Number One - Day Four at Edgbaston

At the start of the series there were two main topics of conversation: could England make it to number one and would Sachin Tendulkar make his hundredth international hundred? England, of course, have achieved their goal in the grandest manner but for Tendulkar, one of the true greats of the game, the wait goes on.

There have been glimmerings of the Sachin of old. In the second innings at Trent Bridge he was the only member of the much vaunted batting line-up to offer any resistance and the same was true here. He had played fluently for his forty as the innings lay in ruins at the other end and his dismissal, run out by a deflection from Graeme Swann’s hand, rather summed up his tour so far. 

Unfortunately, so did the rest of the top order batting, which rolled over in the face of a sustained burst from Jimmy Anderson. On the same pitch on which England had scored over 700 they looked all at sea, although Rahul Dravid seemed to be a little unlucky. MS Dhoni, for the second time in the match, showed some character and Praveen Kumar’s innings entertained everyone except the increasingly exasperated Graeme Swann, but the game was wrapped up by tea by a humiliating margin and the celebrations were well and truly underway.

So, England are number one in the world. Lord MacLaurin was overly optimistic in his original desire to have got there by 2007 but a lot of hard work by a lot of people has got them to the pinnacle and they thoroughly deserve it. The challenge now is to stay there.

Cook at the Double - Day Three at Edgbaston

On 27^th July 1990 I was lucky enough to be at Lord’s when Graham Gooch turned the first ball after tea, from Ravi Shastri, behind square on the leg side to bring up the only test triple century scored by an Englishman in my lifetime. I was especially lucky since it was only seen by spectators in the ground: the BBC, showing their usual sense of priorities where cricket is concerned, were busy showing the expectant millions the runners and riders at Doncaster. 

Since that happy July day, so Englishman has exceeded 250, let alone challenged Gooch’s score, but for much of today it appeared that Alastair Cook, the protégé of Gooch, was going to change that. In the end he had to settle for 294, rather surprisingly caught near the point boundary, but spectators at Edgbaston can at least say that they were there when England passed 700 for the first time since Hutton’s test at the Oval in 1938. For those of us who have been watching England play test cricket for a while this is taking some getting used to. 

It is hard for any bowler to emerge with much credit when the opposition make 700, but Praveen Kumar and Mishra at least kept going and the attack kept their discipline to the extent that England didn’t take the game away in the way that Kevin Pietersen had threatened to do yesterday. Instead Cook, ably supported by Morgan, simply went on and on, and when Morgan, Bopara and Prior departed in quick succession he found a worthy ally in the ever-impressive Tim Bresnan, who started watchfully but seemed to be rather enjoying himself by the end. 

All the plaudits, though, must go to Cook. He had looked scratchy and poorly balanced in the first two tests and wasn’t fluent at the start of this innings, but what he lacks in style he makes up for in concentration, shot selection and fitness. After batting for more than twelve hours he was still scampering singles and turning ones into twos without breaking sweat. Indeed, he went for much of the day without hitting a boundary, but such was his fitness and appetite for runs he as able to score at a reasonable rate anyway. At the age of twenty-six he already has nineteen hundreds, two of them doubles, and an average just under fifty: England’s batting records are there for the taking. 

Having reached the scarcely believable heights of 710-7, England then had the added bonus of removing Virender Sehwag first ball for a king pair. Anderson bowled just about the perfect ball to him, tempting him to drive but just shaping it away to take the outside edge. Had Swann had his leg before appeal against Gambhir upheld, as it should have been, then they would have been delirious – as it is they will have to settle for simply being ecstatic. India will have to bat out of their skins to come close to saving this match: the evidence of the series so far is that they haven’t got a hope.

A Lesson From History - Day Two at Edgbaston

In the autumn of 1958 an England side, unbeaten in test series since 1951, the undisputed world number one and described as ‘the best team ever to leave these shores’, set off for Australia. The following spring they returned having been thrashed 4-0. The Notes by the Editor in the 1959 Wisden bemoan the failure of the much vaunted batting line-up and is critical of the fielding while Peter May, the unfortunate captain, later admitted that the squad had grown old together and was now over the hill. Sound familiar?

