England v India 3rd Test, Ageas Bowl

First topic message reminder :

Lets get in the thread early enough.
India 1-0 up and now is the time to keep up the leel of intensity.
For England a few careers might depend on a quick turnaround in fortune here.
The pitch is reported to have some green on it and is expected to be in between the ugly pathetic track for the Trent Bridge and a lively track for the 2nd test at the HQ.
Not many reports on the England xi, but there are indications that Stuart Binny will be out for India, and by reports coming in now, its Rohit Sharma who might come in.

452-5 at tea then. Pretty good session for England again, although India did slow it down for a while. Still think England should bat for another 15-20 overs and then have a crack at India this evening. Bell and Buttler are probably England's two most free scoring players so they've got the guys in to do it. Woakes, Jordan and Broad can all bat and score quickly so it's not as if England are going to get rolled over either.

hit out after tea- a quick 100 of 15 overs would be ideal and then stick them in

Bat and get them in for 10 overs at the end of the day, got two cracks with a new ball then

Hopefully reach 550-600 by then

whoops India shell another one. Again you could argue Dhoni should have gone for that, but he leaves it to Dhawan who drops it diving to his left. Let-off for Buttler.

Buttlers had as many dropped catches as Prior did at Lords

Buttler and Bell really looking to push on now.

500 up. Probably give Buttler 30 minutes to do some damage and get India in for an hour.

I live about 15 minutes drive away from the Rose Bowl, and it's started to rain pretty heavily. Hopefully the rain avoids the Rose Bowl

these last 20 minutes or so are why England fans are excited about Buttler. Admittedly he's doing it against a very flagging attack, but it's still a promising start.

Still Dhoni continues to rotate his seamers in one-over spells.

Bell gone, looks to whack Kumar back over his head but skies it to Pankaj at mid-on. Fantastic innings from Bell though. Also that means we don't have to worry about whether to give him time to get to 200...

bit of a collector's item that as Dhoni misses a stumping chance. Buttler then rubs salt into the wounds by crashing the next one through the covers for four. India's fielding has rather gone to pot here...

Duty281 wrote:Pretty confident of England's chances for this Test.

I reckon Cook or Bell will make a large score, and that the England bowlers will finally be clinical!

Going well for my pre-game prediction so far!

India well and truly under pressure, and Cook will have the rare luxury of time and runs on his side when England take to the field.

Which will be fairly soon, I imagine.

looks like England might give Buttler a couple more overs to get his 100. I suppose given England are scoring so quickly you might as well get them in the first innings...

This was a situation perfectly tailored to the abilities of Buttler and, fair play to him, he's taken full advantage.

well there'll be no debut century for Buttler, he aims a big heave at Jadeja and chops on. Still, 85 at better than a run-a-ball exactly what England wanted from him in that situation .

England, unsurprisingly, immediately declare. They'll have about 15 overs at India this evening, so that's worked out pretty well.

Plenty of cheap freebie runs for the average English batsmen. 

Buttler slogging like a punch drunk boxer. 

Bell loves batting when free runs are available.

And gone - England declare immediately.

Pretty much the perfect innings from Buttler, scoring 85 at better than a run a ball after the top order had laid the platform.

Now let's esee if we can bowl well or if the wicket is as flat as the Indians made it look.

85 on debut for Buttler. Yes he has had his good share of luck, but he yet again showed he's one to watchout for.
Not bad for a lad who was Not Ready for Test Cricket!.
England declare on 569. Big task now for the Indian batsmen.

Buttler, well yes it's tailor made, yes India were tired and waiting for the declaration. You've still gotta him 'em though.

I suspect the original plan was for England to declare on 550, but with Buttler nearing a century fair enough to give him an extra couple of overs. In the end it's made a difference of 1 over, England will have 14 overs rather than the 15 they would have had had they declared at 550.

Bell and Cook have stood up to be counted. Time for the other two seniors Anderson and Broad.

Not a nice situation for Dhawan in particular - we know he likes to get on with things, so will he just play his natural game or try to bat for close a bit? Needs to fully commit whatever he chooses.

Has Ian Bell ever scored runs without being dropped or aided by poor umpiring?

