It’s important, when you’re doing something resembling day by day commentary on a Test match, to get your blog piece finished before the day’s play. Developments after play has resumed tend to render some of what you’ve written irrelevant, and you're left fiddling around and adjusting things to meet the changes in the match situation.
I’d spent a good hour and a bit on Saturday morning on a piece provisionally titled It’s Not Rocket Surgery, largely based around the question of what we were doing inserting England after winning the toss on a wicket that didn’t seem to be offering the usual reasons for doing so.
Around eight-ten I wandered out of the air-conditioned office, planning a shower, breakfast, and a wrap up of the piece before play resumed at nine-thirty.
I emerged to find The Supervisor engaged in gardening activities with a list of accumulated tasks that required my immediate attention. It was lucky I emerged when I did because otherwise I’d probably have been late for the resumption.
Day Two in Melbourne had delivered a fair bit to think about, and it was hard to see how we were going to get ourselves out of a substantial hole, and harder to think of ways we could afford a fairly crushing defeat, and you’d have to put most of the blame, up to that point in time, on the decision to insert the opposition.
Pondering those matters as I lay in bed that morning I kept coming back to that very useful and much-encompassing phrase It’s not rocket surgery.
I might have picked that up from Kerry O’Keefe, who announced his impending retirement as Australia moved inexorably towards nine-for, but that combination of rocket science, with its accompanying notions of physics, gravity and aerodynamics and the attention to fiddly detail that would have to be a key ingredient in successful brain surgery epitomises something about matters of cricket strategy.
It is, when you get down to tin tacks, a very simple game. Someone bowls, attempting to hit the wicket. Someone defends the wicket and attempts to score some runs along the way.
And long-held adages are long held because they tend, year after year, season after season, to work.
Take the notion that you win the toss and bat. Filter it through the wisdom of the well-known English master of gamesmanship W.G. Grace, which went something like this:
If you win the toss, bat.
If you have reservations, give them some consideration, and bat.
If you have serious concerns, discuss them with a colleague, and bat.
I spent a bit of time after Day One pondering why we won the toss and sent England in, and after a salutary lesson yesterday, spent some time overnight pondering what I could only see as a tendency to get too smart too soon.
That might seem like taking some credit off an English attack that managed to get things pretty right, but you can only play as well as you’re allowed to and the insertion, to a large extent, helped to set things up for them.
I’m not suggesting there aren’t situations where you won’t be inclined to send the opposition in after you’ve won the toss, but they generally don’t line up well against the reasons why you tend to choose to bat.
Let’s look at those for a moment.
First, in any game, batting first ends up reading we’ve got ‘em, they’ve got to get ‘em. Knowing the target, or the score, you’re defending gives you some room to manoeuvre with your tactics and general approach.
Second, and this particularly applies to a two innings game played over two-hour sessions, batting first means you’re probably guaranteed a full two hour session and a single start to the innings. Sure, it might rain, but unless it does, your openers are only going to start once.
From there, unless the final wicket falls immediately beside a break, the team batting second, third and fourth are likely to have to get themselves through two spells with the new ball. Yesterday illustrated that point perfectly.
England might have been bundled out fairly briskly, but they used up enough time to leave thirteen overs until the Lunch break, collecting Warner and Watson along the way. They got Clarke to the crease early, and had two goes at him, eventually claiming him fairly cheaply. We’d struggled to nine-for and the prospect of a substantial deficit leading into England’s second innings.
Which brings us to the third reason for batting first, namely, if you bat first that probably means they bat last, possibly on a deck where batting would be starting to present difficulties. By that point, if it’s going to take turn it should have something for the spinners. If not, it’ll probably be increasingly slow and low which tends to make batting rather difficult.
That doesn’t mean you’re never going to bowl first, but by doing so you’re forfeiting certain other advantages. That first day Melbourne deck definitely seemed to lack justification for insertion.
What we got on Day Three, from where I was sitting, right up to the lunch break, didn’t do much to change perceptions. Haddin and Lyon stuck around, scored at a reasonably brisk clip, and got us within reach of the England first innings total.
