Monday 6 February 2012

England undone by the Emperor's New Delivery

It's a pretty hard bump that England have returned to earth with. After dismissing a fading India with disdain, an up-and-coming Pakistan have made them look like amateurs.


England's bowlers have played very well. Monty Panesar was brought back into the fold after they toiled with a lone spin option in the first Test and played very well on helpful pitches. Graeme Swann was effective, if a little overshadowed by the returning Panesar, while Stuart Broad and James Anderson both had exceptional spells in trying conditions for exponents of swing such as they. But no matter what the bowling unit achieved, they were persistently and consistently let down by the batting. The top six were just awful.

Ian Bell came into this series having finished third highest scorer in 2011 - behind Rahul Dravid and Kumar Sangakkara who had twelve and ten more innings respectively - and an average of over 118. He made 51 runs at 8 in the UAE. Kevin Pietersen fared slightly better making 67 at 11 and Eoin Morgan averaged 14 in making 82 runs in the series. Jonathan Trott has been the most successful of the top six batsmen out there, but he only made 161 runs at a snip under 27 each. All of them have found a variety of ways of getting out and much of that is down to a piece of confidence trickery from Saeed Ajmal before anyone turned their arm over.

The teesra, he claimed, was a new delivery he'd been working on and was ready to show it to England's batsmen. It's a brilliant ball, and the real cleverness of it lies in the fact that it doesn't exist.

Ajmal genuinely turns it both ways - not by much, but that's hardly the point. Like all spinners, he's also got one that goes on with the arm. By inventing a non-existent ball, he added an extra level of uncertainty into the minds of the batsmen. Already uncertain as to which direction it was turning, they were all waiting for this mystery ball that never arrived. They couldn't take risks against Ajmal, so were forced to against the unerringly consistent Abdur Rehman and the seamers who all weighed in with decent contributions. Ajmal was picking up wickets with stock off-breaks, players failing to read it from the hand, in flight or off the pitch, mesmerised by his insistence that he'd created something when what he had in fact invented was the Emperor's New Delivery.
 
This is a triumph for the art of deception. Test cricket is an much a test of mental fortitude as it is of technique and the clear winner in the mind games stakes is the Derren Brown of cricket, Saeed Ajmal.

Friday 3 February 2012

Letters to my late father #1

Hi Dad.
You'd have liked this. Proper, attritional Test cricket. There's something there for the bowlers, which would be new to you, or at least a throwback. Moreover, bowlers are being rewarded, far more than you were used to before... well, y'know.

You'd probably have hated the DRS when it was first mooted. My fear too was that it would undermine the on-field umpire, but after a few teething troubles, it's pretty much won me over. I dare say that the BCCI's intransigence on this has emboldened my stance, but I'd have to consider myself pro-DRS now whatever the reasons. It's definitely had an effect on umpires and what they will and will not give out. TV evidence has shown that things they'd never give previously are indeed as out as you and I always suspected they were. No longer can you get away with plonking your front pad five feet down the track and expect to get away with it.

The art of spinning the ball is back with a vengeance as a result. So is the art of reading it, out of the hand and off the wicket. For all England are ranked number one in the world - no I'm not kidding - there's an alarming lack of ability to read spin. Ian Bell looks absolutely clueless and Kevin Pietersen is trying his usual approach of trying to hit the slow bowlers into submission. Predictably, it rarely works.

203 for 16 today. Just like three-day county games on uncovered pitches. You'd have bloody loved it. Well, right up until England sent out a nightwatchman to protect their number eight batsman. That, beyond all the batting incomptences, made me really bloody angry.
 
 
 
BACKGROUND: My dad died just over three years ago. He brought me up on cricket and we'd spend hours watching it together. Good times. When I moved away, we'd still chew the cud over the day's play and when cricket moved onto Sky, I'd call him at lunch, tea and/or close to relate what had happened. The first England Test after he died, I found myself reaching for the phone to call him. I was half way through dialling when I remembered he wouldn't be there. I still find myself doing it now. Instead, I'm going to start writing him these letters.