mvaughan

It's no surprise to see Graeme Swann head the England top series bowler market at around 2.8. After all, as a spinner he's more likely to bowl more overs than anyone else and these are turning pitches out in the UAE. Or are they?

Whereas I expect these wickets to deteriorate by days four and five and for the spinners on both sides to have plenty of fun on them at that stage, I think it will the seamers doing the vast majority of the work for the first three days. And they'll get two bites of the cherry. They can be extremely dangerous with the new ball especially if there's a bit of morning dew in the wicket and then again when the ball is around 30 overs old and starts to reverse swing. Something that Stuart Broad, Chris Tremlett and James Anderson all have in their locker.

Of these three my preference goes to Anderson. He's the one with the most experience and the greatest variety in his bowling. Outswingers, reverse swing, slower balls, bouncers, yorkers, you name it. If we're being really analytical about it he's also the one bowler who will almost certainly play all three matches. Broad and Tremlett have both been a tad injury prone over the last couple of years and if England decided to go with a second spinner in the shape of Monty Panesar, it would probably be Tremlett who would make way. Anderson gets the nod at around 4.0.

As far as the batsmen go, I wouldn't want to be looking outside the top three. Facing the new ball is when scoring runs will be easiest on these pitches and when batsmen will have the best chance of getting themselves in. After that it's trial by spin (Saeed Ajmal) and reverse swing (Umar Gul). Write off Andrew Strauss at your peril but if we're being really honest, he hasn't scored quite as heavily over the past year and a half as what we're accustomed to seeing from him. Jonathan Trott is as greedy as they come in terms of accumulating runs but he's never played Test cricket on these sort of pitches and may take a while to get used to them before coming up with a really big score.

All of which leaves Alastair Cook. He scored endless runs last year, looks completely comfortable with his own game at the moment and has mastered the art of weathering the storm before launching a counter-attack once he gets in. I've talked about the importance of daddy hundreds already and he's the daddy of those. It's time to feast on the 4.5 about Cook.

2 pts Back James Anderson to be England series top wicket-taker @ 4.0
Back Alastair Cook to be England series Top Runscorer @ 4.5

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