Oval Test – Tea, Day 2 – Still batting…..

Anil Kumble reached his 5th Test 50 at the Oval, becoming the 7th Indian batsman to reach 50 in this innings. The two batsmen who didn’t reach 50 must feel hard done by. Wasim Jaffer’s best start of the series was cut short by an inspired bit of field placement by Michael Vaughan. Sourav Ganguly will add Ian Howell to his list of special umpiring friends.

When the sun shone, it was a batting wicket like few others in recent times. When the clouds came, it offered a more even battle between bat and ball. The wicket has also shown signs of breaking up, with puffs of dust evident from the wicket, not from the footmarks.

Currently though, all interest is centered around whether or not Anil Kumble can disappoint the worlds statisticians and reach his century. He is currently 70 not out. RP Singh is keeping him company. Kumble has been shepherding the strike expertly, leaving RP the job of surviving a couple of balls, which RP does in his own original style – aiming an expansive drive at one, and then, chastened by the experience playing an exaggerated defensive stroke to the next one! Botham and Holding have so raised expectations by referring to RP Singh’s “array of strokes”, that it is a matter of time before RP is compelled to live up to his reputation.

This has been a perfect team batting effort. The openers got away in batting conditions, before the middle order – Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman took charge, steering the innings through a delicate phase late on the first day when the English bowlers (possibly fortified by jelly beans) got the ball to swing under an early evening cloud. Once these three had ground the English bowling to dust, Dhoni arrived to deliver the final blow – and what a blow it was! Kumble is now feasting on the remains of the English disarray in south London.

574/8. If England concede 12 runs more, they will have to do something that has never been done before in the history of Test cricket. The highest losing first innings total in Test cricket is 586. That was in the 19th century.

Meanwhile, a message has come out for Anil Kumble and RP Singh, with the result that Kumble has just crashed Tremlett past mid off. The third new ball will be due in 4 overs time.

The English pace attack has fallen away from the heady heights of Lord’s. 583/8

Trent Bridge Test, Day 4, Lunch – Erratic India, Watchful England

The point has been made that the “blame” or responsibility (a better word than blame) for India’s troubles at Lord’s lay with the middle order and not with the bowlers, who “came back strongly after the first day”. This view is fundamentally flawed and reveals a misunderstanding of the Test match contest in my view, and indeed the contest between bat and ball. The bowling today on the 4th morning, if it results in England going on to save the Test match, given the platform they have built, will illustrate why this is so.

The basic value of swing and seam, is that it is unplayable if the bowler gets it right. It doesn’t matter who the batsman is – if there is consistent seam and swing on offer, with a quality fast bowler who possesses control in operation, then it is almost certain that the batting line up (irrespective of names in that line up) will struggle. The converse of this is that if the bowlers get it wrong and bowl inconsistently, then the batting line up make runs. The difference between Lord’s and Trent Bridge is not that the Indian middle order was stung by criticism after Lord’s, it is that James Anderson bowled poorly at Trent Bridge, while he was brilliantly consistent at Lord’s. The sun shone for a while at Trent Bridge, which meant that the English attack lack the edge they had at Lord’s. Therefore, the pressure was not relentless and there were scoring opportunities on offer. In short, the English bowlers were unable to exert as much control at Trent Bridge compared to Lord’s on account of two reasons: their own accuracy and the conditions.

Similarly, the argument that the Indian bowlers actually did well at Lord’s by keeping England under 300 in both innings is flawed, because England got to 300 in the first innings because India bowled rubbish for most of that innings. Those runs are counted in the course of the Test match – yet it seems almost as though the lack of quality in the pace bowling ought not to matter, if you’ve been reading reports in the Indian cricket press recent.

Play on the 4th morning was yet another case of India’s mercurial bowling line up having one of their fitful sessions. There was swing on offer, yet too much of the bowling was wide, and Strauss was not made to play enough by either Sreesanth or Zaheer. They bowled very little that would have threatened the stumps, let alone actually been on the stumps. They allowed the English batsmen to leave easily outside off stump, and every time they actually strayed closer to the stumps, they beat the bat or had the batsman squared up. Zaheer was the best of the bowlers. RP and Sreesanth were not on song. Sreesanth especially seemed out of control with all his swearing and staring. As with Matt Prior yesterday, Sreesanth basically made a fool of himself and was spoken to by the umpire because things seemed to get out of hand. Somehow, this type of nonsense is quite popular with our Indian fans – erratic bowling, with no real control, coupled with arrogance. Give me the understated Munaf Patel who understands line and length (and actually bowls it) any day.

