The Ashes: Australia in England 16th Jun - 31 July

[sussexpob]

Tyring to see if I could back up my belief that not having a specialist spinner doesn't work out, even in England. It's hard to interrogate the stats for this - while cricinfo does flag bowlers as spinners or pace, you can't filter by whether a player of a particular type was playing, only if they took wickets

You can filter by what type of bowler is playing, but the filter counts every single player who has bowled an over of that type in FC history. So as an example, Zak Crawley would be counted as a spinner in any match he plays, courtesy of 66 balls of offspin for Kent. There is a pretty easy way to work this out in a couple of stages.

Since 2010, England have fielded the following spinners.
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... pe=bowling

Since 2010, 84 matches out have included one of the specialists in the above list
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... ;type=team

Since 2010, there has been 88 overall matches
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... ;type=team

In the 4 matches that England did not play a specialist spinner they have drawn 3 and lost 1. They have never won a game in the data sample without fielding one spinner.

These are South Africa in 2012 - Match Drawn.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/sou ... -scorecard

New Zealand 2021 - Drawn
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/new ... -scorecard

New Zealand 2021 - Lost
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/new ... -scorecard

India 2021 - Drawn
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/ind ... -scorecard

[sussexpob]

What is noticeable is, in all but the India game, part-time spin has to carry some of the slack. Root and KP in 3/4 matches end up bowing 15-20 overs in the game.

In fact, I cant be bothered to go back through the match engine, but essentially if you isolate the stats to all games in England with a significantly long innings (250), the amount of innings with less than 10 overs of spin bowled are very few.

So the long and short of it is, even if you don't field a spinner, the likelihood is you will end up throwing the ball to one for a decent amount of time.

[bigfluffylemon]

Thanks for the tip SP.

Doesn't bode well. Let's hope Root is up to the bowling he'll inevitably be called on to do.

[sussexpob]

You could argue that the net wicket average is lower in the 4 matches, so the all pace specialists took wickets cheaper. But the data sample is small to make any comparison in it, and the margin not noticeable....and it's offset by the expectation that not fielding a spinner would only be tactically wise in very low scoring/bowler friendly conditions, so the expectation would be for lower scores..

[Arthur Crabtree]

Starc in for Boland.

[Arthur Crabtree]

England win toss and bowl. Presume there's cloud cover. Though selection rather ties Stokes' hands.

[sussexpob]

Protesters holding up play.... Bairstow playing policeman. Orange stuff thrown everywhere, not a lot of clothes about

[Arthur Crabtree]

Bairstow drops protester?

[sussexpob]

Bairstow drops protester?

Far from it, he nabbed him and carried him away. Probably drop everything else today....

[sussexpob]

The just stop oil protesters jumped the gun... the match has stopped now for rain

[Arthur Crabtree]

It'll wash their powder away.

[Arthur Crabtree]

England not lighting any fireworks.

[mikesiva]

Warner gets his half century.

[bigfluffylemon]

Well this is going swimmingly for bowling first.

[sussexpob]

Well this is going swimmingly for bowling first.

Last ball before lunch has a breakthrough, which might wrestle something back... but yeah. They'd have wanted 2 or 3 back in the hutch by now.