Today was by far the ugliest day in what has been an ugly series for India. At Lord’s and Trent Bridge there were times when they looked ready to seize the initiative, but here there was no hope and precious little desire. With the honourable exceptions of Praveen Kumar, who ran in all day as those his life depended on it, Rahul Dravid, who at least looks as though he cares, and Suresh Raina, who is at least an international standard fielder, the rest were at best desultory and at worst an embarrassment. Mishra contrived to bowl no balls off a negligible run up, Laxman spent all day with his hands in his pockets and Sehwag eventually left the field apparently suffering from no more than a bout of ennui. The bowling lacked threat, the fielding was poor and the body language was abysmal: they’re not a dynamic side in the field at the best of times but for much of the day they resembled a team of bored schoolboys, viewing fielding as a necessary chore to be got through en route to the fun stuff rather than as a fundamental part of the game.

Praveen bowled extremely economically in the morning, although he didn’t force the batsmen to play as much as he might, but at the other end Ishant bowled too wide and Sreesanth too inconsistently. The ball moved, but Strauss and Cook played with soft hands and the Indian slip cordon were too deep for any chances to go to hand and progress to lunch was pretty serene, if unspectacular.

After lunch it looked for a time as though England would pile on the humiliation and go past India’s total without losing a wicket, but Mishra broke through, bowling Strauss round his legs from what turned out to (too late for Strauss) to be a no ball. Bell played breezily, although he should have been caught at slip, but by now Alastair Cook, who had struggled in the first two tests, had settled and was looking as remorseless as he had through the winter and the early part of the summer.

Bell fell to a beautiful delivery from the admirable Praveen Kumar which ripped out his off stump, but with India’s body language deteriorating there was to be no respite as Kevin Pietersen laid about him. In the run-up to tea India’s bowling and fielding deteriorated in the face of Pietersen’s aggression and the game finally ran away from them.

The final session saw the departure of Pietersen, a decision that would have appalled Bob Wyatt, after whom one of the stands at Edgbaston is named and who believed that no batsman should be given out LBW on the front foot, but which pleased this old bowler, but Cook and Morgan continued remorselessly to the close. We even saw Tendulkar bowl and some sharp turn from Raina, who was described as ‘right arm optimistic’ by Michael Holding during the morning, which will have excited Graeme Swann.

It’s impossible to see where India go from here in this match. They must try at least to improve, both in their performance and their attitude, but even if they do it is impossible to see them saving the game unless the weather intervenes.

Dhoni's Cameo but England's Day - Day One at Edgbaston

At tea the word ‘Perth’ was pushing itself to the forefront of my mind: England, following a convincing win, had India in trouble only to be hit by a rearguard action lead by a player whose form had been abject to that point. This is the best England team of my lifetime but the scars of the past are hard to shift even for this optimistic Englishman.

As with the first two tests it was a good toss to win, although the decision to bowl first was not the no-brainer it had been at Trent Bridge. India had Sehwag and Gambhir back to strengthen the batting and Mishra, arguably, strengthens the bowling given Harbhajan’s abject form of late, while Ravi Bopara came into the England side to replace Jonathan Trott.

According to many commenters on cricinfo, the return of Sehwag would make all the difference, leading India to the promised land of a massive first innings score, so they would have been bitterly disappointed to see him glove his first ball to a gleeful Matt Prior. It was a decent delivery from Stuart Broad, but Sehwag was slow to drop his hands.

Gambhir and Dravid then batted nicely against tidy bowling, with the ball doing a bit but certainly not going round corners, and it looked for a time as though England’s decision to bowl first may backfire, but Gambhir was bowled driving loosely, Tendulkar, having been greeted by the standard standing ovation, prodded meekly outside off stump and then, on the stroke of lunch, Dravid was the unfortunate recipient of the one unplayble ball off the session, a snorter from Bresnan ripping out his off stump.