Good. Tick. But still not where we wanted to be.
With a bit over an hour to bat until Lunch, England progressed to 0-54 with Cook looking pretty good while Carberry did a Tavare impersonation. We got a slight turnaround in that middle session, with Cook going first, Carberry following not long afterwards, followed by the unfortunately-named Root and Bell in quick succession.
it’s possible something like the two brain farts that produced these two dismissals formed part of the decision to insert on Day One, but I’m inclined to dismiss that suspicion. Root seemed to forget that Johnson is a left armer, hit the ball to hit left and ran. Possibly England rate Mitchell’s fielding on a par with their perception of his bowling, but a direct hit did the business.
Bell then proceeded to hit his first ball straight down Johnson’s throat, presenting Lyon with the first of his five-for.
That made things look better, but with Pietersen at the crease with Stokes and Bairstow, Bresnan and Broad to follow before the tail emerged, at 4-87 you’d still reckon they’d be looking good for around 220, which with the fifty run first innings lead would make for a tricky run chase.
Stokes went at 5-131 and Bairstow at 6-173, buy even at that point you’d have been rating 220 as a reasonable par score. Counting Bairstow, they then proceed to lose 5 for 6. Remarkable.
Even more remarkable was the Lyon analysis. 5-50 off 17 thank you very much.
Of course, he was helped by having Johnson at the other end, and the speed of the England demise gave us a neat little eight over spell to reduce the target from 231 to 201 in circumstances that might have been tricky if the England bowlers weren’t (and I’m assuming this to be the case) rather shocked by the fact that they were out in the paddock again.
In any case, what could have been a rather tricky session added thirty, reduced the target and failed to bring the limping Watson to the crease.
And from there, Day Four unfolded pretty well according to the script. A century to Rogers after Warner went at the end of the 17th over, a gritty 83 to Watson, who looked committed to delivering the goods and a red ink 6 to Clarke and we were home and hosed at 4-zip in the five Test series.
So, Hughesy, surely that takes care of those concerns of yours?
Actually, it doesn’t. The decision to insert suggested we were heading off into what has been a tricky area for Australia when we start looking to toy with the opposition’s mental processes. We’re at our best when we keep it very simple and snarl and gouge our way through the opposition.
I took myself through the lap around town this morning pondering these matters further, and came to the conclusion that this whole turn around from the English half of the dual series has come down to the bowling quartet, and the fact that they’ve restricted England to a modest total every time they’ve batted, and sparked a few spectacular collapses along the way.
Looking forwards, you’d have to fancy our chances in South Africa and beyond, but only as far as this particular bowling quartet (with Watson hovering on the periphery) are in action. Remove one element, and things are going to be substantially different.
The key here is Johnson and the important issue as far as he is concerned is the fear factor. A while back there were suggestions he would drop his pace back and bowl line and length the way his mentor and chief sponsor Dennis Lillee did in the later part of his career.
Don’t even think of it. He’s there to scare, particularly if the opposition aren’t inclined to rate him. End of story.
And when he goes, whatever the reason for his departure, he needs to be replaced by someone who has genuine pace and aggression. Not by someone who bowls dry. We’ve already got two blokes who do that. We don’t need a third. Go in with three dries and a spinner and the spinner might get among the wickets as the opposition look for runs where they can get them. They’re equally likely to sit back and wait until the quicks tire and then take their toll on a flagging attack.
That’s not rocket surgery either.
The beauty of this Australian attack is the balance. Two workhorses, one wild card and a spinner who learned his trade bowling in circumstances where everybody down to Eleven is inclined to Slap, particularly when the bowler is a slightly-built bloke bowling finger spin.
Harris and Siddle will keep trundling in and bowl their guts out for you. They’ll take wickets and keep things tight, Johnson has the left armer angle, and genuine pace, Lyon does what he does and if Watson bowls you’ve got a fourth medium pacer with The Genuine Quickie Mentality.
It’s handy. It’s working at the moment. Don’t tinker with it too much, and if you must tinker, don’t mess with the basics.
