Pope Rescues Holy Mess – Day 1 At Cape Town

First let’s start with the positives. England picked the right team, won the toss, and correctly decided to bat first. Hallelujah! In this day and age that’s a triumph. It’s just a shame that the rest of the day – you know, the bit that actually involves playing cricket – didn’t exactly go to plan.

Sadly there’s no hiding from the fact that 262-9 represents a big disappointment on a decent batting pitch. It’s even worse when you consider that England actually batted pretty well for most of the first session when the ball moved around the most. Denly and Sibley looked solid until the inevitably mistakes crept in.

Although all the normal caveats apply – obviously we won’t know how competitive England’s total is until the Cricket Boks bat – there’s no escaping the fact that six of our top eight batsmen rather gave their wickets away. They all got decent starts but failed to capitalise.

Sibley was the first batsman who lost his wicket in completely avoidable fashion. He plays at too many balls that he can leave on South African wickets. Today he was drawn into defending one he could’ve left on both length and line. It was frustrating.

Joe Denly also looked very solid … until he was inexplicably bowled through the gate by Maharaj. Did he simply switch off? Did he misjudge the line? Heaven knows. It came from nowhere.

Ben Stokes was another batsman whose brain farted. He was moving encouragingly towards a half-century when he completely mistimed a shot that can only be described as a hack / slash and spooned the ball to extra cover. Weird.

Meanwhile, Jos Buttler used the modern method of moving across to off-stump, presumably so he could leave anything outside of his eye line, but ended up poking at the ball anyway. The one he edged wouldn’t have hit a second set of stumps.

And then there was Joe Root. He’s such a good player of pace that it was alarming to see him get into trouble against the short ball. Is he moving back and across too much? Again it was perplexing. As perplexing, in fact, as Sam Curran leaving a ball that knocked his off-stump out of the ground.

But strange as these individual dismissals were, England’s overall predicament isn’t strange at all. It’s basically what we’ve come to expect these days – an underwhelming first innings performance that’s put the team in a rather large hole.

The only bright spot, of course, was Ollie Pope. Didn’t he play well?

It’s hard not to get excited about Pope – especially considering the mediocrity surrounding him. He’s compact, his technique is relatively simple (in a good way), and he seems to be a thinking cricketer too. The only problem is that he’ll probably have to open to avoid running out of partners in this flakey line-up. And even that’s not a given.

The only thing that bugs me about Pope is that I can’t quite put my finger on who he reminds me of. Every time I see him I end up tearing my non-existent hair out. My best guess is Ross Taylor. Does anyone have a better suggestion? Whoever it is must be a pretty good player.

One senses that the series could well be decided tomorrow. If the Saffers bat well, and build a first innings lead, then it could be curtains for England. Fortunately, however, their batting line up has almost as many holes as England’s – which is slightly more than a kilogram of Emmental.

Let’s just hope that Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad can find some form. They’ll know that Jofra Archer’s injury might have given them a reprieve, so they’ll be desperate to prove a point. Personally I’d love to see a Jimmy 5-fer.

Although I’m slightly concerned that England’s attack lacks a cutting edge in this game – Nortje’s pace certainly benefitted South Africa today – Quinton de Kock is the only ‘danger man’ I’m worried about. After all, I’ve never seen Faf du Plessis play well (even for for Lancs).

If we can bowl with good discipline and pick up Dean Elgar early on, then we might be able to make inroads. It’s important to remember that we’re dealing with two pretty poor Test teams here. And poor teams usually make for exciting cricket with oscillating fortunes.

James Morgan

25 comments

  • I thought Buttler, Curran and Bess all got snorters – the balls all moved from leg to off late. Curran’s dismissal looked embarassing, but if the ball had continued straight on it would have missed off by a foot.
    KP compared Pope with Bell. I would agree, but I hope that Pope has more gumption than Bell ever did (you may recall that I was never a fan – sorry James!)

    • I’m a member of the Ian Bell fan club but not its chairman. I can forgive you :-)

    • Sorry, but that Curran excuse is rubbish. Pretorius was bowling right arm round from wide of the stumps. If the ball did deviate off line it was marginal. The problem was that Curran made no allowance for the angle. But the excuse for Buttler is even more extraordinary. Yes, the ball did move. But at the point of contact with the bat Buttler was so far across his stumps you could see all 3 behind his legs. If Sibley could have left his on line and length, that applies even more to Buttler. But Pope did bat well. If he turns out to be half the test bat that Ian Bell was then he will be a real find.

  • Let’s face it England are not as good as they think they are and they don’t realize it!

  • Definitely a “let’s see both sides bat on this before coming to any firm conclusions” type of day. SA are perfectly capable of a mediocre score if the ball continues to nibble about a bit.

    I thought SA overbowled their spinner and underbowled Pretorius because Maharaj got one ball to rip early on but it really didn’t help him much thereafter. They still didn’t manage 90 overs in 6.5 hours so good luck with those 98 over days we have coming.

