India v England, 1st Test, Chennai, Dec 11-15 (II)

Furry - you almost make it sound like your boys beat a decent team ...

Peter, when were they indecent?

In a sense this test has overwhelmed me. Felt really greatful to England for proceeding with the tour.

And then this shock victory or defeat depending on which side of the fence one is on. Kinda feel sorry for the visitors .. I was pinning on an exciting draw.

*Buckaroo* wrote:In a sense this test has overwhelmed me. Felt really greatful to England for proceeding with the tour.

And then this shock victory or defeat depending on which side of the fence one is on. Kinda feel sorry for the visitors .. I was pinning on an exciting draw.

Eh? Feel sorry?

Thank you very much for sticking to the tour, we are truly grateful and will remember it. Now take that Test defeat!

Sums it up for me.

Can't be so brutal .. but that's me I guess. More of a softy bwana ever greatful to massa.

Moreover the reason England proceeded with the tour was highlighted when it just crossed me mind on what the Australian team would have done in their place.

They would have stuck the dagger in when they had the chance .. nice,tight and as deep as possible. Tricky Ponting would be on a next plane out and proceeded to give a chain of interviews on how 'insecure' he really felt.

furriner wrote:Peter, when were they indecent?

When batting at 3, 4, 6 or 8, or bowling from 9-11 in the second innings.

Eric Air Emu wrote:Pretty trenchant point that the opening bowlers only bowled 10 overs each. Why isn't Freddy opening the bowling? He's not spending a huge amount of time batting these days and he would have stopped Sehwag going ballistic.

Apart from his (at times) bizarre field placings (4 close in catchers to Swann - 1 for Monty bowling into the rough !!) I also firmly believe that KP bottled it by not immediately replacing Anderson with Fred when the ball was disappearing to all parts of the ground at the top of the Indian's 2nd dig.
Jimmy's short and wide tripe just helped Sehwag to build confidence and gather momentum ... whereas Fred might well have at least put the blocks on the runaway scoring by bowling his mixture of leaping throat balls and yorkers ... Sehwag's seven boundaries through the third man region in the six opening overs of the innings was telling ....

One major disappointment - Monty Panesar. Prime example of bottling it like a rabbit caught in the headlights...

Ho hum ... let's hope they all learn from this crunching defeat ... but sadly, very much doubt they will.

I agee with Tom that Flintoff should open the bowling. Probably in all forms of cricket. Why on earth has it never been tried? The guy is England's best paceman by a mile. In every other team, the leading fast bowler takes the new ball, but apparently not for England. I was thinking exactly this today- Flintoff should be bowling the first over of EVERY GAME England plays.

While I. Gloves is in the team, mebbe switch batting positions (6 and 7) and tell Fred he is in promarily as a bowler who might be able to contribute something useful with the bat.

Prior, keeping shortcomings aside, was left high and dry both knocks. (Last out slogging the second time).


OK, that's just tinkering.

Sorry Petey - disagree..

First innings Prior kept taking his singles (eye on the red ink?) on the first or second ball of an over, leaving Monty to fend off the likes of Zaheer and Bhajji for the remaining 4 or 5 balls. Clever or what ?!

Second innings, his charge came 10 overs too late.
WTF they were doing blocking out 22 overs scoring 54 runs with just the 2 boundaries during that session defies belief.

Meh, Prior is still the best kepper/bat we have. May as well get behind him. Only Foster comes close, but he's not in the same class with the willow.

the problem is Pietersen as captain.

he doesn't have the tenacious doggedness of a Punter nor the chutzpah and guile of a Vaughn.

Pete is too much of a gentleman who has this overwhelming desire to 'fit in'.

I wouldn't say that. I can be a tiger, on occasion.

Henry wrote:Meh, Prior is still the best kepper/bat we have. May as well get behind him. Only Foster comes close, but he's not in the same class with the willow.

