Cricket
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If you want to be rated a great batsman, you must have a rounded game and score runs on all types of pitches.
And if you want to have a legacy as a great team then you have to be able to win on all surfaces.
We have now seen that for all their great batting on flat pitches, this England team has an Achilles heel and other teams around the world will take note. Take England’s batsmen out of their comfort zone and you have a fantastic chance of beating them.
If they do not learn their lessons, they will not be remembered as a great team. Yes, they are entertaining and fantastic to watch because you never know what they are going to do next, good or bad, but Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum want their team to be the best. Unfortunately they are wasting their opportunity and risk being remembered as flat-track bullies unless they make some adjustments for conditions.
The saddest thing is that England do not play in India or Pakistan again on spinning pitches for nearly three years, so our players will quickly be back to being praised by some supporters as the best batsmen England have ever had. All I say to that is you must be kidding.
It was annoying to hear the England players saying after the Pakistan series defeat: “That’s how we as a group play.”
It gives the impression that they think they know it all and have nothing to learn. Richie Benaud used to say you never stop learning! Our youngsters seem to think they invented the wheel, do not want to change and that we oldies do not know anything about Test match cricket.
In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s many county matches were played on club grounds that produced turning pitches so every team picked two spinners. You had to learn how to survive and score runs.
A Test match is an examination over five days and for a batsman the only thing that matters is how many runs you score. Your team cannot win if your ego gets in the way and you are not prepared to change. Some of the judgment and attempted shots by England were awful.
On a spinning pitch in Pakistan, I don’t know what was worse: England’s inability to get rid of the tail cheaply or the dreadful batting against the turning ball.
For two Test matches our batting was pathetic against spin. In India earlier this year the batsmen were weak and easily spun out.
As soon as the ball grips Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Stokes are all at sea. They go at the ball with hard hands and there are gaps between bat and pad.
If they are not smashing boundaries they lose patience – and patience and concentration are the most important traits on turning pitches.
Very rarely do you see any batsman smashing the slow bowlers around when the pitch is in the spinners’ favour. At the start of an innings, batsmen are not going to dictate to the bowlers so you have to defend, fight to stay in, manoeuvre the ball into the gaps while looking for an easy ball to score a boundary.
A defensive technique is paramount. You cannot make runs in the pavilion so you have to stay in and if you can spend time at the crease your confidence will grow, you will get used to the pitch and the bowlers, so batting will become easier and runs will start to flow.
Too many have jumbled-up thinking because they are so used to smashing boundaries and trying to smack the ball around on easy batting surfaces.
Don’t get me wrong, since McCullum and Stokes took over some of our batting has been amazing.
They have transformed English cricket. But always on good batting surfaces. In the 1990s, New Zealander John Bracewell labelled Graeme Hick a flat-track bully. He was denigrating Hick as a guy who whacked county bowlers around on good pitches but did not have the skill to do it against Test bowlers.
I would use it to describe England as they are flat-track bullies on good batting pitches. They are great to watch as they pummel the opposition bowlers into submission and have earned the title of Bazballers, but spinning pitches demand adjustments.
Playing on dry, crumbling pitches is the opposite from batting on flat pitches where there is no movement and batsmen can hit through the line and take chances to be inventive and outrageous.
Some of our guys have learned nothing. High-risk strokes are not smart. Trying safer shots would bring a better rate of success than trying to be clever.
A perfect example is Brook. He scored a brilliant 317 in the first Test and in the next four innings he was naive with no idea against spin and totalled 56 runs.
On big-spinning pitches, no matter how good a batsman is, nobody can succeed every innings because an odd ball will keep low or spit at you and jump. When I watch Ben Duckett and Joe Root, I feel they have a plan, an array of strokes that will work. The rest need to adjust their thinking, get a better defence, be clear about their safe scoring areas and safe shots for them and cut out high risk. Is that so difficult?
As for our spinners, they were outbowled by Pakistan. We have to make allowances for Shoaib Bashir because he is a raw youngster and new to first-class cricket, never mind Test match cricket. But he should take note of their off-spinner Sajid Khan, who put big revs on the ball, bowled it quicker with lots of zip and pitched way outside off stump to hit off stump. I have said before that Bashir bowls too straight at the right-handers.
Jack Leach is an experienced bowler but maybe more subtle variations would help rather than a metronomic pace.
But rather than blame the spinners, the brutal truth is that if you win the toss and bat first on a spinners’ paradise of a pitch and you lose the match by nine wickets then most of the blame is on the batsmen.
And if you want to have a legacy as a great team then you have to be able to win on all surfaces.
We have now seen that for all their great batting on flat pitches, this England team has an Achilles heel and other teams around the world will take note. Take England’s batsmen out of their comfort zone and you have a fantastic chance of beating them.
If they do not learn their lessons, they will not be remembered as a great team. Yes, they are entertaining and fantastic to watch because you never know what they are going to do next, good or bad, but Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum want their team to be the best. Unfortunately they are wasting their opportunity and risk being remembered as flat-track bullies unless they make some adjustments for conditions.
