I don’t ‘ate you, Buttler: day two at the Ageas Bowl

 

This was a pretty boring day of test cricket. Let’s not mince words or beat around the bush. There is something uninspiring, at a basic level, in watching batsmen pile up runs against a tiring attack, who have been much less incisive than at Lord’s, on a very true pitch.

That’s no discredit to England. They did their job well, confidently and fluently.

And true, there was some glorious strokeplay, especially by Ian Bell (who knew he now has twenty one test centuries?), but personally I prefer test cricket with punch and counter-punch, ebb and flow.
It was a shame that ticket sales at the Ageas Bowl have been slow; there were many empty seats today. There are probably a number of interlinked reasons for this, but chief among them, I’d suggest, is the bizarre scheduling – with the match staged from Sunday to Thursday.

Test matches should properly start on a Thursday, which makes the prime days Friday and Saturday, as well as Thursday itself.

In this match, there is no Saturday play at all. And two of the key days are Monday and Tuesday.

Both practically and psychologically, Monday and Tuesday are much more off-putting days to take off work, and then spend drinking beer for seven hours, than the close-to-the-weekend Thursday and Friday.

The peculiar arrangement is the result of trying to play five tests within forty two days. It also reflects the needs and wishes of each team and their respective set-ups.

In the hierarchy of priorities, the interests of management should rank nowhere. The interests of players and spectators rank equal – but the latter don’t get a look in. We are bottom of the pile.

Jos Buttler was extremely impressive. Admittedly, the situation and conditions were as benign as he could have hoped for, but nevertheless – he was on debut, with a lot of hype to live up to, and still had to convert the opportunity into reality.

Our contributor Tregaskis, who knows his Somerset onions, sees Pietersen-like qualities in Buttler. And on today’s evidence I see what he means. Buttler played imposingly – with imagination, verve, and authority. He has the potential to be the kind of player who can transform a match situation out of nowhere.

Buttler should have been playing the entire summer. Of all the ECB’s crimes against common sense in the last six months, their determination to stick with Matt Prior was one of the most egregious.

Prior lost his place after Perth due to six months of poor form, but was restored to the side just two tests later, not only despite being injured, but without having robustly demonstrated a return to form.

Prior was brought back in the face of all cricketing logic, because he was one of their mates.

At the time, Alastair Cook spouted some codswallop about Buttler not being ready. But now, only six weeks later, he is ready, in their view. Is he any different a player now from what he represented in early June?

If one were to quibble, one could point out that Buttler was dropped twice and also very lucky to avoid being dismissed for a duck. On all the replays, the slip catch by Ajinkya Rahane looked absolutely out.

This problem – with low catches being voided on the ambiguous evidence of replays – has now being going on for years. Can’t someone figure out a solution?

Put bluntly, low catches no longer exist as a mode of dismissal in televised cricket, because they will always be referred, and the third umpire will always have too much doubt to convict.

In the days of Channel Four’s coverage, Simon Hughes conducted an interesting experiment in which he proved that when a catch is near the ground, the dynamics of the camera lens result in misleading images.

Several times he filmed catches which, close-up, were perfectly valid – but in the pictures from the boundary camera, the ball deceptively appeared to touch the ground.

The other option, of course, is just to take the fielder’s word for it. In a sense, rejecting a low catch amounts to accusing the fielder of cheating. The batsman should just walk (and in Buttler’s case he did, very nobly, and was called back) but they don’t, because they know the replay will reprieve them.

My colleague James was holding the pen yesterday when Cook made 95. I doubt you’ve been desperate to hear my own view, but as a staunch anti-Cookite, I feel duty bound to offer a few thoughts.

Cook clearly deserves much credit for performing under such intense pressure and scrutiny. But unless he now goes on to score runs heavily and consistently, yesterday’s innings might have to be regarded as a signal example of The Collingwood Principle.

In other words, that any batsman of first class standard will eventually make a substantial test innings if they play in every single match. Sooner or later will come a day when they simply avoid getting out, and of course Cook very nearly failed to do so yesterday – dropped by Jadeja on fifteen.

Neither I, nor James as far as I can recall, have ever argued that Cook should be dropped as a batsman. The issue is his captaincy.

Cook is a poor captain on every observable level. He demonstrates no capacity for man-management. He has no apparent leadership skills. He is weak tactically, and time and again has either allowed circumstances to overtake him, or squandered advantages. He has no idea how to bowl out tailenders. He is unable to tell Broad and Anderson what to do, or to intervene when his bowlers are misfiring. As the on-field symbol of Flowerism, a once-mightily successful but now obsolete philosophy, he represents the past, not the future. His captaincy is underpinned by the belief that things aren’t working, just carry on doing what the spreadsheets tell you anyway.

And none of that will be changed by ninety five runs.

While we’re on the subject, for the real reason there is no alternative to Alastair Cook, please read yesterday’s post by Tregaskis.

And so to tomorrow. Can England press home their advantage? Or will India bed in for the long-haul?