England tour of India

[meninblue]

India in first innings - 329

England in first innings - 134. Conclusion wicket deteriorated.

India on day 3 - 286. So the wicket again turned from unsuitable for test match batting on day 2 to suitable for batting on day 3. How is it managing to do these tricks when India has batted.

Can we just not give credit to Indian batsman and Indian spinners, one of whom is ATG spinner and will be more impactful in home conditions. One knock of 161, even a bowler Ashwin scored 106. Then there are 3 scores of 50+. England should introspect that why there is not even a single 50+ score given that opposition has scored couple of tons and few 50's.

[sussexpob]

Can we just not give credit to Indian batsman and Indian spinners, one of whom is ATG spinner and will be more impactful in home conditions. One knock of 161, even a bowler Ashwin scored 106. Then there are 3 scores of 50+. England should introspect that why there is not even a single 50+ score given that opposition has scored couple of tons and few 50's.

Couldnt agree more. Without wanting to continually repeat myself, there is a huge difference on how both teams have approached playing on the wicket. Strauss hit the nail on the head at the end when he said England are almost letting their fear of the unplayable ball dictate how they setup, but all that means is they are also not playing normal balls well. Most of the batsman just look technically at sea and are making basic errors.

Looks at both England openers. Sibley got out to the variation ball he didnt pick, it was fired in quicker and the pitch or turn has nowt to do with it, footwork all over the place, stance opened up, bat coming down the wrong line. Sorry, thats just crap batting. And Burns got out pretty much straight away after Ashwin's arm ball caused him difficulties. He didnt pick it, was lucky to block it, then Ashwin floats the same off spinner into a similar line and length, and Burns, who looked comfortable to that point leaving outside his off stump, wildly slashes across the spin. Without the arm ball, he'd have left that, but he didnt pick it and wasnt sure which way it was coming off. So he got setup by his own inability to pick from the hand. Root too looked to me (see above comments) dead in the water to another slider from Axar.

Let's not devalue the Indian's skills in these conditions, on both sides of the ball. England's basics have been all over the place. Consistently, from a technical point, England have been poor. The have;

- Not got their footwork right. With the spin on offer you either have to get down the pitch using your feet to nullify it, or you want to favour playing back so you give yourself the maximum time to spot the deviations off the pitch. England have not done this, even Root this evening in the over he faced seemed half forward and half back. Lawrence was outclassed for much of this test, but he at least has decided hes going to come down the pitch and combat the spin, and it bought him a few boundaries even if it seems risky. Got to have a plan and stick to it.

- Playing against the spin. Its not hard. You will pretty much only see Indian batsman sweeping if they are in position to get right on top of the ball, if its on a length thats too short or enough to spin, then they dont. England have continually played against the spin. Burns was the latest to pay the price for it. Ashwin played across the spin when with the tail, and all his loose or lucky breaks came from chances playing against the spin.

- Length, length, length - Indian spinners have realised where the bare patches are and targeted those lengths. The line doesnt have to be particularly great, the spin is out there to make up for hitting the wrong stump and the bounce can still trouble you. Burns for instance nearly top edged a cut from Ashwin, the line was completely wrong but the length was right, hit the dust patch, and what should be a boundary is turned into a risk. Moeen particularly did not hit the right length. England havent bowled well enough at all in their consistent basics.

- Variations - Simply put, India's bowlers have mixed it up more. Moeen fired out Kuldeep with the only arm ball I remember him bowling (although Nick Knight believed it was an off spinner that just didnt turn), and got Kohli pretty much as soon as he went to bowl the other side of the wicket, but despite results even after this England went back to bowling without much thought. As stated above, both Englands openers (and Root lucky to survive) got out being setup up by the straighter one. England have to work out a way to pick these balls from the hand.

The pitch is tough, but the game is being won by one teams superior technique and skills. If England want to remain in this series on pitches that spin, they have to have a plan on how to nullify these spinners.

[Red Devil]

Brilliant summary Sussex

[Durhamfootman]

Moeen finally getting his length right, and reaping the benefits. This looks pretty out

I think Mo has been much better in this innings than in the first. He still gives too many freebies, but he hasn't been all over the place today. Pretty amazing that someone who was terrible in the first innings and only bog standard in the second has walked away with 8 fer for the match, yet Leach who has much better control and has commanded much more respect only picks up 6. I think Leach will learn more from this series than pretty much any other, so I hope they don't rotate him out and he plays the whole series

Just noticed that Ashwin went on to make a hundred... i'm guessing he got the long handle out. Who took the brunt of it?

5fer in the second innings, ton in the third, who'd bet against him taking another 5 fer in the final innings? Helluva cricketer our Ravi

Who'd have believed that the pitch could change so much from one innings to the next. It's a neat trick.... I wonder if Durham would be interested in signing the Chennai head groundsman

[Durhamfootman]

Good time for Dan Lawrence to make a debut Test hundred.

