable. We just mean that Oram made repeated mistakes dealing with bouncers, whereas Flynn only really made the one, massively costly error.
Wonder when he’ll play a hook shot next. We’d be filing that away in the mental drawer marked ‘never again’ along with running with shin splints and Gujerati food (sugar is NOT a type of salt).
It seems like James Anderson feels pretty bad about it, but he also made a very sensible point when he said: “When you hit someone on the head it generally encourages bowlers to do it again.”
That’s a recognition that it’s not his job to sway out of the way of 90mph pulverisers, it’s his job to deliver them.
England v New Zealand, second Test at Old Trafford - day one
New Zealand 202-4 (Ross Taylor 67 not out)
“So, are you any relation to Hamish Marshall?”
Writing in his Cricinfo diary, Ross Taylor says someone asked James Marshall that. James and Hamish are identical twins, if you didn’t know.
This was either the most admirably, pig-headedly stupid and obvious joke of all time or it was asked by a complete moron. If it’s the former, the asker should get some sort of medal to acknowledge their services to bloody-minded humour.
Sportsfreak are running a cricket tipping competition about the England v New Zealand series. We are currently equal second out of 12.
For the last Test we used reasoning for precisely one of the questions and got it right. Michael Vaughan has scored bucketloads of runs at Lord’s, so we bet on him to be England’s top scorer. This might lead to the conclusion that ‘thinking’ is the way forward. Or at least it might do if we were using thinking to reach these conclusions. Which we’re not.
For our tips for the Old Trafford Test, we instead waited until we were in a faintly delirious state of mind. We can’t remember most of what we said. We think we may have used thinking at one point though.
The Old Trafford pitch is usually as hard as the thick-skulled inhabitants of our fair town. It’s kind to quick bowlers and spinners, while fast-medium bowlers tend to get carted. In addition to this, we haven’t had rain in these parts for about three weeks, so the surface should be like compressed adamantium right now.
Being as there aren’t really any proper fast bowlers in either team, we’ve tipped Daniel Vettori and Monty Panesar to be the top wicket-takers. If we turn out to be correct about this, we will be forced to embrace reason. If we’re wrong we’ll carry on pretty much like we’ve always done.
Most teams struggle for all-rounders. In New Zealand they’re ten a penny. If only they could find a couple more half-decent specialist batsmen, they’d be a force to be reckoned with.
This new batting line-up’s missing a few of the bigger names, of course, but even those batting absentees dabbled with the ball: Craig McMillan, Scott Styris, Nathan Astle.
Now, with Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum, New Zealand are still well off for all-rounders. Then there’s Jacob Oram as well, who hit a muscly 101 as New Zealand easily saved the first Test. (Bloody weather. Bloody light-accepting batsmen.)
Why does Jacob Oram look so old? He’s only 29. Is it because he’s suffering from some kind of gigantism? Not only is he six-foot-many and burly, he’s also got a head that’s too big for an already gargantuan body. But not only that. He’s also got a face that’s too big for the head that’s too big for the body.
Somebody somewhere has made an almighty error of scale when constructing Jacob Oram. Mr and Mrs Oram, we’re looking at you.
England v New Zealand, first Test at Lord’s - day five
New Zealand 277 (Brendon McCullum 97, Ryan Sidebottom 4-55, James Anderson 3-66)
England 319 (Michael Vaughan 106, Andrew Strauss 63, Alastair Cook 61, Daniel Vettori 5-69)
New Zealand 269-6 (Jacob Oram 101, Jamie How 68)
Match drawn
It’s not often we agree with Mark Nicholas, if only because we don’t float through life spouting words like ‘divine’ and ‘exquisite’ every second sentence, but we think he had a point yesterday as he commentated over Channel 5’s highlights of cricketers walking on and off the field.
Nicholas reckons that cricketers can play in worse light than they currently do and most people who’ve been at a cricket ground on a faintly murky day will probably agree.
The magical thing about the human eye is that it responds to the amount of light available. Obviously there’s a limit and equally obviously it can get dangerous when there are lanky, demonic sociopaths flinging cricket balls at your face, but the point where bad light is offered to the batsman is too soon.
It’s May. Even under the heaviest cloud cover, it can never get that gloomy in the middle of the day, yet England and New Zealand went off five times yesterday. If Simon Taufel and Steve Bucknor had ever visited England in December, they’d have had their sunglasses on yesterday.
Maybe England’s fabulously white kit had sucked up all light in the vicinity. That use of ‘fabulously’ was brought to you by Mark Charles Jefford Nicholas.
Jefford?
Brendon McCullum recently found his feet. Now he’s putting them to good use.
If you’ve read the page we just linked to, this might sound kind of familiar. This is the Test version of that post.
Brendon McCullum’s had 52 Test innings. In his first 45, he managed two hundreds and six fifties. In his last seven, he’s added another three fifties - all against England. That in itself wouldn’t count for much if it weren’t standing unsteadily atop his form in the shorter forms of the game.
Brendon McCullum hit the record Twenty20 score recently and the Brendon McCullum one-day post mumbles on and on about how he’s started to come good in that form. He’s a batsman on the up and maybe yesterday’s 97 was a sign that he’s starting to think he can do the same in Tests.
Why not use the same approach? It’s been working for him. If anything, he could be even more successful. In Twenty20 and when opening one-day innings, you’ve really got to go after every ball. In Tests he’s got the luxury that he can leave some of the more dangerous deliveries while still flaying everything else.
In fact, he could leave even the semi-dangerous deliveries and maybe just work ones and twos off the bad balls. He could bat all day if he really minimises risk. Oh, wait. This isn’t using the same approach at all, is it?
England v New Zealand, first Test at Lord’s - day one
New Zealand 208 (Brendon McCullum 97, James Anderson 3-42)
We pretty much know the teams. We pretty much know the tactics. What we don’t know is what the two teams will be feasting on during the first lunch break and who will fare the better.
It’s common cricketing courtesy to clap the players when they emerge for the afternoon session, but that’s not exactly what happens.
What you are in fact doing is clapping the players as they exit the luncheon arena. You are applauding them for the stunning eating performances they’ve put in during the previous 40 minutes.
Of course the whole event takes place behind closed doors, but seasoned cricket-watchers can judge a player’s performance from the look on his face and the distension of his gut.
Any inside information on the day one menu will be gleefully pored over.