Watson and Harris must have question marks over the fitness going into Sydney. Possibly you rest one or both of them.
If it’s Watson, replace him with Faulkner and bat Clarke at Three. Give Faulkner a decent workout with the ball and hope to get Harris through relatively unscathed.
Rest Harris and it’s a different matter. The first question then becomes whether Watto is there and whether he’s going to bowl. He probably isn’t, so you're going to be looking for a workhorse. Coulter-Nile? Bollinger? Cutting?
Cricinfo will be providing some very interesting reading over the next day or two…
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Melbourne Day One
Having managed to sleep in, which ruled out a morning walk, and with plenty of writing backlog to work on it took a while to turn my attention to the events of Day One in Melbourne.
An hour’s walk would have provided something to hang England’s 6-226 on, but on a slow day you’d have to dig fairly thoroughly if you were going to avoid being overly negative. You could, after all, make a fairly solid case for watching paint dry as more interesting than the English run crawl.
Record chase more entertaining than run chase was one headline that caught the eye on the ABC News website, and wasn’t far off the mark. The so called world record for attendance, of course, probably isn’t. There have almost certainly been larger crowds at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, and there have definitely been many more entertaining Day Ones.
The key issue, having missed Adelaide and Melbourne, has been the decision to insert the old enemy after winning the toss, when the natural inclination in almost every set of circumstances is to win the toss and bat.
Clarke certainly didn’t seem that sure it was a good idea, but there are two angles that might be worth pondering.
First, of course, there might just have been something in the pitch, and it was good luck rather than good management that got Root through to the Lunch score of 1-71. Cook lasted an hour or so, and with an extra break through in that first session England could well have gone into a downhill slide. Three catches would have helped in that regard as well, and it’s interesting looking at the day’s play to ponder how much damage has been done to the English esprit de corps.
They’re not quite broken. Yet. But it might be close.
One thing that did disturb me was the lack of an aggressive response to blatant time wasting by Kevin Pietersen towards the end of the day’s play. Maybe he was just out to do what he could to get his side through to Stumps without further damage, but I suspect there was an additional bit of Niggle in there. It wasn’t what you’d call subtle time-wasting.
I would have liked to see a rather aggressive approach to the umpires, something along the lines of making sure he has to pay if we get slugged for slow over rates. The consensus in the commentary box seemed to be a belief there was very little the umpires could do about it, but I’d have been interested in seeing what would have happened if a protest about time-wasting had been followed by an appeal for Obstructing the Field.
To quote the first sentence of Law 37: Either batsman is out Obstructing the field if he wilfully attempts to obstruct or distract the fielding side by word or action.
You’re not going to get it, of course. But you ask. And, just maybe, by repeating the appeal ad nauseam when the fielding side is in position and ready to go, and KP is wasting time you’re underlining the fact that you’re onto what he’s up to.
And a bush lawyer would be able to make plenty out of those words willfully attempts, obstruct or distract and action.
The other thing with the decision to insert might have been a degree of interest in seeing how we go when the coin falls the other way and the opposition decide to bat. Given the notion that the coin falls fifty-fifty you’d possibly want to see how things run in that sort of situation when the coin fails to co-operate.
But there’d also be a degree of seeing how close to broken they are, matched with the knowledge that we’re in for a much more competitive series in a month and a half’s time.
Juggling my attention between the resumption of play and the attempt to fill in the commentary, at thuds point, having just seen Johnson strike twice, with Pietersen as the second victim, let’s just turn our attention to the screen.
An hour’s walk would have provided something to hang England’s 6-226 on, but on a slow day you’d have to dig fairly thoroughly if you were going to avoid being overly negative. You could, after all, make a fairly solid case for watching paint dry as more interesting than the English run crawl.
Record chase more entertaining than run chase was one headline that caught the eye on the ABC News website, and wasn’t far off the mark. The so called world record for attendance, of course, probably isn’t. There have almost certainly been larger crowds at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, and there have definitely been many more entertaining Day Ones.
The key issue, having missed Adelaide and Melbourne, has been the decision to insert the old enemy after winning the toss, when the natural inclination in almost every set of circumstances is to win the toss and bat.
