Everything’s Gone Green – Day One at Lord’s

Stuart Broad

It’s the second test of a five match series, and it’s already a game too far for England’s bowlers. It doesn’t bode well.

Despite being presented with a perfect pitch for seam bowling – ‘swamp green’ would be my description – our jaded pacemen laboured like lumbering lamas and totally fluffed their lines.

Broad and Plunkett were particularly woeful. The fact that Moeen Ali was the most reliable bowler (a spinner, on a green-top) says it all.

When we arrived at Lord’s it was tricky to tell where the square ended and the strip began. I’m all in favour of pitches that offer the bowlers something, but the sheer greenness of the surface revealed England’s desperation.

Should we have batted first? It depends entirely on how the pitch plays today. However, one wonders whether Cook looked down and thought “b*ll**ks” am I facing Ishant on that”.

The star of the day was undoubtedly Rahane. As he strode to the wicket I remarked “England have a sniff here … Rahane’s a good player but probably the most vulnerable in the middle-order”, before hastily adding “so he’s bound to score a ton now”.

And so it proved. His innings was majestic. He made mincemeat of the testing conditions and flayed anything off-line mercilessly.

Obviously he was helped by more woeful tactics from England – Plunkett’s around the wicket bodyline strategy (clearly a team plan) is getting really tedious.

Plunkett can bowl quickly, but not in 30 degree heat when he’s already bowled what seems like five hundred overs in the space of a week. All the bowlers must be exhausted.

As India’s tail piled on the misery, Cook’s captaincy also disintegrated again. At one point he had seven men on the boundary for Kumar. That particular statistic requires no analysis.

In fact, England’s strategies all summer have been rather poor. The worst they’ve been, in fact, since Peter Moores was last in charge. Funny that.

James Morgan

7 comments

  • Boycott reckons Cook can save his captaincy but getting runs. I’m not so sure. Culture is set from the top. This team reflects Cook’s ultra conservative out look. Run saving rather than wicket taking was the default stance. This reminds me of the days when Atherton was in charge and I would screaming for him to do something and not just passively let the game slip away.

    But who else is there? Broad would’ve been an obvious candidate but really blotted his copybook in recent matches. Who could come in and inspire this side to play attacking winning cricket, not conservative loss avoiding cricket?

  • Personally I really likes the pitch. Assistance for the bowlers and a test of technique for the batsmen, if you batted sensibly you could score runs. Good test cricket.

  • I agree with Boycott (Gulp!)..but he said that these were the coaches tactics with the Captain’s blessing. I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks that by the end of this series (if we reach the end?) England will be in complete tatters? I hope not, but the writing’s definitely on the wall!…oh…and when KP’s book comes out in the Autumn, that may well throw another hand grenade in the room?

  • One of the consequences of the army of back room staff is the inability of players to think for themselves. As the role of coaches has become more powerful,players (particularly bowlers) seem to have lost the gut instinct to know what to do in any conditions. An average county seamer from 30 years ago would have needed no instruction on how to bowl on that surface. Add to that the ludicrous conservatism of coach and captain and you have an obsession with “not giving anything away” instead of lets attack and bowl them out.

    Isn’t this the underlying cause of what happened to Stephen Finn? They tried to turn him into an economical bowler instead of a fast,wicket taking bowler.

    As for Cook he is not captain material. He will not change. He can’t change. The ECB and and the cricket media can can keep defending him. Strauss, Gower, Selvey can keep deluding themselves that he is the right man. But they just make themselves look more foolish every day.

  • Rather see that pitch in England than the one from the previous match. Very fine batting by Rahane. I think the English bowlers got carried away. Kumar gave a bit of a clinic in using that pitch today just kept it there or thereabouts.

  • Et tu Goochius..

    “It would be wrong to say this is just bad form. Opposition teams have worked out how to bowl to him to stop him scoring, to stop him playing shots. Australia did it, Sri Lanka and now India have copied it. He has to go back and look at his game and remake it, to work out ways to score runs.”

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