The saddest thing is that England do not play in India or Pakistan again on spinning pitches for nearly three years, so our players will quickly be back to being praised by some supporters as the best batsmen England have ever had. All I say to that is you must be kidding.
It was annoying to hear the England players saying after the Pakistan series defeat: “That’s how we as a group play.”
It gives the impression that they think they know it all and have nothing to learn. Richie Benaud used to say you never stop learning! Our youngsters seem to think they invented the wheel, do not want to change and that we oldies do not know anything about Test match cricket.
In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s many county matches were played on club grounds that produced turning pitches so every team picked two spinners. You had to learn how to survive and score runs.
A Test match is an examination over five days and for a batsman the only thing that matters is how many runs you score. Your team cannot win if your ego gets in the way and you are not prepared to change. Some of the judgment and attempted shots by England were awful.
On a spinning pitch in Pakistan, I don’t know what was worse: England’s inability to get rid of the tail cheaply or the dreadful batting against the turning ball.
For two Test matches our batting was pathetic against spin. In India earlier this year the batsmen were weak and easily spun out.
As soon as the ball grips Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Stokes are all at sea. They go at the ball with hard hands and there are gaps between bat and pad.
If they are not smashing boundaries they lose patience – and patience and concentration are the most important traits on turning pitches.
Very rarely do you see any batsman smashing the slow bowlers around when the pitch is in the spinners’ favour. At the start of an innings, batsmen are not going to dictate to the bowlers so you have to defend, fight to stay in, manoeuvre the ball into the gaps while looking for an easy ball to score a boundary.
A defensive technique is paramount. You cannot make runs in the pavilion so you have to stay in and if you can spend time at the crease your confidence will grow, you will get used to the pitch and the bowlers, so batting will become easier and runs will start to flow.
Too many have jumbled-up thinking because they are so used to smashing boundaries and trying to smack the ball around on easy batting surfaces.
Don’t get me wrong, since McCullum and Stokes took over some of our batting has been amazing.
They have transformed English cricket. But always on good batting surfaces. In the 1990s, New Zealander John Bracewell labelled Graeme Hick a flat-track bully. He was denigrating Hick as a guy who whacked county bowlers around on good pitches but did not have the skill to do it against Test bowlers.
I would use it to describe England as they are flat-track bullies on good batting pitches. They are great to watch as they pummel the opposition bowlers into submission and have earned the title of Bazballers, but spinning pitches demand adjustments.
Playing on dry, crumbling pitches is the opposite from batting on flat pitches where there is no movement and batsmen can hit through the line and take chances to be inventive and outrageous.
Some of our guys have learned nothing. High-risk strokes are not smart. Trying safer shots would bring a better rate of success than trying to be clever.
A perfect example is Brook. He scored a brilliant 317 in the first Test and in the next four innings he was naive with no idea against spin and totalled 56 runs.
On big-spinning pitches, no matter how good a batsman is, nobody can succeed every innings because an odd ball will keep low or spit at you and jump. When I watch Ben Duckett and Joe Root, I feel they have a plan, an array of strokes that will work. The rest need to adjust their thinking, get a better defence, be clear about their safe scoring areas and safe shots for them and cut out high risk. Is that so difficult?
As for our spinners, they were outbowled by Pakistan. We have to make allowances for Shoaib Bashir because he is a raw youngster and new to first-class cricket, never mind Test match cricket. But he should take note of their off-spinner Sajid Khan, who put big revs on the ball, bowled it quicker with lots of zip and pitched way outside off stump to hit off stump. I have said before that Bashir bowls too straight at the right-handers.
Jack Leach is an experienced bowler but maybe more subtle variations would help rather than a metronomic pace.
But rather than blame the spinners, the brutal truth is that if you win the toss and bat first on a spinners’ paradise of a pitch and you lose the match by nine wickets then most of the blame is on the batsmen.
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Have to agree with most if that Eli’s
Crawley: Duckett and Pope were done by straight balls in the second innings. We were 20-3 in less than 10 overs. That was disgrace on that pitch, which, was in no way ever a Bunsen. I didn’t hear them say this is how we play but I thought we were over that particularly the way Smith and Atkinson batted in the first innings. I feel fir Stokes as he has the temperament and technique to play spin but consistently feels he has to show the rest of them the “ No Fear “ method and often “ Gives “ his wicket away demonstrating that to his players. The point of Test Cricket is adapting to the test. We failed |
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crawley and pope have both played 50 tests and average less than 35. that's nowhere near good enough for a top 6 batman if you want to be a winning consistently against the better sides
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Listening to Jeremy Coney on Talksport 2
He is making the same criticism of the Indian batsmen who play their attacking shots with aplomb but cannot defend against spin. I wonder if they might consider taking Pujara to Australia |
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i loved waching Javed Miandad play the spinners
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And the Umpires in Pakistan! Great player though!
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