Panesar at home and Pietersen’s spark

I managed to get to a couple of games last week, the first was the 3rd day of the County Championship game of Northants against Glamorgan where I managed to see ex-South African all-rounder Lance Klusener reach his highest first class score of 202*. He was helped by a decent batting performance from Monty Panesar, who held up an end while ‘Zulu’ got to his landmark after which Northants declared.

Monty batted reasonably well for  his unbeaten 30 odd, but rightly so Klusener was roundly cheered by the sizeable crowd, considering it was a Friday.

  

Glamorgan were visibly flat in the field and looked to have an uphill battle to save the game after losing a wicket before bad light ended the day’s play. Hence I got to see Monty bat as well as bowl.

On Sunday I managed to see England’s last performance of the ’summer’, beating South Africa in the 4th ODI at Lords in what turned into a 20 over slog in the gloaming. Pietersen’s captaincy has reinvigorated the England team and as a result had convincingly won the one day series before even getting to HQ. Which was just as well as the weather was shit. I have a friend that I regularly go to cricket with who seems to carry the rain around with him, I mean this summer he has literally always been under a cloud, that more often than not chooses to spill its guts.

Luckily the Lords drainage showed its worth and we were able to get underway shortly after 1pm. England choose to field and were going through fielding drills before the start.

South Africa actually started their innings really well with Amla and Gibbs hitting regular boundaries with Amla looking in especially good touch before a shambolic attempt at a run, ended in Shah running out the bearded opener. Gibbs was the only South African batsman to make a meaningful contribution before the rains came again in the 32nd over.

Between the innings I walked around the ground as is traditional at the innings break and got talking to one of the stewards alongside the pavilion, who like the rest of the people in the ground was disappointed at the reduced play. He was absolutely adamant that the ground should have a roof for such occasion! A well natured argument then ensured with I, even with having being continually been screwed over by the weather this year, advocating no roof as atmospheric conditions play such a large part in the game.

Continuing the walk around the ground I came to the Nursery Ground under the Media Centre where there were many people milling about. Suddenly a group of stewards parted the crowd and between the 2 support columns of the Media Centre came the serious looking Andrew Flintoff who strode purposefully to the nets to prepare for the innings. He looked in good touch when smashing a few throw downs in the nets.

It came in useful later when despite the near dark, Flintoff and Shah smashed several boundaries to reach the target of 137 with a few overs to spare. England had started slowly with Bell and Prior struggling to find the boundaries early on. After their dismissals, Shah, Pietersen and Flintoff played themselves in before teeing off. In the best of lights it’s a challenge to face the likes of Dale Steyn, so to watch the batsmen flog them to all parts in the dingy light was an immense end to the summer.

Ball tampering

In a quiet week for cricket, the subject of ball tampering has come to the fore after Marcus Trescothick admitted to using a humble mint to change the consistency of his saliva which he then applied to the ball. I’m assuming he applied it to one side to maintain a shine. Now those with a soft spot for the larger part of antipodean cricket will be thinking back to the 2005 Ashes and thinking hmmm… But you can stop right there as he used the technique in the 2001 which England lost convincingly.

So was it illegal? Going by the letter of the law, yes it was. But how on earth do you police the consistency and make up of a players spit? Take a swab before the beginning of each session? And what sort of stuff keeps the shine on the ball? Something of a grey area really.

There are three basic goals in ball tampering depending on the stage of the innings. At the beginning of the innings you want to retain the shine on the ball (or rather one side of it) as long as possible to assist conventional swing. Once the ball is around 40 odd overs old, in the more abrasive environments, the un-tampered ball will become scuffed assisting reverse swing. Obviously the earlier you can affect the reverse swing, by scratching up the ball, possibly with suitably sharp objects such as fingernails or bottle tops, the longer the fielding side have to bamboozle and bowl a team out. The third main way to change, or in this case retain the performance of the ball is to pick or pinch the seam up so that the bowler can hit the seam making the ball deviate off the pitch. There is a good article on the merits and penalties of the various different methods on the CricInfo site.

Of these ball tampering methods, scratching and the scratcher are the easiest to spot these being very much physical elements against which to enforce any offence. Picking the seam too is a very obvious thing to be seen doing especially with the many many cameras present at top level international cricket. The less obvious is using foreign substances to shine the ball. Where do you cross the line from cleaning the ball and artificially retaining its shine? By the letter of the law, does the shining of the ball on a bowler’s trousers, as every bowler does, fall foul of the laws of the game? It probably doesn’t, but how far removed is this from Marcus Trescothick’s actions with his minty fresh spit? Who knows. Whether it is right to do it or not, it gives a bowling side some small solace in the increasingly batsman friendly world of cricket.

My season of going to the cricket comes to an end on Sunday with the 4th ODI of England vs South Africa at Lords, before which I have a trip to Northampton to see Northants take on Glamorgan in the LV County Championship, day 3 of 4. Earlier this year on discovering that a close friend had never seen any top level British sport, I made a pact to take him to top(ish) level football, cricket and rugby before he gets married in January next year. I think he will enjoy tomorrow’s day in the sun the best of the three, having been nonplussed by Wolves vs Ipswich at the back end of the 2007-2008 season.

A damp squib

England’s win in the last Test of the summer was little more than a reasonable dessert following a disappointing main course that had looked so appetising when being weighed up on the menu some hours earlier. Prior to the South Africans arriving on these shores much of the media billed the series as an indicator of how competitive England were in the context of world cricket. So what does losing a 4 Test series 2-1 in your own backyard indicate?