India’s travails continued after lunch, Raina, as has been the case for much of the series, not hanging around for long and Laxman falling to the pull shot for the third time in the series. Laxman seems to be having real problems with building on starts, something that has dogged his whole career, for his conversion rate is poor for a player of such class. Maybe it is an issue with concentration, maybe it is an issue with fitness, but this was not the first time that he has got himself out when set.

Mishra didn’t hang around and India were in the mire at 111-7, but the pitch was losing whatever demons it had had and Dhoni, whose batting so far in the series had ranged from the abysmal to the merely weak, finally showed what he was made of, taking the attack to England in partnership with the swashbuckling Praveen Kumar and, for the first time in the day, causing some consternation in the England ranks. Andrew Strauss’s captaincy was questionable at times during the onslaught, as were the tactics of England’s bowlers, but it is not always easy to combat the kind of hitting that we saw here and credit must be given to the two Indians and especially the skipper.

It was too good to last, however. Kumar feathered an attempted hook to Prior, although it needed a review to send him on his way, Dhoni edged to slip where Strauss held on comfortably and then Ishant, summing up the way that the series has gone so far, fell to a freakish catch at silly mid-off from Cook, who didn’t know a lot about it.

The pitch had now flattened considerably (and, in truth, it was never a 111-7 pitch to start with) and England’s openers, neither of whom has been in great form in the series, played watchfully at first and then opened out into a broader range of strokes to leave them 84-0 at the close and firmly in charge of the game. If England can continue to build in the morning and if the loss of Jonathan Trott doesn’t hamper them too much, then it could be a long few days for India.

In praise of... Matt Prior

There was a time, not so long ago, when the thought of writing this would have been as far from my mind as a piece praising Zaheer Khan’s physical fitness. When Matt Prior first came into the England side he represented everything that was wrong about attitudes to wicket keeping: his batting was fine, although nowhere near the level that it is today, but his keeping wasn’t even first class standard, let alone test standard. His glovework was clumsy and his footwork non-existent. I, a fully paid up member of the Campaign for Real Wicket-keepers, watched, appalled, through my fingers as the ball rebounded from hard hands and he launched himself into another fruitless dive from an entirely static position. He epitomised Duncan Fletcher’s ludicrous assertion that you can teach someone to catch but you can’t teach them to bat and seemed to have bought wholeheartedly into the false notion that in order to be an effective keeper you also had to behave like an idiot, as the infamous jelly bean incident showed. He was the bastard lovechild of Geraint Jones and Kamran Akmal. You may have gathered by now that I wasn’t a fan.

How times change. After a poor run of form saw him ditched from the England side in favour of Tim Ambrose he starting working with Bruce French, a much underrated technician behind the stumps, and his keeping has improved spectacularly. His glovework is tidy and his footwork, an all too frequently neglected aspect of keeping (see Brad Haddin for details) is unobtrusive and effective. Balls that once would have prompted a desperate dive are now collected on his feet, although the departure of Steve Harmison from the England side may also have helped.

At the same time his batting, which was always handy, has blossomed. I have seen hm bat twice in the flesh this year, in the Lord’s tests against Sri Lanka and India, and on both occasions he made a hundred, piercing the offside field with aplomb and driving and pulling effectively when the bowling strayed onto his legs. When Michael Vaughan suggested during the first test that he is currently the best wicket-keeper batsman playing test cricket he was greeted with some derision from proponents of MS Dhoni, but there is no doubt that he was right. Such has been his improvement that he may even be the best pure keeper currently playing test cricket, something that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

His importance to England now cannot be understated. To have a number seven who not only averages in the mid-forties with the bat but who also scores at such a rate that he can take the game away from the opposition in a session is a luxury that is afforded to very few sides. In both of the games mentioned above he came to the crease with England some way short of where they wanted to be but through a combination of scintillating stroke play and aggressive running he took the game away from the opposition in a manner that was almost Gilchrist-esque.

