This will hurt England, more perhaps than anything in recent times. The last time they lost two Tests in a row was three years ago, at home to South Africa, but they were the final matches of the series. There was respite afterwards. Not so this time, with another match to play, starting back in Dubai on Friday, the melancholy of defeat still fresh and the same opponents coming at them.
This they have not experienced since the successive Ashes disasters of 2002-03 and 2006-07. When they packed away the kit at the end of last summer, they did so alongside the art of winning, for every competitive match they have played since then in all forms of the game has resulted in defeat excepting a single Twenty20 win at Eden Gardens.
Saturday's collapse had a relentless feel to it, a snowball gathering pace and mass as it rolled downhill until the game finished in an avalanche of five wickets in the space of 11 balls. It happens when a bowling side gains momentum and the adrenaline flows. That has been an England forte over the past few years.
Was England's approach too timid? It is facile to sit on the sidelines and invite attack, when such actions, had they resulted in dismissals would have been ridiculed as irresponsible. A virile start and the job would be done. Perhaps Kevin Pietersen could be sent in early. Or Eoin Morgan. Even Stuart Broad. Ideas all of them, but if the collective cannot entertain scoring 145 runs as they are, then there is something wrong.
There was no pressure of time, only of circumstance. It was a game that would be won by a single innings of consequence and contributions elsewhere. Graham Gooch always believes that being positive does not invoke recklessness but is a measure of intent. You can be positive in defence, he says. The caution shown by Strauss and Cook at the start of the innings, in which 21 runs came from 16 overs, may be seen in many quarters as merely allowing the Pakistan spinners to settle into a rhythm, but they would also have known that even if the pitch was turning a little more than on the first three days, the bowling would be easier to play once the ball lost its hardness.
In fact Strauss, although fortunate to survive through Billy Bowden's aberration as third umpire when turning down a catch offered to short-leg, looked more comfortable against spin than he has done since scoring runs in India, picking length well, playing back unless he could get forward to the pitch and looking to his best scoring areas square of the wicket. The pace of progress did not matter as long as there was progress. The determination was that, with their most accomplished fourth-innings batsman ailing (Jonathan Trott is the only member of the side whose fourth innings average exceeds that of his career), and the batting order thrown out of kilter as a result, it would be he who played the sheet anchor.
It is something of a generalisation, which we have all used, to say that England do not play spin well. This needs clarification: they do not play it as well as the best but all bar Eoin Morgan have made runs against good spin in the past. It is worth noting that a century has yet to be scored in the series so generally difficult has batting been; that it is Cook who has the top score, with 94 in the first innings in Abu Dhabi; and that Trott, Matt Prior and Broad have all made excellent half-centuries.
The real problem lies in the engine room where Pietersen, Ian Bell and Morgan have just 94 runs between them in 12 innings with seven dismissals going to Ajmal and three to Rehman. Of these it is Morgan, who is learning the trade, who has most runs, 41, but is most vulnerable. His place for the second Test was certainly debated, and he will almost certainly make way for Ravi Bopara in the final match.
Bell is being bamboozled more than most by Ajmal, although he was playing well enough in the first innings in Abu Dhabi before falling to Umar Gul and the new ball instead and was unfortunate in his second-innings dismissal. He is one of the few England players confident in using his feet and hitting over the top and down the ground.
But what to make of Pietersen? The most intuitively attacking batsman England have had since Marcus Trescothick has been reduced to a prodding introvert, shackled by the spin and racked with doubt. This is the man who hammered Shane Warne and reverse-swept Muttiah Muralitharan for six. At the moment, he is determined to play as far forward as possible, which is fine although not immune from the threat of the umpire decision review system if he misses. Planting his feet, though, in such early commitment, means that defensively he plays "curtain rail" cricket, the bat coming around his pad. Fleetingly, he tried using his feet but just the once. When he tried to hit over the top he chose not to go over the off side, but midwicket, and edged a catch from his pad instead. So far he has scored 17 runs from 84 balls of which two went for four. Not difficult to see there is a lot of blocking there. More than anything England need Pietersen to take on the spinners.
No comments:
Post a Comment