A review of the first Test: Pakistan Vs England

It was almost as if the England team were aware of my new blog in the way that they performed for three pretty pathetic days of Test cricket. They provided enough ammunition for me to write pages upon pages of criticism with chapters including 'Pietersen' or 'How not to play spin bowling?'. Before I lament England's lack of fight, skill or brainpower especially in the two batting efforts I just want to mention a couple of things regarding the bowling performance.

This was viewed as a strong disciplined effort from the England attack but the Pakistan batting lineup would refuse to play a shot to get out of a wet paper bag. Talent wise this may be the weakest lineup I have ever seen from Pakistan usually filled with flair and aggression they allowed England to bowl at them which, even though they were in control of the match, gave England the chance to slowly creep back into the game. To prove my point the supposed 'gun' player as he is often referred to, Younis Khan, was out lbw to Jonathon Trott who might as well bowl underarm on a pitch like that and also raises the debate concerning team selection but that comes later.

After scraping 146 ahead though, with the only demon in the pitch apparently jumping out occasionally to bend Saeed Ajmals' arm when bowling his new 'Tissra' delivery, you would imagine England would build a total to create an exciting finish to the Test match rather than me writing a blog post on the scheduled fourth day of play. Then began the procession of brainless batting allied with 'tactical' Decision Review System (DRS) referrals, which I absolutely despise. Created in order to eliminate the 'shocking' decisions it has only led to referrals being taken given the batsman or situation in the game. My opinion is there will be erroneous decisions throughout the course of five days of cricket be it through human error or in this case mechanical error as there were wrong decisions because of DRS so let us all just get on with the game. The side which plays the best cricket wins the game not the one which used DRS in the correct manner.

The term brainless batting I believe was coined for Mr Kevin Pietersen when on nought and your team in trouble how on earth can you be out caught in the deep hooking? It beggars belief, I have stood up for KP on numerous occasions but it has become a joke because when he has been out in this fashion previously his record has backed him up but when you can count the number of hundreds scored on one hand in the last God knows how many years it becomes more of a problem. Since the captaincy 'episode' there has not been the same swagger nor the same hunger for runs and if he is not careful he could well go from potential England great to the ego with the stupid haircut that helped win the '05 Ashes.

Continuing with this game though and Trott accumulated his mandatory runs to keep his average up without really threatening to take the game to Pakistan while Bell and Morgan have no idea which way the ball is spinning which makes the game that much more difficult. Even a reprieve when Gul took a wicket off a no ball could not save England (although the less said about Pakistan and no balls the better). The lower order huffed and puffed but they were fighting a losing battle after the top order showed such little application. It would be easy to panic now but that is not the England way nor is it their way to change the side too much but if ever there was a time to do it it would be now.

Prior to the Test match there was an argument amongst 'experts' that England should stick to their strengths and go into the match with four bowlers (a formula which has worked well for them I may add) and not make a horses for courses selection and maybe play an extra spinner. However, this is exactly what happened in Australia in the most recent victorious Ashes series when Bresnan replaced leading wicket taker Finn. Six batsmen is plenty in the sub-continent, despite the atrocious two attempts by England, all it has done is remove the responsibility to go and score big runs. If they cant get 350 in two innings with seven it wont make much difference only going with six and who should be dropped? Take your pick, England need to be ruthless and for me it is between Pietersen and Morgan with Panesar coming into the side.

A final point. England in recent years have prided themselves on how well prepared and organised they are as they go into Test series but the coach Andy Flower claimed the abysmal performance was due to lack of preparation. What exactly have they been doing for the previous three months then?

Plenty of cricket to come in the next couple of weeks which means plenty of scope for criticism!

An Introduction

As a passionate cricket fan watching this great game has sometimes become a chore. Are cricketing standards slipping around the world? Are shorter versions of the game ruining the very essence of cricket? Or am I just getting old and creating legends in my mind where in actual fact they were just average cricketers themselves?

Ask any cricket fan their favourite player and it will undoubtedly be someone from their generation which is why the argument about the greatest ever player is often skewed by generation gaps. A few parameters before I begin my crusade to reinvigorate International cricket, I am an England fan although my favourite player is Sachin Tendulkar for a variety of reasons but they will not be immune from criticism in fact a great deal of my criticism will no doubt be aimed at the England team despite their dominance in recent years.

Nor will criticism single out batsmen, bowlers or fielders. Everyone involved in cricket are in my firing line coaches, commentators, twelfth men and even the people in charge of the game who in my opinion are at fault for most things wrong with cricket. One of the great things about cricket, and sport in general, is that it is subjective and statistics can often be misleading but one thing is always true there is constantly someone doing something wrong thus essentially creating blog posts for myself.

It would be wrong of me to comment on every single game going on in the world as I feel I should have watched before criticising and I do not have that kind of time on my hands unfortunately. There will be subjects outside of this, however, which will also need addressing so this will prevent any lull between posts and of course there will hopefully be comments to provoke a response.

What prompted this blog though is in the current Test Match between Pakistan and England the batting side, England, were five wickets down at lunch in Dubai. This can often happen the first day of a Test Match but as has rightly been said in commentary the ball has not swung, seamed or spun! How can this happen? A spinner was introduced in the sixth over of the day and Cook was not ready for this? This is the subcontinent it's almost cliche to talk about how influential the spinners are but it wasn't just Cook, the England captain played a horrific shot, Trott was out to an inside edge, which is not unlucky playing the ball with the edge of the bat is full of pitfalls if it comes off the middle then he would have had four.

This ends the first post but I have a feeling this will be fun and better than therapy. Oh and don't even get me started on the shot played by Pietersen it's about time the 'star' player started to deliver instead of deciding what sunglasses to wear.


A failed cricketer

A review of the Pakistan Vs England Test to follow.................