England v India - 2nd Test Match

[SUFC Forever]

England have delayed naming their team for the 2nd Test v India which starts today.

Doubts as to if Monty will play after critcism of his performance in the last game.

Do people think that Monty is all hype or is he genuinely a Test class spinner capable of winning games at this level?

 

[canveyshrimper]

England have delayed naming their team for the 2nd Test v India which starts today.

Doubts as to if Monty will play after critcism of his performance in the last game.

Do people think that Monty is all hype or is he genuinely a Test class spinner capable of winning games at this level?

The changes England should make are Bell for Shah, and Broad for either Swann or the perpetually misfiring Harmison.

I am sure that Panesar is a Test class player, he has over 130 wickets at a resonable average for a finger spinner. However over the past year he seems to have gone backwards in his development.

He will never rip the ball like a Warne, Murali or even Harbahjan, and as a finger spinner he needs to able to gain guile & flight, what little I saw of him at Chennai looked like he was trying to bowl too quickly. And a further point he needs to try and calm down a little and cut out the excessive appealing.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

The changes England should make are Bell for Shah, and Broad for either Swann or the perpetually misfiring Harmison.

I am sure that Panesar is a Test class player, he has over 130 wickets at a resonable average for a finger spinner. However over the past year he seems to have gone backwards in his development.

He will never rip the ball like a Warne, Murali or even Harbahjan, and as a finger spinner he needs to able to gain guile & flight, what little I saw of him at Chennai looked like he was trying to bowl too quickly. And a further point he needs to try and calm down a little and cut out the excessive appealing.

Monty rips the ball as well as any finger spinner, but a finger spinner who can only turn the ball one way is always going to have limited impact, even if they have all the guile in the world.

Warne is regarded as the greatest spin bowler of all time, yet took his wickets at over 25. McGrath took his at 21.64 despite playing against the same opposition. McGrath will have taken more top order wickets as well.

The top averages for bowlers who have taken over 200 test wickets are Marshall, Garner, Ambrose, Truman, McGrath, Murali, Donald, Hadlee, Imran, Lindwall, Pollock, Waqar, Wasim, Holding, Lillee, Grimett, Walsh, Statham, Bedser.

There are only two spinners in that lot, and both could turn the ball both ways. It is also worth noting that most of that list were genuinely quick, only Statham, Bedser, McGrath and Pollock weren't express and Pollock was certainly sharp in his younger days and McGrath could be when he wanted to be.

 

[Exiled Shrimper]

I'm not massively concerned by Monty's average at this stage in his career - he's only 26 and he will improve, if he gives himself the chance to. It's not as though Panesar is a mystery spinner like Murali or Ajantha Mendis, so his figures are not going to drastically change once batsmen work him out (not that that pair's are, either, to be honest).

What concerns me is the speed of Monty's learning. At the start of his career, he sought out the likes of Warne and Anil Kumble to discuss spinning - is he still doing that? I doubt Mushtaq Ahmed's absence from the tour is helping, either - I think Mushie should really assist Monty, and for that matter, Adil Rashid, in their development.

There are times when Monty appeals excessively - how much of this is natural enthusiasm for the game, and how much is it simply not being aware of the laws?

It is correct to say that Monty has bowled too quickly and too flatly, and that was what made him seem so inferior even to an average journeyman County cricketer like Graeme Swann in Chennai, with the Notts man looping the ball up outside the off stump into the rough created by Zaheer Khan. What concerns me is that, in those conditions - when he has a measure of control of line and length - that Monty is not picking up on this, that nobody in the England camp is suggesting that maybe he could add some more flight and guile to his action and see what happens.

It is no coincidence that some of Panesar's best figures have come at Old Trafford, in tandem with Steve Harmison, when the pitch has had pace and (sometimes variable) bounce, rather than on wearing surfaces. That said, Monty's job was somewhat tougher than Swann's in that he had no rough to aim into from around the wicket to the right-hander.

My belief is that, in the short-term, for the Second Test, it should be Panesar that makes way for Broad, but only because he is off-form and out of practice at the moment, as well as the potential for England to utilitse reverse swing without his sweaty palms, as I eluded to in another post. Over the long-term, I have little doubt that he will be England's premier spinner, especially with further mutterings in the press of late that it is Rashid's batting, and not bowling, that is coming on strongly.

