The bloody English weather. It’s about as reliable as Del Trotter’s Robin Reliant. We’ve had no cricket for months, everyone’s aching for some live action, but the overhead conditions just wouldn’t comply. I guess we should’ve known.
What a shame that day one at the Ageas Bowl was curtailed by rain and then bad light. I was looking forward to writing a traditional TFT daily report but the lack of meaningful action has scuppered my plans. However, at least there was a typical England selection controversy to chew over though …
Why on earth did England leave out Stuart Broad? His record in England is fantastic, he bowled really well this winter, and I was looking forward to a Broad / Anderson reunion. With overcast skies, and a West Indies batting line-up that’s traditionally struggled against the seaming ball, England’s most productive new ball partnership in history would’ve been a real handful.
But no. England decided to include both their express bowlers – even though both have fitness concerns and the pitch is slow. I don’t half worry about Chris Silverwood sometimes. England have made far too many strange selection decisions thus far in his short tenure. I guess we should thank our lucky stars that he didn’t pick Broad, play five seamers, and omit Bess. I bet it crossed his mind though.
Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on the negative. What little cricket we did see what fascinating – although I say that as someone so desperate to watch live cricket again that I probably would’ve found the fifth day of a bore draw on a featherbed interesting. It’s just a shame that the action was so short-lived.
So what did we manage to see in the 82 minutes of cricket? The Windies struck early when Dom Sibley inexplicably left a ball angled in at his off-stump. Thankfully, however, Burns and Denly battled hard until the premature close of play. 35-1 seemed about right.
One thing that did strike me, however, was how relatively little the ball swung. The odd delivery definitely moved, and there was a hint of swing, but one might expect it to swing prodigiously under heavy skies. Instead I thought the seam movement was far more noticeable. Indeed, it was mostly seam movement that did for Sibley as the ball moved back into him slightly more than he expected.
The reason I’m dwelling on this, of course, is because the players are playing in a Covid-safe and saliva-free environment in international cricket for the very first time. And as we all know, bowlers habitually use saliva to shine the ball and make it move in the air – as we discussed last week.
This subject is worth exploring again because our bowlers’ experience and ability to swing the Dukes ball gives us a big advantage at home. If the amount of swing on offer is reduced then it reduces our home advantage.
The importance of saliva was a topic discussed by Zak Crawley in a webinar I was invited to on Friday. Speaking from his hotel after England’s warm up game, Zak claimed that England’s players were confident they could produce the required effect using sweat alone.
However, I wondered at the time whether this was just propaganda? After all, when you’ve got Jimmy Anderson in your XI, you want the opposition to think that the ball will hoop round corners. What’s more, I wanted to hear from an actual bowler. They understand the mysteries of swing far more than a young batter – no offence, Zak.
That’s why this interview with Charl Langeveldt on the Betway Insider Blog caught my eye. Not only was Langeveldt a seasoned fast bowler who took over one hundred wickets for South Africa; he’s also one of the best bowling coaches in the world. He also has extensive experience in English conditions having represented Leics, Derbs, Somerset, and Kent. What’s more, he specifically mentions the Ageas Bowl in the article.
According to Langevelt, the saliva ban certainly will make life harder for the bowlers. He describes using spit as ‘second nature’ and wasn’t sure how England’s bowlers were going to get round the problem. Indeed, he said he was looking forward to seeing how the likes of Jimmy Anderson managed:
The maintenance of the ball is key, particularly in England. It’s a big plus for a bowler if he can use saliva. That is especially the case in England because they use the Dukes ball. Once one side of a Dukes ball gets scuffed up and you polish the other side, it does swing a lot more and it swings for longer … I don’t know how they’re going to do it.
The good news, however, is that the Dukes ball should still be our bowlers’ ally. Although Chris Woakes, who knows a thing or two about swing bowling in English conditions, believes that kicking the saliva habit will be tough, he still expects the Dukes to move around:
The Dukes always gives you a little bit of something, so hopefully that can continue. We will find ways to shine the ball, whether that’s being a little bit more aggressive on the shining side of things.