CGAF Trev ... I've only stated facts that are there to be verefied.
Monty ain't a batsman - even in the eyes of a blind mackerel... feeding him to Zak and Bhajji for 18 every 24 balls bowled was the height of stupidity. Am not denying Prior can bat ... but FFS, can't he work things out for himself ?

2nd dig - he blocked it ... but here, granted, probably on orders from the dressing room.
Though just WTF he was instructed thus will always remain a mystery.

He's far from perfect, but the fact is, he made a 50 in the first innings that the likes of Ambrose and Read could only dream of. He's got a long way to go, but he's not one of the major worries, imo. Kept tidily enough, as well....

Henry wrote:He's far from perfect, but the fact is, he made a 50 in the first innings that the likes of Ambrose and Read could only dream of. He's got a long way to go, but he's not one of the major worries, imo. Kept tidily enough, as well....

That's not the point though.
Was not discussing replacements for Prior nor his merits during this gig versus the other possibles Read/Ambrose.
The thing at stake here is his batting nous ... or rather, the apparent lack of it.

His keeping is adequate ... but he does not appeal too often IMO ... nor loudly enough.
Yuvraj gloved one to him off an Anderson legside dross ball after tea, but he went up only after he saw Anderson scream.

A modern cricketer who doesn't carry on like a pork chop at the drop of a hat? (or appeal). Bravo, I say.

Anyway, wasn't everyone criticising him last year for his excessive carrying on behind the stumps?

Batting wise- Yes, he might have farmed the strike a bit better, but why complain about a guy who scored 50 when we could more legitimately complain about Bell, Panesar, Anderson, and Harmison?

I'd give Prior a 7 1/2 out of 10 in this match.

Henry wrote:A modern cricketer who doesn't carry on like a pork chop at the drop of a hat? (or appeal). Bravo, I say.

... when we could more legitimately complain about Bell, Panesar, Anderson, and Harmison?

I'd give Prior a 7 1/2 out of 10 in this match.

Bravos are for the ballet ... this is pro cricket. Give it back as much as it's given you.
And anyway, umpires do tend to regard the instinctive appealing of a keeper in caught-behind situations ...
a fraction behind the bowler or less vociferous off a gloved attempt, and the appeal becomes doubtful ...

We've done those four to death ....

Agree .. prior 7.5 ... with a notation ** to have a word in his shell-like re. batting with a hopeless #11.

First of all - hats off to India: that was a stunning result.

Now for England where to start!

Monty's first over after lunch says it all really, four short balls, all played comfortably into gaps for singles. No nous, no pressure.

Was Harmy inconvenienced by his knee injury? I'd like to think so, because if he was fully fit, his performance was utterly pathetic.

And we have a return to the Anderson cycle, except that it now just oscillates from crap to really crap.

What must Andrew Strauss be thinking? He would probably like to take his Gray Nicolls to Harmy, Jimmy and Monty, and I wouldn't blame him.

This was a test of KP's resourcefulness as skipper and he flunked it. No sign of creative thinking. Why wasn't Collingwood given a chance to bowl some cutters. Oh, for Matthew Hoggard!

You have just scored 11 on my Grouchometer, Baz.

Brilliant innings by Tendulkar, and Yuvraj Singh's first real moment of very fine Test batsmanship should not be overlooked.

Perhaps Pietersen should have tried more variety on the last day, bowling himself, Collingwood, or even Bell ... they couldn't have been worse than Anderson and Harmison.

Bloody Harmlessone.

I've seen Red today ask if Broad is any better - all i'd say is that at least he's an investment for the future.

Harmy is the wrong side of 30 and looks like he can no longer be arsed. Which we probably found out on the last tour of NZ anyway.

He just doesn't want to be there. Why do the selectors keep inflicting this morose lummock on his tour mates?

Depressingly predictable surrender by England. They had the better of three and a half days of this Test, but an appalling final session on day four turned the game on its head and they never looked like a side capable of winning from that point. Whatever self-confidence and "killer" instinct they had drained - hemorrhaged - from their players with every swish of Sehwag's bat. You might say that they choked - setting a side 400 to chase on the final day (which is what they were going for at lunch on day four) is as winningest a winning position as it gets. Yet they managed to lose. Heavily.

