0Days Two and Three — A Right Old See Saw

I was so incensed last night at England’s abil­ity to snatch defeat from the jaws of vic­tory by fail­ing to bowl a debut 19 year old num­ber 11 rab­bit out (helped by an appalling umpir­ing decision) and then their per­fect fol­low­ing of the script by los­ing two crick­et wick­ets in reply (note again – appalling decision) that I was unable to put key­board to laptop.

It looked that today might a have been a second day of radio silence but Eng­land man­aged to dig deep and loc­ate some so far as of yet reserves of guts and bottle (Ander­son aside). Well played to Cook and to KP for some decent con­tri­bu­tions but espe­cially to Ian Bell. I’ve been one of his harshest crit­ics of late – but only because he hasn’t been weigh­ing in with decent scores when they mat­ter. But today it was time to step up to the plate and he did so, ably assisted by Broad at the oth­er end.

Let’s hope they con­tin­ue in the same rich vein of form tomor­row. They at least anoth­er 50 runs – if bats­men apply them­selves and dig in there are still plenty of runs to be scored on this pitch and there’s cer­tainly enough time left.

Of course one of today’s talk­ing points was Broad’s refus­al to walk. I’m all for good sports­man­ship in crick­et – it’s one of the many things that sets us apart from oth­er more pop­u­list sports. But in this instance I’m with Broad. For per­haps the first time in the match Eng­land were on the oth­er end of bad umpir­ing.  The decisions that went for Agar yes­ter­day when he was on 6 and against Trott mean­ing he was out for a big fat zero were at key points of the game for Eng­land. They poten­tially cost Eng­land 142 runs (the 92 extra runs Agar added after being giv­en not out and 50 runs) Trott’s aver­age). In a rel­at­ively low scor­ing match when no one has (yet – fin­gers crossed for Bell) scored a ton, it’s a lot of runs to deprive Eng­land of.

It was up to the umpire to give Broad out and he failed to do so.

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I do feel at the moment that Eng­land are miss­ing a decent back up bowl­er who can give you as many as 15 overs in a day and who doesn’t embar­rass them­selves. It helps to take the pres­sure of the front-line bowl­ers. Aus­tralia have the per­fect pro­ponent of it in Shane Wat­son. Wat­son today sent down 15 overs, 11 of them maid­ens. OK, he didn’t take a wick­et but he helped to give the oth­ers a quick rest in hot con­di­tions. Since Colling­wood, Eng­land haven’t really had any­one  who fits the bill. Trott and Pieterson don’t really have them in it. Per­haps Root could be encour­aged more. But I sus­pect like Hick and Vaughan before him, he will be under-used.