Of course there is still the odd blemish and he can still be vulnerable to the ball moving back into him, especially early in his innings when he can play rather waftily around off stump, but he has become a vital cog in an increasingly impressive England side. I can’t remember many cricketers who have improved so dramatically after making their test debut, for which both he and his coaches deserve the utmost praise. All hail Matt Prior.

Disintegration - Day Four at Trent Bridge

For the second test running England took the final Indian wicket as I stood at Harlow Town station (it’s a glamorous life that I lead). I’m considering setting up camp there permanently during the Edgbaston test.

India’s wheels had threatened to come off since Matt Prior and Tim Bresnan started taking the long handle to the bowling on Sunday evening and today they did. With one or two honourable exceptions they were a shambles with bat, ball and in the field. Rarely, if ever, can such a highly ranked side have produced such an awful day’s cricket.

Prior and Bresnan carried on where they had left off but Prior’s early dismissal, which could have provided some vain hope for the Indians, simply brought the startlingly belligerent Stuart Broad to the crease and he and Bresnan laid about them as the bowling and fielding became more insipid. Suresh Raina might as well have waved a white flag as he propelled the ball to the other end such was his ineffectiveness.

Broad was run out by the sub fielder (it was to be a good day for substitutes) and Bresnan fell next ball for his second score in the nineties in seven test innings. Many may have expected Strauss to declare, but he wanted to keep India on the field for as long as possible to completely demoralise them. Steve Waugh would have been proud of him.

India would have wanted to survive until lunch and then re-group but, after Mukund was reprieved by Tim Bresnan at slip first ball, Dravid edged Stuart Broad behind to complete a miserable session for the Indians and their millions of supporters.

What followed will give Duncan Fletcher sleepless nights for weeks to come. Laxman was beaten by a beauty from Anderson and Tendulkar stood firm, but the rest of the batting capitulated to relentless fast bowling. Mukund, his fluent 49 at Lord’s a distant memory, scratched his way to three from forty-one balls before falling to a well-directed bouncer, Raina, who clearly didn’t fancy the short stuff, hooked wildly to England’s sub and Yuvraj was pinned on the hand and then caught by Alastair Cook close in on the offside. I shudder to think how they would have coped with the 1980s West Indians.

MS Dhoni has won a lot of friends in this test but his cricket has been pretty awful. His keeping has gone into decline, his batting, especially against the moving ball, is technically lacking and his captaincy has been a little erratic. He will hope that his dismissal here, palpably leg before to a ball that he was leaving alone, represents the nadir of his tour.

Harbhajan at least provided some entertainment, although the freedom of his strokeplay raised doubts as to how bad his stomach injury actually is, and when Tendulkar, who had made batting look rather easier than his colleagues, also fell offering no stroke, Praveen Kumar also enjoyed himself, thumping a rapid twenty-five.

It wasn’t going to last, however, and when Harbhajan fell to another catch by the sub the writing was on the wall. Praveen continued to blaze away merrily, but at about half past five on the fourth day India, batting on a pitch on which England had scored 544 at four and a half an over, were bowled out for 158.

It has been an extraordinary test, not least because India looked the likelier winners for much of the first two days, but MS Dhoni, Duncan Fletcher et al must be very concerned at the manner of the defeat. They can point to injuries, but England were without Chris Tremlett and lost Jonathan Trott for much of the test. All sides suffer from injuries from time to time – what matters is how you respond and the performances of England’s stand-ins, Tim Bresnan scoring over a hundred runs in the match and taking seven wickets including a five for and Ian Bell making 159 batting out of position were in stark contrast to their counterparts. If India don’t get their act together, starting at Northampton, then it could be a very long series for them.