    Good to see picking a spinner because of his batting was the usual rip-roaring success.

  • I would agree that Pope reminds me of Bell, in stature as well as very pleasing on the eye. Pope’s innings was the only bright spot today (unless you count Jimmy hanging around for a while!). I agree that England aren’t very good at all, we could be in for an awful amount of suffering over the next few years….

  • Pope is an original. If you have to compare him with Bell, it is Bell with much more game sense and more panache. I think he learnt a lot from Sangakkara, but of course doesn’t look like him.

  • Pope has always looked an intelligent and stylish player, even when he was stuffed in too far up the order against India. As for the game, I’ve adopted the usual anticipatory cringe. I find it saves time.

  • You could have saved yourself the bother of writing this and just cut and pasted your blog from pretty much any of England’s first innings efforts for the last 2 years, then added a note that Pope is definitely an International-standard batsman and Crawley definitely isn’t.
    Only surprise for me was that the collapse happened between 200 and 250. I’d put my money on 150-200.

    • As none of our bowlers apart from Stokes have made any decent contribution in a while the dominoes seem set to fall apace after 5 or 6 wickets. Is Moin a better option than Bess considering these circumstances? I’m no great Moin fan as a test all rounder but he does have enormous natural talent as a batsman and maybe an ability to make a quick white ball 50 with a long tail would come in handy. His bowling has certainly improved with time and I can’t see that Bess looks anything other than innocuous at present. He reminds me of a Croft or a Marks.

      • Moeen should never be considered for test cricket… however.. Moeen vs Bess … Moeen wins as you say

  • The sad facts of today are that five recognized batters got out for scores between 28 and 47 – only Pope went on to a major contribution. Maybe England will bowl well tomorrow, but this is already looking bad.

  • I have to disagree about the selection. Crawley may turn out to be a test bat but nothing in his career to date suggests that he is yet good enough. England would have done better to retain Bairstow (and give him the gloves, which would be worth 10 runs an innings compared to Buttler). And if not Bairstow then including Woakes and getting Denly to open would have been preferable to Crawley. Woakes is as likely to score runs and would provide additional bowling.

    • Yep, Crawley is nowhere near international standard. It’s embarrassing to watch. I can’t ever imagine him getting to 10 against Philander and Rabada.

    • If England had picked Bairstow and moved Denly around (again) to accommodate him they would’ve been slated. And rightly so. Crawley is a bit too wet behind the ears to be playing on this tour but he’s impressed everyone in practice and the nets. We shouldn’t write him off after two Test innings.

  • What a difference Burns might have made, being in long haul form. It is always frustrating that experienced players as well as the new boys are getting in and not going on. How many decades have we been complaining about England batting line ups doing that. It is hardly a new phenomenon.
    However, we must applaud the selectors for righting the worngs of the last test to pick a more balanced side, and at least we have runs on the board against a pretty decent attack with a pretty decent new ball one of our own on paper. Nil desperandum, as you never know what a good score on any wicket is until both sides have batted and South Africa’s batting hasn’t been pulling up any treesof late.

    • Agree. If we bowl them out for under 350, which on their current batting form we should, we’ll at least have a sniff.

  • None of the batsman with the exception of Pope look capable of scoring a 100. It’s same old same old, no patience, poor technique, silly shots. No one in the top 4 looks anything like making a big score. Butler needs to go now and Foakes brought in asap. Better test bat and certainly a superior keeper. I’ve always thought Bess was more of a lower order bat who turns his arm over. Parkinson is in the side, give him a go.I don’t think Ali wants to play Tests anymore, certainly not at the moment.
    Well maybe we can bowl them out for under 250!
    N.B. Marnus Laberchange 213. Another Steve Smith?

    • Lager change is just showing what can be done with a red ball technique and red ball mentality !!! He’s no freak like smith. He’s just showing the way tests should be played and every England batsmen should follow suit ASAP

  • The weird thing is that this is the SA second 11, pretty much; or at least they could probably make a better team from the SA born cricketers playing for Australia, NZ and the English counties and T20 leagues.

    By contrast, England just haven’t produced many great players – for example Peterson and Trott have been probably our best batters of the past 30 years.

    Of course the whole thing is exacerbated by bad management at all levels. Once there are bad managers at the top – who devote their efforts to strengthening managerial power, they spread the rottenness through the system by picking bad managers below them, who pick more bad managers etc.

    On the basis of what he has done so far; Foakes *may* be a great keeper – the only one currently playing anywhere in the world, but it looks like we will never be allowed to find out.

    • KP,amd trott were Saffers so we didn’t produce them either 🙈 to a degree Strauss, prior neither

      • In terms of them as professional cricketers Trott most certainly became the player he was through the county championship and KP developed into what he bacame through his Hampshire experience.
        It’s a bit like saying Smith, Lamb and Grieg were not produced here, as all three developed into test players through their county championship experience, which they could not have got at home.

  • @Ccc – That was exactly my point. England did not produce England’s (arguably) best batters since Gooch…

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