Clarke certainly didn’t seem that sure it was a good idea, but there are two angles that might be worth pondering.
First, of course, there might just have been something in the pitch, and it was good luck rather than good management that got Root through to the Lunch score of 1-71. Cook lasted an hour or so, and with an extra break through in that first session England could well have gone into a downhill slide. Three catches would have helped in that regard as well, and it’s interesting looking at the day’s play to ponder how much damage has been done to the English esprit de corps.
They’re not quite broken. Yet. But it might be close.
One thing that did disturb me was the lack of an aggressive response to blatant time wasting by Kevin Pietersen towards the end of the day’s play. Maybe he was just out to do what he could to get his side through to Stumps without further damage, but I suspect there was an additional bit of Niggle in there. It wasn’t what you’d call subtle time-wasting.
I would have liked to see a rather aggressive approach to the umpires, something along the lines of making sure he has to pay if we get slugged for slow over rates. The consensus in the commentary box seemed to be a belief there was very little the umpires could do about it, but I’d have been interested in seeing what would have happened if a protest about time-wasting had been followed by an appeal for Obstructing the Field.
To quote the first sentence of Law 37: Either batsman is out Obstructing the field if he wilfully attempts to obstruct or distract the fielding side by word or action.
You’re not going to get it, of course. But you ask. And, just maybe, by repeating the appeal ad nauseam when the fielding side is in position and ready to go, and KP is wasting time you’re underlining the fact that you’re onto what he’s up to.
And a bush lawyer would be able to make plenty out of those words willfully attempts, obstruct or distract and action.
The other thing with the decision to insert might have been a degree of interest in seeing how we go when the coin falls the other way and the opposition decide to bat. Given the notion that the coin falls fifty-fifty you’d possibly want to see how things run in that sort of situation when the coin fails to co-operate.
But there’d also be a degree of seeing how close to broken they are, matched with the knowledge that we’re in for a much more competitive series in a month and a half’s time.
Juggling my attention between the resumption of play and the attempt to fill in the commentary, at thuds point, having just seen Johnson strike twice, with Pietersen as the second victim, let’s just turn our attention to the screen.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Resuming the Commentary
While I was always confident we’d be retrieving The Ashes from foreign interests by the end of this series I didn't expect to be sitting down two days out from Boxing Day contemplating a five-nil whitewash.
The Inquisitive Reader may have been wondering at the lengthy silence following the win at The Gabba, something that stemmed from the fact that Hughesy wasn’t in the country. We were still part way through the English half of the two part series when I heard about a run of four Elvis Costello Spinning Songbook concerts in Japan. That looked like a reasonable excuse to head across to ride around on bullet trains.
The Interested Reader will find details of those shows over on The LHoC Music blog, or the LHoC web site but in between concerts and shinkansen excursions I was actually following the scores. Things would have been better if the feed from the Cricket Australia app on the iPad wasn’t geoblocked, but you can’t have everything.
And even with the prospect of a whitewash there’s no room for complacency because from what I’ve read it looks like we’re still only operating around 95%.
The important thing to remember before we get down to gloating is that this is a side that has been assembled to complete a task, and while we’re well on the way to doing that, a couple of issues will need to be dealt with on the way to reclaiming that #1 Test ranking, which is what we’re after.
Look at the current side and we’ve got Rogers, Haddin and the pace bowling trio that's the heart of what may well be the best attack going around at the moment (Australia's attack 'best in the world' - McDermott) all needing to replaced in the medium term, and we also need to build up the spin bowling department for future tours to spin-friendly environments on the subcontinent.
We’ve also got the prospect of a three Test Series in South Africa in the New Year, and one notes recent developments that suggest we’ll need to be firing on all cylinders if we’re going to win that one. We’re still ranked #5 on 101 with South Africa well ahead of the pack on 131 (India 119, England 116, Pakistan 102). They’ve got de Villiers, Amla and Smith at 1, 2 and 9 in the batting rankings (Clarke 5) and Philander and Steyn at 1 and 2 in the bowling (Harris and Siddle 5 and 6).