England, though, were superb on days three and four. Rahul Dravid made the observation that they just keep coming at the opposition and they are blessed not just with a superb bowling attack but also with a magnificent lower order. The best may yet be to come.

The Tide Turns - Day Three at Trent Bridge

There have been two points in this game when India looked almost certain to square the series: when England were 124-8 on the first day and when India were 267-4 on day two, only for Stuart Broad to intervene. Today, however, the game seems to have gone away from them and they must be looking at a 2-0 deficit.

Much of the talk will be about Ian Bell’s run out, and we will come to that later, but that would detract from what was a day of superb batting from England. India were hampered by Harbhajan’s lack of full fitness and Ishant and Kumar were, by the end of the day, showing signs of fatigue after their efforts at Lord’s, but England made 417 runs in the day, their highest score in one day since the fifties. Not even in their wildest dreams could they have imagined this at the start of the day.

Strauss went early, caught behind, but Bell, fluently, and Pietersen, less so, built a partnership that started to swing the game England’s way. The pitch seemed to have eased but the ball was still swinging and Bell batted beautifully, his balance and timing oozing class, although he was helped by MS Dhoni’s reluctance to post a third man.

Having survived until lunch, which was taken with the score on 130, Pietersen put his foot down in the afternoon, playing some trademark shots before being caught behind off the persevering Sreesanth. There was no let-up for the wilting Indians, though, as Bell continued on his merry way and Morgan took advantage of what Geoffrey Boycott described as benefit match bowling.

The run out incident, which was entirely Ian Bell’s fault, meant that the session ended with a certain amount of farce. The incident has been described in some detail elsewhere, but it should be said that Mukund was perfectly within his rights to remove the bails and India were quite correct to appeal. The TMS commentators were comparing it to the run out that England fashioned when Ryan Sidebottom and Grant Elliott collided, but a much closer recent parallel was the run out of Murali by Brendon McCullum when Murali prematurely walked down the wicket to congratulate Kumar Sangakkara on reaching his hundred. On that occasion the appeal stood, as it would have done here if the tea interval hadn’t intervened. It is interesting that Rahul Dravid, interviewed at the end of the day, spoke of the unanimity of the Indian dressing room and praised MS Dhoni’s leadership, and the Indian team deserve a lot of credit for their attitude throughout.

The evening session looked for a time as though it would go to India. First Bell edged Yuvraj to Laxman, who took a sharp catch after a deflection off Dhoni, and then Morgan and Trott, batting in the unfamiliar position of number seven, succumbed to the new ball and some superb bowling from Kumar. The ball that got Trott was a brute that he would have struggled to play even without an injured shoulder. India scented the chance to bowl England out and set themselves a reasonable target.

Unfortunately for India England bat deep and have the man who is currently the best wicket keeper batsman in test cricket in their side. With the attack tiring and Harbhajan struggling Prior and Bresnan went berserk, adding 102 in just 18.2 overs to finally knock the stuffing out of India. They are 374 runs ahead with four wickets still in hand and will be looking to put the game completely beyond their shell shocked opponents. This game has already had its fair share of twists and turns, but it is hard to see another one.

Dancing Myself Dizzy - Day Two at Trent Bridge

One Sunday morning in 1995 I awoke later than planned and headed for the launderette with my cricket kit, the comments of my team mates having been less than complimentary the week before. When I returned, delayed by a queue for the tumble dryers, it was 11.15 and I had missed the first hat trick by an England bowler since 1957.

Fast forward to today. Having watched much of the afternoon session (although I missed Pietersen dropping Yuvraj while looking for a missing piece of Lego) I eventually lost control of the television to a bored seven year old. Still, if anyone asks me what I was doing when Stuart Broad took his test hat-trick I can tell them that I was playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii.