Lawrence might need one if Crawley is available for the 3rd test?

who else comes back into contention? I'm guessing YJB might be in the mix

[Arthur Crabtree]

Jimmy the Saint and Archer will come back.

[sussexpob]

Just noticed that Ashwin went on to make a hundred... i'm guessing he got the long handle out. Who took the brunt of it?

He hit a couple into the stands, but mostly he got there by farming the strike and trusting Siraj to block a couple at the end of each over. I think if I were Silverwood I might have my batters watch Siraj's innings, a couple of times I barely believed I was watching an 11 on a tough deck. Got behind pretty much everything well, used his feet a couple of times to cream the bowler into the stands, another couple to negate the spin, and backed up his partner Ashwin owes him a drink after this test. Seems like a character too, at one point he played a little delicate push into the off side for a single, and was dancing down the wicket like he had scored a 100

Cant remember where I read it, but someone commented that Siraj's embrace with Ashwin when he got his 100 made Tim Paine's comments about no one liking him see even more stupid. Seemed his team-mates really loved the moment from the balcony too.

On a completely separate note, watching Ashwin bat this morning on his home patch and get his 100 really rams home the difference of watching sport with crowds. When he came onto bowl too, Kohli was playing the orchestra conductor getting the crowd going; you notice these things more after not having them, felt nice to watch sport with the crowd in.

[Durhamfootman]

I confess that, for me, it felt a bit weird having fans in the ground

It almost felt naughty, or irresponsible, or something vaguely unnatural. It's going to take a bit of time for me to adjust, I think

[Dr Cricket]

Boom best day of cricket I have ever followed , can’t wait to watch the cricket on the sky box recording.

Wander what the pathetic English media, fans and players are saying now.

Absolute morons when India scored 615 runs on the deck lol.
Yet again England being sore losers and pathetic when it comes to spinner decks.

[Dr Cricket]

They probably need to start accepting spin decks first.
Find it shocking they don’t allow ciderbad.
Especially a former spinner deck in Northants produced Swann and panasar.

England pretty much gave up on the first day.
Considering the crap England players are surrounded with doubt anything will change and stokes and broad have already liked tweets about the pitch during the game.
Only atherton writing sense, even mentioned these decks are so better than the snore fest of 60s and 70s.

And takes toss out of the equation.

[Dr Cricket]

As to the pitch/toss matter : I agree to a large extent with the critics of this pitch in that it was "too extreme" from the start. Regardless of which side gains an advantage , such a surface is not one we would like to see every week ... you could forget about five day cricket altogether.

Agnew rambled about this "pitches should last 5 days" stuff last night. And while I dont want to put his words in your mouth, he seemed to indicate that pitches are only test match standard when they swing on Day 1, and if they spin they are not of standard. For me this smacks of a sort of disgusting cultural superiority that more Western conditions are in some way proper cricket, while Asian conditions are not worthy of the game. I cant really see what the difference is, if you concede swing is desirable throughout a match then why not spin?

Either way, lets put some stats into this. Including matches hosted in England since India last toured in 2018, there has been 19 matches.

Total overs in the game on average - 292.5
Average wicket value - 28

This match
229 overs so far. That requires 63 overs left to be bowled to make this last the same length as the average recent test in England. In fact if England replicated their first innings length, we would reach almost an exact parity in length of match.

I cant remember a single article about English pitches being substandard or producing too short tests.

India's effort of runs in this test would be the fourth best out of 10 match totals in the last England hosted series between the teams. They have had 5 individual batsman make a 50.

Very good post.
Tbh the ironic thing is England hosted the most number of games in recent times to finish before 4 days play of overs.
Been quite common with scores around 250 in each innings.

[Gingerfinch]

Winning the toss, batting and scoring even 250 may have put a bit of pressure on India? The toss certainly CAN help!

BUT, we have been well beaten, well nearly thus far and the best team will win.

[Dr Cricket]

Tbh if the ball turning from day 1 don’t think India cares about the toss.
I will back India to win regardless of what happens.
They not exactly gonna score runs of ashwin either way.
Plus the pressure of bowling India out makes the opposition spinners bowl more freebies.
England need a performance tomorrow or this series could get messy.
They need root to play a captain fighting knock tomorrow like cook did in 2012.

[Dr Cricket]

Actually mad atherton the only Englishman talking sense.

[sussexpob]

Tbh if the ball turning from day 1 don’t think India cares about the toss.
I will back India to win regardless of what happens

The only exception is when the pitch is a proper dud. The last by memory was the Australia first test in 2016.....An Ozzie spinner barely test class looked like Murali on steroids and both teams could barely get bat on ball. Very little skill involved in that win.