 

[sufcintheprem]

Someone I was speaking to yesterday was saying that Monty was scheduled to go to India and Sri Lanka at various points to work on his spin bowling but both of these fell through and as a result has not played top level cricket or been able to realy further his game.

I don't know if I'm being overly critical but I would agree with the comment above that if he wants to be ont he top table of International cricketers, he needs to develop a variation ball. As Alec Stewart was saying, India's top order had played a test series against Sri Lanka where they were facing Murali and Mendis (a player genuinely worth getting excited about in test cricket) and in the nets would have faced Harbhajan and Mishra. Coming in to face a consistent but predictable Panesar won't give them sleepless nights.

I'm pretty sure a neutral watching the test series would be more concerned at Harbhajan's toothlessness. It seems he's varying his deliveries so much that he no longer has a clear strategy in his head for getting the batsman out. Put it this way, if an English bowler in swinging conditions wasn't swinging the ball at all threateningly (to the wickets, not the slip fielders mr Harmison) then we'd be rightly disappointed.

 

[sufcintheprem]

Oh, on the day's play, looks like India aren't going anywhere soon. Something colossal is needed to get England back in. Another day like today and england might as well pack their bags. Don't seem to have bowled that badly but when Dravid is happy making 50 off 200 balls and Gambhir is looking as sturdy as this, you have to pull out something special. From what I saw, I think Anderson is our only chance of really breaking this.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Oh, on the day's play, looks like India aren't going anywhere soon. Something colossal is needed to get England back in. Another day like today and england might as well pack their bags. Don't seem to have bowled that badly but when Dravid is happy making 50 off 200 balls and Gambhir is looking as sturdy as this, you have to pull out something special. From what I saw, I think Anderson is our only chance of really breaking this.

Worse than that, the forecast for tomorrow isn't good.

England blew one of the best chances you'll ever get to win a test series in India.

Broad was the pick of the bowlers, bowled a very good opening spell. Swann also posed a few questions, but he isn't going to run through a test standard batting line-up - although we have the WIndies next.

Harmison's value never looks higher than when he is out of the side.

 

[sufcintheprem]

This really is the reason why cricket has a reputation as a boring sport. At its best, Test Cricket is a measure of a cricketer's ability no not only produce brilliance but sustain it for whole days.

When India are favourites and come out on the first day with the no intention of scoring at a rate needed to win the match it's a bad start. When they bowl England out cheaply (given the platform they had) but even with the quality of batsmen score at 2.68, it's just really uninspiring stuff. For them, it's fair enough because a series win is so much more valuable than winning a one off game.

I feel the ICC should change their rankings system somewhat along the lines of the change in football from 2 points for a win to 3 points for a win. For a 5 day event, it's just not right that it should have the more talented team playing solely to avoid defeat. It's like Chelsea playing Everton at home trying solely to keep a clean sheet.

 

[Exiled Shrimper]

Match drawn - not entirely surprising since the equivalent of a whole day was fogged off.

With regards to the rankings, the system at the moment is quite complex, but the resultant tables, here, for both Test and ODI cricket, in my opinion, don't vary too much from what most Test-followers would consider a fair reflection on the abilities of the relative teams.

Australia head the Test table by some way (though not as much as they did before sustaining losses to India and SA in the first test), then India and SA are very closely matched for second, with Sri Lanka 4th and England 5th. As matches and series go on, the older results are 'weighted' less heavily, so that the table reflects recent trends.

Each match does have a bearing on the rankings (for instance, England, incredibly, would've gone second in the ODI rankings in September had the final ODI versus SA not been rained off in Cardiff), but overall, series results count for more, and that is probably how it should be.

India head SA by one point as we speak - had they given England a sporting declaration and lost today, then they would probably have slipped to third, given a series draw. The problem that you get with the rankings - which have only existed over the past decade after Wisden magazine (now The Wisden Cricketer) instigated a prototype - is that there is no real schedule, with the Future Tours Programme not really working (Pakistan have not played a single Test match in 2008). Until everyone plays everyone else twice in a four-, five- or six-year cycle, anomalies will be thrown up.

 

[undercovershrimper]

boring boring boring cricket, utter contempt shown by dhoni to the game, the opposition, the paying fans and the millions watching. you think he might be a bit more sporting seeing as the only reason they had a game to play was due to us going out there.

******!