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England’s batsmen lucky to be playing in this era

Posted on | January 27, 2010 | 4 Comments

Now that the dust has settled on the four Test series in South Africa it’s time to take a closer look at England’s performance. On the face of it drawing the rubber 1-1 is a good result but to be honest we could have lost it 3-1 and probably should have. We were lucky enough to get out of jail twice at Centurion and Newlands with Graham Onions saving the day but it’s quite clear we are going to have more problems unless the batting gets a lot better. The real crux is we can’t win Test matches unless we bat well consistently and having a good batting order on paper is no good if you can’t deliver and the fact is our batsmen didn’t do that.

Andrew Strauss was in very good form in the lead up matches but had four failures. Three times he’d got himself in with scores of 46, 54 and 45 but he never went on to make a big score, that’s the key to opening. Facing the new ball and fresh bowlers you’re always going to get out early occasionally because the bowler has to win sometimes. So when you get in you’ve got to go on and dictate the course of the match and Strauss didn’t do that.

Jonathan Trott got off to a decent start in five of his seven innings with scores of 28, 69, 18, 20 and 42 but, again, he never went on to do anything to swing the game in England’s favour. When it’s your day you have to make those good starts count and make a lot of runs.

Kevin Pietersen is our best player, his record for England before this series is better than anybody else’s. But his shot selection was unbelievable and never once was he got out by the bowlers. Some of the really great players have poor series like Peter May in South Africa in 1956-57 when he could hardly get a run in the Tests, making 153 in ten innings. In 1966-67 Ian Chappell could only score 196 in ten innings in South Africa. The difference was the bowlers got them out while Kevin gave himself up.

Someone has to get to KP and tell him he has to play according to the state of the game. He can’t just keep saying ‘this is the way I am, this is how I play’. When you’ve been out of the game for four months you have to play your way back in to form, you can’t just pick up where you left off and he needs telling some home truths.
Matt Prior’s wicketkeeping has improved a lot in the last 12 months but his batting has gone backwards in this series. He played only two decent innings out of seven. So what have we gained? Nothing and that’s hurt us.

Stuart Broad has been touted as the next genuine all rounder to step into Freddie Flintoff’s shoes and he showed lots of promise before this series. There was plenty of discussion about whether he should bat at seven and allow us to include an extra bowler but he failed with 76 runs in seven knocks. What was really disappointing in his last innings in Johannesburg was his attitude to being given out caught off his glove down the leg side. I’ve no problem with him standing and waiting for the umpire’s decision, Graeme Smith did the same and got away with it, but when the TV review showed he was out he went off shaking his head and acting as if he’d been cheated out! He needs a good talking to and reminding if he annoys the umpires with his conduct he won’t get the benefit of any 50/50 decisions when he’s batting or bowling and that hurts England as much as him.

The surprising batting success was Ian Bell who was under serious pressure after the first Test but who subsequently showed his mettle and talent. At Durban he played a quality innings full of lovely strokes to set up a big lead and in Cape Town had two good knocks making 78 in the second innings which went a long way towards saving the game. What was particularly pleasing was that in Durban he played fluently but adapted his game to play a defiant, defensive innings at Newlands.

The other success was Paul Collingwood. He isn’t the prettiest of batsmen and at times looks ungainly with nearly all his power in the bottom hand. But I and the rest of the public take our hats off to him because he has made himself into a very good player. What he lacks in natural ability he makes up for with character, plays according to the situation and doesn’t sell his wicket cheaply. For all the talent of the others above him he’s the one we’ve come to depend on.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; batsmen put you in a position to win, bowlers take the 20 wickets to bring off the victory. But if the batting doesn’t do its job there’s not much the bowlers can do about it.

In the only match we won in Durban we got a big lead and scoreboard pressure told on the South Africans who folded.

Simply, our batting didn’t do its job in the other three matches but who do you replace them with? There’s not much competition and in fact some of them want to think themselves lucky they’re not playing in previous eras. So we have to get more out of what we’ve got or we’ll be in serious trouble in Australia next winter.

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Comments

4 Responses to “England’s batsmen lucky to be playing in this era”

  1. NICK NEWSUM
    January 28th, 2010 @ 9:04 pm

    AS EVER COMMON SENSE FROM THE MASTER

  2. Ross Done
    February 4th, 2010 @ 7:33 am

    My view on the series is just that feeling you got of the level of performance from the teams. It felt like England were playing out of their skins. And conversely, it felt like South Africa were under-performing, as they did throughout 2009. Kallis, Smith continued to perform regularly, but Ntini and Harris were woeful in their bowling, Duminy and Prince poor in their batting, and Steyn was off-key for half the series, coming back from injury. SA only starting peaking towards the end of the Newlands test, and you get the feeling that if they had been at that level from the beginning, the overall scoreline would have been vastly in their favour.

  3. Paul A
    February 7th, 2010 @ 9:24 am

    England were great at Durban, but constantly through the series the batting let us down. It seems common place for England’s players to get to 50 and decide to “switch gears”, not sure why they do it! You don’t see guys like Kallis, Ponting, Tendulkar and other great players do that. They just play normally right the way through and get hundreds, not 50′s and decide to have a go at the bowling and get out. The bowling was quite good most of the time for me, the batting is the worry. I’m not sure South Africa under-performed as much as some people think, I think the teams are quite evenly matched, there’s no doubt that both teams were inconsistent however, which has been the case for England in the last 12 months (all 3 losses in the last 12 months have been by an innings). One more thing I’ll add is the question; what in gods name happened to 5 match test series?? The ICC and the boards need to seriously use some common sense on these matters, obviously the ashes should always be 5 test matches regardless, but series between the teams at the top such as Australia, South Africa, India & England should be longer and the series involving the lower ranked teams and the top sides vs the bottom sides should be the shorter series.

  4. Dean Measor
    March 12th, 2010 @ 1:32 am

    The cricket in Australia was dead boring, West Indies and Pakistan (especially) really, really struggled. I hope Australia are not that good, you can only beat who you play against though.
    With England, you just never know what team is going to turn up and play?
    I agree, for years not enough England batsman have gone on to make enough 100′s and big hundreds at that.
    I hope England can put on a good show here in Australia later this year.
    Come on England.
    DEAN

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