The question for me is whether this is more wishful thinking (or mind games). After all, Woakes didn’t actually reveal how they intended to generate swing. What does being ‘more aggressive’ with shining mean? One hopes they’re not going to rub a hole in their trousers as they try in vain to create a brilliant sheen.
Personally I still expect the bowlers to find some swing in the Test matches this summer. I can’t see the Dukes not swinging. After all, it often swings in the first couple of overs before the lacker has worn off. However, will it swing as much as before? And crucially will it swing enough to maintain England’s home advantage?
Only time will tell, of course. But maybe Silverwood was being smarter than we thought when he selected England’s two fastest bowlers under overcast skies. Although Stuart Broad is more of a ‘seamer’ than an out-and-out ‘swing’ bowler, doubts over whether the ball will swing might go some way to explaining England’s thinking.
I bet Broad wasn’t impressed though.
James Morgan
I would say the English weather is extremely reliable in exactly the same way as the England cricket team. It’s inconsistent from day to day and totally reliable in being so, in effect like Del Boy’s Reliant, an ill named vehicle from the outset. Maybe Silverwood feels this way about Broad, but what you have to bear in mind in these unusual circumstances, where no competitve cricket has been played for months, is whoever impresses in training is most likely to get the nod. Broad is about as reliable as the weather on a day to day basis, so he needed to impress the selectors in the build up. With nothing much depending on the results, why not take a punt at something different for future reference.
inexplicably left a ball angled in at his off-stump.
My take on it was that it was good bowling and he was done by the ball before. That had done the opposite and he misread this one.
I quite agree with you about the bowling. These Tests come thick and fast so there is bound to be rotation especially of the quicks. Much though I am excited by the prospect of an all speed attack, given how prone the two are to injury, I would have gone with the Broad and Jimmy option here and saved Wood and Jofra for OT. IT’s good, however, that we have the luxury of choice for opening bowlers – that hasn’t always been the case!
Both Wood and Archer were under something of an injury cloud so I was really surprised to see them in the same XI. I thought the plan would be to rotate them so the team always has one fit out-and-out pace bowler.
Yes, that’s what I thought they’d do.
The three of us are thinking alike for once.
Just for once ? !!!
There was a CricViz tweet that this Test has currently seen more swing than any Test last summer at the same stage, with the exception of the Ireland Test
We’ve only had 17 overs so the key will be whether it keeps swinging. I honestly didn’t think it swung too much. I was watching while working (so didn’t see every ball) but I didn’t see it hoop. I thought the bounce looks slightly problematic from what I saw. I’m glad England won’t have to bat last if the bounce gets very uneven.
Well what a souless affair. Bio secure? Just devoid of anything really. Maybe the black power salutes put me off from the start. Sorry folks, this just isn’t Test cricket for me.
I wish they’d cut out the pseudo political PC nonsense too. We’ve all seen how little effect any of this has after years of this and that against racism in any number of sports.
I have a Caribbean neighbour and even he’s embarrassed about it in the same way NHS staff became towards the end of the weekly clapping at 8. Once again the media are trying to create something significant from single event. Their sanctimony is unreal. How many black media moguls are there?
However I was pleasantly surprised watching the cricket how involved I got and certainly the players seemed up for it. If the weather improves it could be an interesting, if relatively meaningless series.
Good to see no gimmicky card board cut out crowds or distractingly mistimed crowd noises. It’s a bit like watching a county game in midweek.
Who needs actual cricket when there’s the warm fuzzy feeling that cricket has women in top positions and the players are supporting BLM?