For the first time in this Test match, India have lost a session. The bowlers may yet make a “comeback”, and the batsmen (helped by England’s below par bowling effort) have given them enough of a cushion to still make a comeback – but the lack of quality and control in the bowling has hurt India for the whole of Kumble and Tendulkar’s career. Things have improved recently, but India are still one of the weakest pace attacks in the world – only West Indies are possibly weaker.

The key is control. In arithmetic terms – its a question of how many balls you can bowl exactly as you intend to bowl them. In Sreesanth’s case, that figure must to be somewhere in the low 30’s in percentage terms. Just to illustrate what im saying further – a for McGrath or Akram, a similar figure might have been 80-85. For Zaheer, it is probably 50-60 right now.

If you don’t believe what im saying about bowling and batting in Test cricket – check out the following two statistics:
1. How many “match-winning” Test innings has Brian Lara played after Curtly Ambrose retired?
2. How frequently has Lara reached 50 in a Test innings in England and in Australia in the last 10 years?

He is considered a “match-winning” batsman. Yet he’s won zero Tests in England and Australia since Ambrose retired. He’s reached 50 in 2 out of 18 innings in Australia in the last 10 years and in 4 out of 17 innings in England.

It is one of the most interesting dichotomies in the discussion about Test cricket in India. Everybody agrees to the principle that quality fast bowling is a non-negotiable necessity if you want to be a top class Test team. Yet, when it comes to assessing actual Test matches, poor fast bowling is often excused even when the conditions have clearly suited fast bowling, simply because the fast bowlers haven’t played a hundred Tests! So in effect the argument is – yes top class fast bowling is absolutely necessary to compete in Test cricket, but its the fault of the batsmen, because nothing much is expected from the fast bowlers anyways.

Judgements are made on Test cricket, while completely ignoring the contest between bat and ball!

Hopefully India will learn – its one of the advantages of bowling – it’s possible to make right in one good spell, the wrongs of 3-4 bad spells, while batsmen are allowed 2 mistakes per Test match. Its a beautifully designed contest – one which ought to be given its due when Test match performances are discussed.

Cricinfo’s lunch time headline reads – “Strauss and Vaughan dig deep” – they haven’t had to dig too deep, because three of the four bowlers haven’t bowled very well. India’ bowlers may eventually do well enough to make Strauss and Vaughan go away, but they won’t be able to recover the runs and time conceded while they weren’t bowling well. In the final analysis, both the good as well as the bad performance will count – whatever the “expectations” may be. The “expectations” play not part in the outcome of the Test match.

Batting Greatness

Thanks to Homer for posting the new cricket videos site. Here are four modern masters – the result in each case a boundary…..

Power
Care
Confidence
Class

There is something inherently beautiful about watching a master in action. I posted the 5th video (below) because i want you to watch the catch Mark Waugh takes at second slip of VVS Laxman’s edge. Waugh in my view was the greatest catcher i have ever seen. His magic lay not in his catching technique, but in his anticipation – which makes everything else – balance, reception of the ball, everything else look ridiculously easy.

The Natural

When you actually think about it, Power, Care, Confidence and Class – as qualities which describe batting greatness, are in truth, merely the symptoms of greatness. Greatness lies in the ability to anticipate and to prepare well enough to execute plans and skills close to perfection. Everybody knows that you need to have decisive footwork to counter a good length outswinger, or that you need to keep a still head when you play an expansive aggressive stroke, or that you need to get to the pitch of the ball to be able to play against the break on a turning wicket. Some just execute this more often and better than others. Some times it is called class, at other times – greatness. ‘Class’ is an aristocratic term – signifying superiority more purely than any other word in common usage. In this event, i don’t think anyone will complain about the division it creates.

The common quality amongst all great actions, is that they seem obvious and almost ridiculously simple. We can’t all be great, but we can surely try and develop the ability to identify it when we see it.

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