All change

An emotional week for England fans as Michael Vaughan, the most successful in English Test captain history stood down after 5 years in the job with England surrendering the 3rd Test and the series to South Africa at Edgbaston last Sunday.

The press conference on Monday was almost heart wrenching to watch as the man who had brought home the Ashes in 2005 and won landmark a Test series in the Caribbean struggled to fight back the tears as he announced his resignation.

But while it is a shame to see such a well liked man and stylish batsman walk from the captaincy and the England team, at least for the foreseeable future, it is with great interest with which the new England captain will be watched. He has led England to a good first day at The Oval in the 4th Test. However, the true test of a leader is not how he gets through the good days, but how he bounces back from the bad ones.

Good to see the return of Steve Harmison today who looked like the man who terrorised the West Indies in 2004. Being dropped from the squad must have made him realise the value of being an England cricketer and we all hope not to see the meek, scattergun bowler that Harmison was prior to his short stint out in the pastures of county cricket.

Michael Vaughan

Kevin Pietersen

Steve Harmison

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.

Sinking England need a lift

England, England, England! What on earth happened? Getting thumped by ten wickets in Leeds is not quite what was discussed in the dressing room at the start of the 2nd Test last Friday.

Where did the selection of Darren Pattinson come in? If England wanted a specialist swing bowler for the game rather than a pace bowler, ruling out Chris Tremlett who has been the 12th man for the past few Tests is understandable, but why then did the selectors decide against Matthew Hoggard? A former England player on his home ground with something to prove, will surely do everything he can to produce that massive performance that puts him in the team for the rest of the series. Does he not tick all the boxes? I guess not unluckily for him.

Can one player upset a team so much? Usually I’d say no, but on this occasion it may have. In the past few years, the players that get into the England Test team have already been talked about for many months beforehand and are on the periphery of the England set up before they get their chance, usually in the ODI side before getting promotion to Test team should they be good enough. This has several advantages as a player wishing to make the England Test team, can do the business in County cricket and catch the eye of the selectors, who may give them a try in the ODI side, before they push for the Test team. It is a very logical and understandable process, to get straight in to the Test team from County cricket you would need to be an exceptional player. So to pick someone on a “horses for courses” basis who is not in and around the England setup, like Pattinson, dents the confidence of all those players in and around the England set up because it gives an element of uncertainty.

Prior to the Pattinson selection, players in the team in the squad could identify the other players that are competing for their spot. The batsmen in the team know they have guys like Shah, Bopara, Key, etc pushing to get in. Known quantities. Similarly the swing bowlers like Jimmy Anderson and Ryan Sidebottom know their competitors. Hoggard, Jones, Onions are pushing for their places. Again known quantities. But the selection of Pattinson blows a hole in the certainty of knowing your enemy, how do you perform if someone can come randomly out of left field and take your place? Or indeed your place in the theoretical pecking order.

This is not to blame Pattinson himself as he tried manfully and did not completely disgrace himself. It was a measure of having a man he did not know about thrust upon him, that Michael Vaughan sent him into the deep field after the 3 overs that made up his first spell. The selectors have took a risky punt for only average results.

So where do England go from here? Their first innings batting in that game was irresponsible and though on paper England have the batsmen to match any team in the world, they rarely all perform to a necessary standard. To me though Tim Ambrose looks too high up the order at no.6, his keeping has been excellent and the criticism of his rival Matt Prior was that he dropped too many catches, though he is thought to be the better batsman. So is it better to score 30 and not drop any catches or score 50 and drop two catches? I would vote for the former so I would keep Ambrose in the team.

My team for the 3rd Test at Edgbaston would line up like this:

• Strauss
• Cook
• Vaughan
• Pietersen
• Bell
• Ambrose
• Flintoff
• Broad
• Sidebottom
• Anderson/Jones
• Panesar

To me this is a decent England batting side, but lacks a bit of pace in the bowling department, so should the pitch in Birmingham be deemed to have a bit of pace in it, I maybe tempted to pick Jones over Anderson, but it would be a seriously close call between them.

Freddy’s back!

Could this man have helped as the rest of England’s bowlers toiled for the last two days of the 1st Test against South Africa at Lords?

He would have brought that out and out pace that is lacking from the England side at the moment, but on a docile wicket like that found at Lords over the weekend, I reckon the result would have been the same. In the past few seasons he has never taken more than 3 wickets in an innings in Test matches at ‘HQ’.

So should he come back? He is in the squad for the 2nd Test at Headingley and although he is not yet the batsman he was in the past I think he is worth his place as a bowler alone. Also at his best he has the ability to inspire the rest of the team. So who do you drop to accommodate him?