Sky’s coverage of the latter was supposedly magnificent. Did they mention that slave markets have reappeared in Libya since NATO’s invasion but all BLM care about are centuries old statues? Did they mention BLM’s manifesto and their strange inability to mention black fathers (a group who deserve support if ever there was one)? Did they mention the extreme dubiousness of George Floyd’s “death”? Did they mention that fewer than ten black men were unarmed deaths at police hands in the last year for which there are figures but the deaths of black men at the hands of other black men were in the thousands? Did they castigate BLM protesters for breaking social distancing and spreading the virus? They didn’t mention any of this? What a surprise – it doesn’t fit in with the agenda of what couldn’t be a more obviously elite-controlled movement.
On the selection I actually agree with Wood and Archer.
How can you not select Wood after his last three matches? When not struggling through his injury in the winter I have been incredibly impressed with Archer – he would actually be my first pick of the seamers.
However, controversially, I would have picked Broad over Anderson. The rationale behind this is that Anderson (still a great bowler) to me always seems to need “overs under his belt” before really getting into his rhythm – I might be wrong but on away tours he always seems to have a relatively poor first Test before coming good later in the series.
An amazing situation for England to have such a pool of bowlers – Woakes is a seriously good player but has not really come into the argument!
Funny how no crowd produced almost the same level of noise as we normally get at the Ageas Bowl!
I feel dropping Broad has been a long time coming, he’s not the bowler he once was. I was more surprised that we didn’t bowl first given the conditions, but the lack of swing (despite helpful conditions) was more concerning. Personally I’d love England to use this series to give all of the bowlers a run.
Poor put-upon Ebony Rainford-Brent’s net worth:
https://trendcelebsnow.com/ebony-jewel-rainford-brent-net-worth/
Get down on your knees and apologise to the milionaire for your white privilege now!
(And before some tedious SJW-type complains that I have a problem with a black person earning lots of money, I don’t. My problem is with very rich people posing as victims. And with people who become rich, not by any talent they have, but by – knowingly or unknowingly – pushing certain elite agendas.)
Oh dear, “SJW-type”. Can we maybe leave the playground insults at home Simon?
I would be more convinced by your wild conspiracy theorising if you didn’t use as evidence a trashy website that a few minutes research would show doesn’t have a clue what it’s talking about! The wording about wealth, and the amounts given, are completely generic, and the information doesn’t appear in any of the sources it gives. If you really think that the net worths of (to take four examples) Stuart Broad, Kraigg Brathwaite, Michael Carberry and Rainford-Brent are likely to be that similar, then I have a wonderful brand-new Robin Reliant to sell you!
I have no idea how much Rainford-Brent is worth (although if you think that’s the start and end of the story anyway then you have a pitifully simplistic idea of how racism works), but I can tell you that that site is unlikely to be a reliable source for that information.
Some more info re the county vote:
The vote for red-ball cricket apparently carried 11-7 (which explains the rule change the day before from requiring a 2/3s majority). It only passed with the inclusion of an opt-out provision which four counties (including the hollowed-out shell that carries the name of the county I once loved) are threatening to use (and others could sneak into by an “oops, we’ve failed the health protocols” ruse to get around opposition from their members). There’s still no guarantee the matches will be f/c or won’t be ruined by farcical new rules. They’re using the term “red-ball” very deliberately, not f/c.
The DM alleges that Colin Graves actively lobbied for the no red-ball option.
Clearly Holder does not know how to bowl.
I think he has been more spot on with his reviews than Kettleborough has been while umpiring.
Four of the counties that voted against the red-ball option were already known – the other three are reported to be Essex, Somerset and Warwickshire. Not sure many would have guessed it was those three.
So the pro red-ball eleven were: Derby, Durham, Glamorgan (despite some mention that they were anti-), Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Notts, Surrey, Sussex, Worcester, Yorkshire.
I really am beginning to wonder if it’s actually worth playing any 1 st class cricket this season with all the restrictions, it’s all rather artificial and somewhat hollow and rather meaningless. Maybe that’s why there is more conversation in blogs, threads and the media on BLM, racism and the politics of it all than the actual cricket. And on that England were pants weren’t they.
Reliant Robin