And while it’s rather pleasant to watch the wheels start to fall off the much vaunted England line up one notes suggestions of burnout as a significant factor. They’ve kept a fairly tight core of players together through a lot of cricket, and the strain is going to show eventually. We don't want to end up in the same pickle.
On our part, we’re looking for a long term replacement for Rogers as The Steady Opener, cover for Watson as The All Rounder (or, if you prefer, The Batsman Who Bowls), Haddin behind the stumps and depth and variation in the spin bowling department (Backup Offie, as well as a leftie and a left arm orthodox). Throw in another top order bat and someone who can bat in the middle and you’d have the makings of a decent medium to long term prospect.
Those players need to be identified and brought on, with a degree of rotation involved when we play the likes of Zimbabwe, Bangla Desh, the West Indies and New Zealand.
The fast bowling department looks reasonably good, with plenty of depth coming through, but there are two questions over that way. The first, of course, is getting them on to the park, something that we haven’t quite managed to do consistently. If you’re not convinced of that, take a squiz at the injury list.
Then, assuming you’ve got the resources fit and ready to fire, it’s a question of getting the right mix. In many ways, this current attack reminds me of the bowling group that got us home against the West Indies back in 1995. That attack went into a Test series having just lost McDermott to injury, and while it included Warne and an emerging McGrath the other two quicks (Reiffel and Julian) aren’t going to end up being ranked along Australia’s all-time greats.
That lineup, however, offered a blend of talents that gave options to attack the West Indies batting order, and, just as importantly, weren’t afraid to ruffle the West Indian tailenders who were used to monstering the opposition without getting a great deal of retaliation when they batted.
One notes some of the same thing happening here where Messrs Anderson and Broad are concerned.
So when it comes to replacing Johnson, Harris and Siddle it might not be a case of a straight like for like swap. Johnson may be The Leftie With the Terror Factor, but that doesn’t mean he can be replaced by, say, Starc, who may be The Leftie, but mightn’t fit into the Terrifying Pace side of things.
No, it’s a matter of getting the right combination, and that’s not necessarily going to be a matter of selecting the three most obvious choices.
The other matter that needs to be commented on is, of course, the rapid depletion of English resources in this series, and I’d direct The Argumentative Reader’s attention in that direction if he or she thinks I’m getting a little over the top in the comments above.
The first point to be made here is that we’ve turned on the aggression and the verbals, and one notes a report in this morning’s ABC News digest where Graeme Swann’s granny is blaming unwelcoming Australians for the lad’s decision to retire.
There are two telling comments in that report.
"I do not think they have been (made) very welcome, the team. He is not easily upset, there is something nasty happened.”
Well, you don’t (or shouldn’t) expect to be welcomed with open arms when you’re looking towards a four-series drubbing of your hosts. One doesn’t get the impression there are open arms when our blokes step onto the paddock over there. The words Barmy and Army spring to mind here.
She’s also reported as saying "When the team went down to Australia and that young lad [Jonathan Trott] came back, there was something going wrong then,” which moves the debate over the verbals into a whole new ball game.
Now, you might think that what I’m about to say is heartless, and you may be right, but both Trott and Swann came into this series with their own issues.
With Trott the psychological issues were, to some extent, known, and how much the Australian side knew about his actual mental state doesn’t matter. He was known to be a stickler for routine, fussy about his preparation for each ball he faced and that makes him liable to a little hurry up.
If I’d been on the field when he was batting I’d have been making fairly pointed comments about time wasting, particularly if it was the morning of Day One and I was looking to get through thirty overs before lunch.
As far as any damage inflicted is concerned, in this context I’m reminded of a sequence of photos I saw somewhere years ago.
Taken at what may have been a County match they showed a batsman, possibly Colin Cowdrey, lying on the ground after being struck by an Andy Roberts bouncer. There were a number of concerned individuals clustered around the figure on the ground, but Roberts wasn’t one of them.
Roberts was standing at the top of his run, ready to steam in for the next delivery.