Headingley Cricket Ground, Leeds

The most out of form player in the team is Paul Collingwood, though he was unlucky with his dismissal in the 1st Test, but based on the fact that Flintoff has little batting form to speak of either, to bring Flintoff into the side would change the composition of the team from 4 bowlers to 5 bowlers and on a pitch that traditionally produces a result from being a bowler friendly surface, do you need 5 bowlers? But then which of the bowlers, who have performed increasingly well as a unit in recent Tests do you leave out in the cold? If Ryan Sidebottom’s stiff back were to keep him out of the Leeds Test this ‘nice’ problem could be resolved, at least in the short term, though England will do all they can to get their left arm swing bowler fit for the game.

Assuming Sidebottom is fit for Friday’s start and England do go with 5 bowlers how should they line up? How about this:

1. Strauss
2. Cook
3. Vaughan
4. Pietersen
5. Bell
6. Ambrose
7. Flintoff
8. Broad
9. Sidebottom
10. Anderson
11. Panesar

As widely reported if he plays Freddie will bat at 7 for the game, but Ambrose like Collingwood is having a lean batting spell in Tests, so for this line up to work numbers 6 to 8 need to bat well. England have a long tail as it is, so for 6 downwards to fold cheaply could be firstly quite embarrassing and secondly put England in a dire position in the game and most probably the series. But that’s the pessimist in me.

So my predictions for the game:

• Ambrose and Flintoff to start shakily but get valuable 40s in a low scoring first innings;
• Even though I’m an England fan, Steyn to fire;
• Kallis to get a stodgy century after 20 runs in total at Lords; and
• KP to get in the headlines. For the right reasons.

England vs South Africa Preview

The forthcoming Test series between these two nations has been earmarked by many England watchers as a true indicator of where England are in world cricket with a view, whisper it, to the Ashes next year.

Over the last 8 months or so England fans have had something of a Kiwi overdose, playing them away then at home. Whose great idea was that? Playing the same team back to back to back to back to… If that doesn’t make the cricketing public of both England and New Zealand stop watching the game I don’t know what will. Perhaps that’s what makes the forthcoming series against the South Africans so appetising. Finally! Some different opposition! Those suits at the ECB are real masterminds…

As such there’s been a fair bit of build up in the media, plenty of talk of the pacy firebrand Dale Steyn and the resumption of KP’s duel against his homeland. On a lesser scale the duels between the two captains Michael Vaughan and Graeme Smith is being talked up. Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times points to a real chance of England suffering a home Test series defeat for the first time since the turn of the century, which is pretty uncharitable to India having won albeit with some luck. But hey, England had their fair share of it in winning the 2005 Ashes series. So what of England going into this series?

The team has good batsmen, but for my money lack something in terms of aggression especially up the order. Strauss and Cook aren’t going to take the opposition bowling to task and set the agenda. Which is why Trescothick and Strauss were such an excellent partnership at the top of the order. One clearly had the task of pushing the run rate along while the other accumulated. Guessed which one was which? When Strauss and Cook are together, neither one looks truly comfortable dictating the pace.

The places of the captain and Kevin Pietersen are the most secure in the batting line-up, so it falls to the other two specialist batsmen to prove themselves. Ian Bell absolutely oozes the textbook talent, but there is a suspicion that he only makes the big runs in easy game situations. A glance at when he makes his Test match hundreds shows that another member of the team has made a hundred previously in the innings. He needs to prove his worth in tough situations. Paul Collingwood on the other hand is stereotyped as a scrapper, but again he has something to prove following a poor home Test match series against the Kiwis. Ambrose is a good ‘keeper, but has something to prove after a poor recent ODI series with the willow.

Looking at the bowling, Monty Panesar should have a key role in the series being the only spin bowler of any note on either side (Paul Harris? Didn’t think so). Of the pacemen Sidebottom, Anderson and Broad don’t look as good a unit on paper as Ntini, Steyn and Morkel and will have to work hard to stay afloat.

Sidebottom is the most consistent of the 3 and has for my money supplanted Hoggard as the reliable element of the England attack. I think Anderson is greatly underrated; look at his performances in recent Test matches, albeit against the New Zealanders. His struggles against left handers have been highlighted and how he deals with Graeme Smith at the top of the order will be a key battle. Stuart Broad gets better with every match but has yet to be put in a situation where he can get England out of a tight spot or into an unassailable position.

Hence, my key battles for the series:

• Graeme Smith vs James Anderson
• Monty Panesar vs South African batsmen
• Dale Steyn vs England batsmen
• Kevin Pietersen vs South African bowlers