That they were even able to compete was itself a miracle as only three players contributed anything of real substance: Strauss, Collingwood and Flintoff. Prior and Cook chipped in half a knock each, but generally it was quicker to count the England players that turned up and played at a level approaching Test-class than it was counting those that didn't.

In the ODI series, the batting relied on two players (Pietersen and Shah), while the rest of the team contributed little, and the bowling was consistently poor, with only Flintoff playing up to standard.

I suppose there's a comforting symmetry to the Test side failing in exactly the same way - two batsmen, one bowler - but the question still remains: how are England going win matches when they're carrying so many passengers?

The batting's been debated ad nauseam - they don't score enough runs as a unit, and with Flintoff in the top six, they're basically a man down on most batting units around the world, placing an even greater emphasis on the specialist batsmen to score big runs. Which they're abjectly failing to do.

There's not much room for manoeuvre, as there's only one other batsman on tour. Swapping Shah for, say, Bell and perhaps relegating Flintoff to a position more befitting his actual batting ability rather than his mythical reputation isn't likely to have a massive impact. I think the malaise runs deeper than that: how many times have England scored 400 in Tests since the 2006 Ashes? Once? Twice? And they've played some terrible teams...

In any case, I'm going to make a prediction here that Shah won't be picked. And the reason is this: Michael Vaughan has been inked in for the West Indies tour, and if they back Shah for the second Test against India (and presumably beyond, to give him a proper go), then there's no obvious place for Vaughan to fill in the team upon his triumphant return. They're not going to select him with drinks duty in mind. Bell will get another game, before being "rotated" out (but still a part of the squad and the "plans" as he's an MBE-er with a central contract) for the ex-captain.

Shah won't even make the tour.

The bowling is a disaster. One Test on from his "heroic" return to proper cricket, and Harmison looks as shot-to-pieces useless as he did when he got dropped. So he's gone from useless to decent to useless in the course of three Tests. I guess the saddest part of that is that it represents an improvement of sorts: his previous run of form was useless to useless to useless.

It's proven scientific fact that James Anderson is nothing more than fodder when the ball doesn't swing. Proven. Scientific (not really, but probably - if they had the time to test these things and weren't wasting it all on not curing cancer and making monkeys smoke cigars). Fact. The ODI series should've tipped the selectors off that Anderson wasn't swinging the ball - and looking about as threatening as a fluffy bear holding a fluffy heart. Wearing a fluffy hat.

Some might ruminate that a player's fluffing ability is the key to getting selected in this England regime, but I find that insinuation hard to swallow.

So, you replace Harmison with Stuart Broad (Harmison-lite?) and Anderson with - am I going to say this? - Amjad Khan, and the bowling suddenly looks... well, just as bad. Maybe worse. I did mention that the bowling was a disaster.

And that was without even a word about the spinners. Swanny gave it a go and certainly wasn't the wost spinner ever to wear an England shirt (although as faint praise goes, that's barely visible to the naked eye). Panesar, on the other hand, has been steadily declining for the past 18 months. His numbers aren't that bad - apart from averaging over 50 against Sri Lanka and India - but his bowling appears to have lost whatever magic it used to have. He's not turning the ball. He's not flighting the ball. He's not even keeping the batsmen honest by pitching on a consistent length and giving his skipper some control. He's all over the place.

It's hard to imagine England going to the sub-continent and dropping their front-line, star spinner and - again - they're not stocked with alternatives - but to remain wicketless (and I can't even remember him beating the bat) and go for 100 at four an over on a fifth day pitch taking plenty of turn is such a disappointing effort as to be almost laughable.

Where do England go from here? On to another defeat and then home, I'd imagine.

Good times.

In Monty's defence, even great spinners have struggled to contain that lot.