The home nation not being in the rudest of health me thinks. With Australia far and away the best Test team and England, South Africa and the Subcontinental nations all supposedly close together in the chasing pack, England at home would expect to win Test series against all of those in the pack. However losing at home last year to India and this year to South Africa hardly gets any opposition boots quaking, let alone the Australians.

South Africa are not a bad team, in fact in my opinion they are underrated, the fact that they don’t have a “proper” spinner is often highlighted by Geoffrey Boycott among others, but is that such a bad thing? Where have a seen that before? A pre-Monty Panesar England perhaps? The one that won the Ashes in 2005 and several home series before that? Yes exactly. Stand up the King of Spain. The England team from that period is not so different from the South African team now. They should be congratulated on coming to England and not just being hard to beat but winning. Well done them. I can only hope this spurs England to take a long hard look at themselves to put things right.

Nothing ever fails for a single reason, so what went wrong?

Batting failures. The top order rarely put together the partnerships required to build the big scores needed in the first innings of a match to push home the advantage in each match overall. England batted first in the first 3 Tests making 593/8 declared, 203 and 231 respectively. In the latter 2 cases, at Leeds and Birmingham they lost comprehensively proving the scenario that a team batting first, if they are put in or chose to bat, need to put up good scores to not be significantly on the back foot with around 4 days of a game to play.

Lack of bowling penetration. In previous times, England have had a “go-to man”, a bowler that the captain could turn to, to break a batting partnership. In their pomp this would have been at different times, Harmison and Flintoff and arguably over the winter Sidebottom was outstanding. When the pitch was conducive to spin, even Monty Panesar chipped in, reference his performance at Old Trafford last year. The go-to man was not present in this series. Sidebottom’s form has dropped away and Harmison and Flintoff are only recently back in the team. Stuart Broad is an admirable cricketer but no strike bowler (8 wickets at 49) and lets not even mention the Pattinson episode.

Let’s look at the Test matches up to next summer. A paltry 2 Tests in India and 4 Tests in the West Indies before next summer where there may or may not be 2 or 3 Tests against Sri Lanka before the Ashes. What a way to prepare for the biggest Test series in world cricket.

Rain stops play

So far this year I have been to 3 separate days of international cricket. The 1st was the ODI England vs New Zealand at Edgbaston, the 2nd was the 1st day of the 3rd Test of England vs South Africa also at Edgbaston and the 3rd day of the 4th Test of England vs South Africa at The Oval. I only bring this up as I have had the luck or lack of, this year to have only seen 1 full uninterrupted day of cricket.

• Of a potential 100 overs in the New Zealand game, I saw 54 overs;
• I saw all 90 overs of the day at the 3rd Test versus South Africa; and
• Of a potential 90 overs at The Oval, I saw a mere 17.5 overs!

So this year out of a possible 280 overs, I have seen 161.5 overs, just over half of those possible had there been full play on each day! Really gutted with that so far this ’summer’, never more disappointing than in the New Zealand game. Actually I’ve never previously had to apply for a refund as I had to do in the final Test of the year. Absolutely gutting. One last chance to make it up comes when I go to the ODI at Lords at the end of the month. Please please please please please don’t rain!

Anyway of the day at The Oval, Pietersen’s first Test in charge no less, the highlights for me were, Stuart Broad ripping out McKenzie’s middle stump, the classy batting of Hasim Amla and the aggressive return of Steve Harmison.

A great atmosphere with people leaping to their feet when the young man rearranged the furniture! Definitely my favourite moment of the day.

Game poised

3rd Test – England vs South Africa at Edgbaston

It is currently just after lunch on the third day with England having been batting for over an hour in their second innings, with Cook out top edging a pull off Ntini’s second ball to wicketkeeper Mark Boucher for 9 runs and Michael Vaughan making a speedy 17 before driving straight to extra cover. England need to bat better than they have in recent times to get a chance of winning this game. At half past 2 on day three England were 27 runs behind with 2 wickets down, clearly still some work to be done.

I was at the game on the first day and was bitterly disappointed with England’s paltry batting performance. Getting bowled out for 231 on the first day was awful having chosen to bat after winning the toss for the first time in the series. To think it was all going serenely to start with, as I took my seat in the Priory stand half an hour after play had started. Cook and Strauss were relatively comfortable having seen off the new ball and had a solid partnership going with Cook being the aggressor of the pair, before Strauss stepped on his stumps which some commentators a bit unfairly, attributed to technical flaws. I just thought he was unlucky and I’d be surprised if he does it again.

The highlights of the day were the batting of Cook and Bell before they got out and the all-round performance of Andrew Flintoff. Bell played beautifully on his home ground for his fifty hitting several textbook shots.

Perhaps predictably the biggest cheers of a muted day for the crowd was for Andrew Flintoff. Batting with the tailenders he smashed a six through square leg followed by a four down the ground that the bowler Ntini nearly wore on his forehead. The cheap run outs of Anderson and Panesar afterwards spoiled the cheer.

Flintoff takes a single off Ntini

With just 11 overs of the South African batting innings at the end of the day it was essential that England made some inroads. Anderson and Sidebottom opened the bowling but failed to get the batsmen playing consistently with Smith and McKenzie able to play relatively comfortably.

Flintoff was given 3 overs at the end of the day and showed his intent immediately by beating Smith outside his off stump with his first ball, before dismissing him the very next ball when the South African captain nicked one low to Strauss at slip. Freddie roared and the crowd showed their appreciation. The English talisman had returned.