Apparently, questioned about what might be interpreted as a heartless attitude, Roberts said something like “It’s my job to bowl it. It’s his job to deal with it.”
Go down the track and take a look at the damage you’ve done and you may lose some of your effectiveness. Using the short ball to get a batsman moving onto the back foot, then spearing in the yorker to clean him up is a fairly standard strategy. If the batsman’s technique of dealing with the short stuff has him swaying back and being hit by a ball that follows him, it isn’t the bowler’s fault.
No, if he’s batting Three he has to expect pressure, and it’s the opposition’s job to deliver it.
In Swann’s case, elbow surgery had already reduced his effectiveness, and Lehmann is on record as saying the plan was to attack him in an endeavour to force Cook to bring back the quicks (and, more than likely, bowl them to the point where they’re increasingly susceptible to injury).
What is interesting, at least from where I’m sitting, is that Swann opted to come on tour knowing he wasn’t going to be able to deliver the lengthy spells he had been used to, and then, faced with the prospect of a five-nil drubbing with a major question mark over whether Broad will take the field and turn out to be fully effective, chose to make an early departure from a side that had already been considerably weakened.
But, for all that, now I’m in a position to resume watching, roll on Boxing Day…
The Inquisitive Reader may have been wondering at the lengthy silence following the win at The Gabba, something that stemmed from the fact that Hughesy wasn’t in the country. We were still part way through the English half of the two part series when I heard about a run of four Elvis Costello Spinning Songbook concerts in Japan. That looked like a reasonable excuse to head across to ride around on bullet trains.
The Interested Reader will find details of those shows over on The LHoC Music blog, or the LHoC web site but in between concerts and shinkansen excursions I was actually following the scores. Things would have been better if the feed from the Cricket Australia app on the iPad wasn’t geoblocked, but you can’t have everything.
And even with the prospect of a whitewash there’s no room for complacency because from what I’ve read it looks like we’re still only operating around 95%.
The important thing to remember before we get down to gloating is that this is a side that has been assembled to complete a task, and while we’re well on the way to doing that, a couple of issues will need to be dealt with on the way to reclaiming that #1 Test ranking, which is what we’re after.
Look at the current side and we’ve got Rogers, Haddin and the pace bowling trio that's the heart of what may well be the best attack going around at the moment (Australia's attack 'best in the world' - McDermott) all needing to replaced in the medium term, and we also need to build up the spin bowling department for future tours to spin-friendly environments on the subcontinent.
We’ve also got the prospect of a three Test Series in South Africa in the New Year, and one notes recent developments that suggest we’ll need to be firing on all cylinders if we’re going to win that one. We’re still ranked #5 on 101 with South Africa well ahead of the pack on 131 (India 119, England 116, Pakistan 102). They’ve got de Villiers, Amla and Smith at 1, 2 and 9 in the batting rankings (Clarke 5) and Philander and Steyn at 1 and 2 in the bowling (Harris and Siddle 5 and 6).
And while it’s rather pleasant to watch the wheels start to fall off the much vaunted England line up one notes suggestions of burnout as a significant factor. They’ve kept a fairly tight core of players together through a lot of cricket, and the strain is going to show eventually. We don't want to end up in the same pickle.
On our part, we’re looking for a long term replacement for Rogers as The Steady Opener, cover for Watson as The All Rounder (or, if you prefer, The Batsman Who Bowls), Haddin behind the stumps and depth and variation in the spin bowling department (Backup Offie, as well as a leftie and a left arm orthodox). Throw in another top order bat and someone who can bat in the middle and you’d have the makings of a decent medium to long term prospect.
Those players need to be identified and brought on, with a degree of rotation involved when we play the likes of Zimbabwe, Bangla Desh, the West Indies and New Zealand.
The fast bowling department looks reasonably good, with plenty of depth coming through, but there are two questions over that way. The first, of course, is getting them on to the park, something that we haven’t quite managed to do consistently. If you’re not convinced of that, take a squiz at the injury list.
