Alistair Cook’s captaincy has come under a lot of scrutiny recently; lack of form, lack of imagination and a long winless streak. However in the last two tests Cook has been near perfect! He’s getting runs again; granted he got dropped early on in the 1st innings of the 3rd test, but he made the most of this to score a very good 95. He was very unlucky not to get another ton to add to his long list. He then went on to add 70* and 17 to his scores. Are his worries with the bat over? No, far from it. This is International Cricket. You are always going to have to fight for all of your runs and are always going to go through lean spells, but I do believe that his recent poor form is behind him. His field settings and bowling changes have all paid off over the last two tests; look at the Kumar wicket in the 2nd innings of the 3rd test. Cook puts Anderson into gully and next ball Anderson takes a catch. This is just one of the many examples that Cook demonstrates in fielding positioning’s as well as bowling changes. I think his bowling changes before now haven’t been catastrophic, its just the bowlers haven’t been on form. You have to remember that if the bowlers aren’t doing their job there isn’t much that the captain can do but take them off and throw the ball to someone else, but if none of the bowlers are really performing then you have a big problem. The winning streak finally came to an end after the 3rd test of the series. After two wins on the bounce England must be starting to feel more confident about their new team and the way in which they are proceeding. Is this the start of a long successful winning streak and another successful era?
Revitalised England Cricket Squad
Ali has caused quite a stir in the cricket world over the last few tests with his bowling; brought into the England team as a batsman with an adept part time spin option. He has now gone a long way to helping England win the last two tests with his bowling, which shows that Cook now trusts him a lot more now with the ball. Many people are saying that this is all down to Ian Bell helping Ali to improve his bowling to a better degree than he had in county cricket. As a consequence of this Ali has learned to bowl faster in International Cricket than in County Cricket. Either way it demonstrates his ability to adapt and develop as a player which can only be a good thing going forward. Have England found that much-needed replacement for Swann? I think it’s still too early to say, against a massively out of form team and one that quite frankly didn’t look like they cared too much about the game. We will find out over the next few series if he is good enough but it does look promising. I’d still like to see Borthwick in and around the England set up; he could potentially still be a very good leg spinner.
Gary Ballance has been hailed as the new Trott by many people. Firstly I feel that this is a harsh for Ballance as he is his own man, his recent innings quite clearly show that he has more gears that Trott ever did. Ballance does look like the perfect number 3 for England; his style allows him to adapt his game plan to a number of different situations. If he needs to score runs quickly he can go through the gears, as I’ve already said, to score quickly. If the team has lost an early wicket, he is then able to stay at the wicket and slowly tick the score over. Saying that, it is still very early in his England career to predict his future but it does look like he has everything to make him one of the best.
Anderson and Broad, have England seen a better opening partnership before? Well yes, we have had good opening pairs before: Botham and Willis got 476 wickets between them; Hoggard and Flintoff took 367, but our current pair so far have 505 between them and are 5th in the list of most prolific opening bowlers ever, the list being headed up of course by Ambrose and Walsh with 762. Will Anderson and Broad ever catch them? I’d have to say no, but they do have a very good chance of going second in that list which would mean they would go ahead of Akram and Younis of Pakistan who have 559 wickets; this is obviously if they can both stay fit. With this in mind, no matter how good Botham and Willis were and the fact that there is a lot more Test Cricket played now I still feel that this pair will be regarded as the best England have ever had and will also be regarded as one of the best in world cricket ever.
Steven Finn was called up for the last test but not included even though we won. Was this a mistake or a blessing in disguise? Finn had a great start to his test career, which then turned into a nightmare once the England backroom staff decided to change his run up to a shorter run. He’s been in county cricket for a while now and is bowling very well and very quickly. His call up was right for me as long as England do a couple of things.
- Play him!
- Leave his run up alone
- Just let him bowl fast
My first point is that there is no point in bringing a player like Finn into the squad just to sit around; he is someone who needs to be bowling and having been around the England set up before, there is no need to keep him around just to introduce him into the squad as you might do with a new player. As long as they leave his run up and bowling style alone Finn can be a key player in the England team as he can bowl around 95mph regularly. Yes he may go for around 4-5 runs an over but he takes wickets! You need to take 20 wickets in a test to win; he is a player who can change a game in one spell of bowling. He needs to be in the team instead of Woakes. As much as I like Woakes I don’t think we need two “all rounders” as we would have with ether Jordan or Stokes in the team (who are both fighting for one place) so should Finn play then we would have three game changing fast bowlers in Anderson, Broad and that man.
Jos Buttler had a great game with both the bat and the gloves at Southampton, taking six catches and getting one run out with the gloves and with the bat he made a very quick 85 off 105 balls in the first innings. Considering this was his first ever game for England he coped very well with the pressure of replacing the once world’s best wicket keeper-batsman in Prior. Buttler looked uncomfortable behind the stumps at Old Trafford but once again with the bat he made a very impressive 70. Once Prior is fit after his operation will he return to the England team? I think it will all depend on Buttler and how his form is and how his wicket keeping has improved, it does need a lot of improvement but so did Prior’s when he first came into the England set up. I think Buttler will be one for the future, but that is only if Prior can find his form again and get back to where he was when he was the world’s best. If that happens it would be hard for the England selectors to not pick him.
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