0First Innings Failures — Time to Get Thinking, England

This latest missive comes to you from my sick bed. Yes, dear read­er, I am cur­rently lying in bed on a Fri­day night whilst oth­ers enjoy a post work pint or five in a loc­al hostelry. Ser­i­ously, what could be worse than feel­ing like death warmed up on a Fri­day night?

Well at least, I hear you cry, it gives me a chance to pen this brief missive after day two of the open­ing Ashes battle.

And I’m afraid that today’s sub­ject is hark­ing back to a bit of a well-trod­den path – i.e. England’s bats­men let­ting the side down yet again. Geof­frey Boy­cott summed up the side’s per­form­ance in his own par­tic­u­lar style by simply refer­ring to the per­form­ance as “pathet­ic.” And he was spot on. 136 is, well, a pathet­ic score by Eng­land. Simply not good enough. After bowl­ing with beau­ti­ful con­trol and rhythm on Thursday, Broad helped to fin­ish the job off this morn­ing and must have felt like a well-earned rest was in order. Instead he again tried in vain to bring a modic­um of respect­ab­il­ity to the score by hit­ting a quick-fire 32 runs – the side’s second top scorer by some way.

Now I’ve been check­ing back through the stats – Eng­land have star­ted the last few series badly when it comes to the busi­ness of mak­ing runs.

The first test against the Pakistan at the start of 2012 – innings of 192 and then 160

First test v Sri Lanka – March 2012 – scores of 193 and 264

First test v West Indies – May 2012 – OK they won that with a decent first innings total

First test v South Africa – July 2012 – a just about par score of 385 (but then beaten almost single-handedly by Amla’s triple ton) fol­lowed by a meek 240

First test v India – Novem­ber 2012 – first innings score of 191 (bet­ter go of it in the second innings – but the dam­age was already done)

First test v New Zea­l­and – March 2013 – first innings score of 167 (improve­ment second innings to save the match)

First test v New Zea­l­and – May 2013 – dis­tinct­ively aver­age scores of 232 and 213 (bowl­ers pulled a rab­bit out of the hat to force victory)

Open­ing test of this year’s Ashes – July – first innings score of 215

And finally this Ashes cam­paign – first innings total of 136 – a total com­fort­ably beaten by just two of the oppos­i­tion – a jour­ney man keep­er-bats­man in Had­din (per­haps a little harsh) and a bowl­er – John­son. Now here’s hop­ing of course that we can pull off a minor mir­acle in the rest of the match and sal­vage a draw but if we do it will be des­pite this first innings calamity.

Of course this doesn’t make Eng­land a bad side – far from it. In most cases we have recovered our com­pos­ure and demon­strated our class and ground the oppos­i­tion down and won the series – although usu­ally because of the bowl­ers it must be said.

But the Eng­land man­age­ment – who plan every last little finite detail down to the last atom must be a little con­cerned at a seem­ingly con­sist­ent fail­ing in the open­ing test. If Eng­land are going to keep on win­ning series they need to on top of their game from the off.

If I had the answers then I would be out in in Aus­tralia at present help­ing the team out and not lan­guish­ing in my sick bed on a freez­ing-cold Novem­ber night.

But it’s an on-going issue that needs address­ing – there are only so many times the bowl­ing attack can keep on res­cuing their bat­ting counter-parts.