For much of the day it was like watching test cricket in years gone by. England had been skittled on the first day and their opponents, helped by butter-fingered fielding, were building a considerable lead. Just about everything was going to the script: VVS Laxman was dismissed after reaching fifty, Rahul Dravid was batting on and on and Yuvraj was playing loosely at the start of the innings. The only surprise was that Sachin Tendulkar, whose record at Trent Bridge is formidable, fell early, but his record against England over the last nine years is not as stellar as might be expected.

As with yesterday, however, Stuart Broad was to have significant impact on the game, delivering one of the great spells in test cricket history. The new ball has been difficult to play in both innings and now he was devastating. First Yuvraj feathered a brute of a ball to Matt Prior, but then came the real fireworks. Dhoni slashed ill-advisedly to slip, Harbhajan was given out leg before although he had got a big inside edge and Praveen Kumar was comprehensively bowled to give Broad a hat-trick as Trent Bridge went wild. In the next over, Bresnan had Dravid caught at third man (can such a thing ever have happened before?) and Broad polished off the innings not long later to complete a spell of 5-0 in just sixteen balls. Astonishing.

Harbhajan, of course, can feel rightly aggrieved about the decision that cost him his wicket, but his right to show dissent, as he also did when he had a leg before appeal turned down at Lord’s, is invalidated by his board’s refusal to embrace the full DRS. Indeed, the evidence of this series seems to be that hot spot, which they have kept, is appreciably less reliable than Hawkeye. It will be interesting to see if their attitude softens after this series.

England, then, found themselves behind on first innings but not to the catastrophic extent that appeared likely in mid-afternoon. They lost Cook, who seems to have lost his rhythm, before the close but Strauss and Bell, promoted in place of the injured Jonathan Trott, saw them through to the close. Tomorrow promises to be a fascinating day.

Twisting and Turning - Day One at Trent Bridge

Some years ago I found myself, for reasons which escape me, watching Sky’s rugby league coverage just at the point when Stevo, at the end of a lengthy rant, described league as ‘our game, the greatest game’. He was, of course, wrong. The greatest game, as we all know, is cricket, and its greatest form is test cricket.

Test cricket, of course, is at its best when there is a balance between bat and ball and although conditions at Trent Bridge were perhaps overly helpful to bowlers, this was preferable to watching batsmen having it easy. India, having won an important looking toss, bowled beautifully and although Alastair Cook’s dismissal was further evidence that the luddites obstructing the use of Hawkeye as part of the DRS are wrong, the other England batsmen could have no such complaints. Praveen Kumar could probably swing the ball anywhere so he was particularly dangerous, but Ishant resumed where he had left off at Lord’s and Sreesanth was at his least bonkers at England fell to 124-8. 

When these two sides last met at Trent Bridge in 2007, England had Chris Tremlett batting at number eight, with Ryan Sidebottom, Monty Panesar and Jimmy Anderson following him and it isn’t unreasonable to assume that had that been the case today England wouldn’t have made 150. Times, however, have changed. With Tim Bresnan replacing the injured Tremlett England had a number nine with a test hundred to his name and a number ten with an average of around twenty-fine and a highest first class score of 183. Stuart Broad must be the first lower order batsmen in test history to make an unbeaten seventy in one test and find himself moved down the order in the next. 

Broad’s recent test record with the bat bears some scrutiny. Since the Oval test last year, where he began to recover some form, he has played nine test innings. He’s been out for nought three times (twice first ball), for three once and six once. However, if he gets into double figures his lowest score is forty-eight and, in spite of those failures, he’s averaging 44.25. Here he, in tandem with Graeme Swann, decided that attack was the best form of defence and his buccaneering sixty-four carried England to the relative respectability of 221. It seems odd to think that it is only just over a week since many people, including me, didn’t think that he should be in the side at all. 

England came out to bowl with a spring in their step that had seemed unlikely not long before and when Anderson removed Mukund with the first ball of the innings the momentum seemed to have shifted their way. They had reckoned without Dravid and Laxman, however, who survived with some good fortune and a lot of skill to the close. Tomorrow promises to be a fascinating day.