Then, assuming you’ve got the resources fit and ready to fire, it’s a question of getting the right mix. In many ways, this current attack reminds me of the bowling group that got us home against the West Indies back in 1995. That attack went into a Test series having just lost McDermott to injury, and while it included Warne and an emerging McGrath the other two quicks (Reiffel and Julian) aren’t going to end up being ranked along Australia’s all-time greats.
That lineup, however, offered a blend of talents that gave options to attack the West Indies batting order, and, just as importantly, weren’t afraid to ruffle the West Indian tailenders who were used to monstering the opposition without getting a great deal of retaliation when they batted.
One notes some of the same thing happening here where Messrs Anderson and Broad are concerned.
So when it comes to replacing Johnson, Harris and Siddle it might not be a case of a straight like for like swap. Johnson may be The Leftie With the Terror Factor, but that doesn’t mean he can be replaced by, say, Starc, who may be The Leftie, but mightn’t fit into the Terrifying Pace side of things.
No, it’s a matter of getting the right combination, and that’s not necessarily going to be a matter of selecting the three most obvious choices.
The other matter that needs to be commented on is, of course, the rapid depletion of English resources in this series, and I’d direct The Argumentative Reader’s attention in that direction if he or she thinks I’m getting a little over the top in the comments above.
The first point to be made here is that we’ve turned on the aggression and the verbals, and one notes a report in this morning’s ABC News digest where Graeme Swann’s granny is blaming unwelcoming Australians for the lad’s decision to retire.
There are two telling comments in that report.
"I do not think they have been (made) very welcome, the team. He is not easily upset, there is something nasty happened.”
Well, you don’t (or shouldn’t) expect to be welcomed with open arms when you’re looking towards a four-series drubbing of your hosts. One doesn’t get the impression there are open arms when our blokes step onto the paddock over there. The words Barmy and Army spring to mind here.
She’s also reported as saying "When the team went down to Australia and that young lad [Jonathan Trott] came back, there was something going wrong then,” which moves the debate over the verbals into a whole new ball game.
Now, you might think that what I’m about to say is heartless, and you may be right, but both Trott and Swann came into this series with their own issues.
With Trott the psychological issues were, to some extent, known, and how much the Australian side knew about his actual mental state doesn’t matter. He was known to be a stickler for routine, fussy about his preparation for each ball he faced and that makes him liable to a little hurry up.
If I’d been on the field when he was batting I’d have been making fairly pointed comments about time wasting, particularly if it was the morning of Day One and I was looking to get through thirty overs before lunch.
As far as any damage inflicted is concerned, in this context I’m reminded of a sequence of photos I saw somewhere years ago.
Taken at what may have been a County match they showed a batsman, possibly Colin Cowdrey, lying on the ground after being struck by an Andy Roberts bouncer. There were a number of concerned individuals clustered around the figure on the ground, but Roberts wasn’t one of them.
Roberts was standing at the top of his run, ready to steam in for the next delivery.
Apparently, questioned about what might be interpreted as a heartless attitude, Roberts said something like “It’s my job to bowl it. It’s his job to deal with it.”
Go down the track and take a look at the damage you’ve done and you may lose some of your effectiveness. Using the short ball to get a batsman moving onto the back foot, then spearing in the yorker to clean him up is a fairly standard strategy. If the batsman’s technique of dealing with the short stuff has him swaying back and being hit by a ball that follows him, it isn’t the bowler’s fault.
No, if he’s batting Three he has to expect pressure, and it’s the opposition’s job to deliver it.
In Swann’s case, elbow surgery had already reduced his effectiveness, and Lehmann is on record as saying the plan was to attack him in an endeavour to force Cook to bring back the quicks (and, more than likely, bowl them to the point where they’re increasingly susceptible to injury).
What is interesting, at least from where I’m sitting, is that Swann opted to come on tour knowing he wasn’t going to be able to deliver the lengthy spells he had been used to, and then, faced with the prospect of a five-nil drubbing with a major question mark over whether Broad will take the field and turn out to be fully effective, chose to make an early departure from a side that had already been considerably weakened.
But, for all that, now I’m in a position to resume watching, roll on Boxing Day…
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