21 Test hundreds and all have been meek affairs.

India went into this game with a rather defensive mindset as they picked the additional batsman rather than the all-rounder. They had a couple of calamitous days in the field, hopefully they won't carry that defensiveness to the crease as well. Even defensive game has to be played positively. They should defend to make the bowlers bowl to them rather than for blocking out the next 3 days to save the test.
Hopefully the 2 days in the field haven't dome much psychological damage.

Michael Holding wins the "most ridiculous field suggested this year" award - I don't think anybody is going to better than one anytime soon. Any youngsters listening, please ignore him.

Dhawan looks uncertain out there.

Dhawan is a walking wicket against the moving ball

So... going to put this out there, but is Dhawan technically against pace bowling any better than Phil Hughes?

That was a dreadful poke at the ball. Although again I suspect had his head been clear he may have been tempted to play a positive shot rather than just a dab.

Nice bowling from Anderson. Not a drive ball (just saying).

Come on Jimmy - make him play!

Mike Selig wrote:So... going to put this out there, but is Dhawan technically against pace bowling any better than Phil Hughes?

That was a dreadful poke at the ball. Although again I suspect had his head been clear he may have been tempted to play a positive shot rather than just a dab.

Nice bowling from Anderson. Not a drive ball (just saying).

Shikhar has got realy problems against the moving ball. He played a determined knock in New Zealand, but he hasn't really gone consestinly well in the 3 overseas tours so far. Has got one innings probably to save his place perhaps?
But unlike Hughes Shikhar can play spin though.

Dhawan has many problems. Chief amongst them being I don't think he has the concentration span for Test cricket. I'm not calling time on his hopes as a test cricketer, but it seems a ways away before he becomes Sehwag, or indeed Sehwag lite

Good effort from Vijay. England will I think be disappointed they couldn't prise out one more. Anderson bowled well but Broad and Jordan were a bit more scatter-gun. Impressed by Woakes's over, looks to have gained a bit more ooomph, bowling the ball into the pitch with more purpose. Got a bit of swing as well.

England's day certainly, but a lot of work still to be done.

Pujara didn't look all that comfortable in the end, but he survives as does Murali Vijay.
India go to stumps at 25-1. Lots and lots of hard work for tomorrow and the dayafter. Avoiding the follo-on the first target......

Jordan seemed to suffer from lack of gametime, was a bit all over the place.

D2 observations

--India's strategy is clear.....pitch doesn't have juice.
Draw is best we can get. Right or wrong their startegy is clear.

--they are under presure
and from the time this morning first session they did not get wickets.......they were going to be under pressure.
And will continue to be till the end of this test.
Because of their self imposed cannot win lets draw startegy

--Eng's stratgy is more curious
Are they going to impose a follow-on ???
if YES then they should have batted longer...until D3 and gotten 650 or so.

--If NOT...then they needed to give themselves more time topday and declared earlier....say 30 minutes before tea....whether their score is 500 or 570...if they have to bat one more time it doesn't matter.
Which means their acceleration should have started after lunch.

--if they KNOW they will bat again......depending on match situation they could give themselves anywhere between 30 to 60 overs in second inning.

save time NOw and reserve the option to give yourself more time with bat in second inning if need be.

-should have declared 20 overs earlier.
I am afraid T1 vs Ind and T1 vs Lanka like situation awaits Cook......Ind 7 down and he runs out of time on D5

msp83 wrote:Jordan seemed to suffer from lack of gametime, was a bit all over the place.

lack of game time   

to me it looked like he lacked human legs.....w.as running on some kinda stakes instead  

is he the replacement for Stokes...who looked Eng's second best bowler at Lords second inning
Or has he replaced pLunkett...who was equal to stokes
2 changes for the sake of showing something changed because they could not dare to touch Cook and Broad.

and Woakes doesn't seem to bowl like one who belives he is priomariyl a bowler.
and if reports about Broad's fitness are true, then a considerably weakened Eng bowling this one compared to Lords

Dhawan is definitely struggling. Anderson seems to have got on top of him which doesn't help, Anderson is very very good when he senses he has the edge over an opponent (as with Thirimane for instance). There do appear to be some serious issues with Dhawan's set-up though, and whenever the ball is nipping around just a little he looks like he'll struggle.

Very good day for England, would have been a great one had they nipped another out, but they've set themselves up well. Need a big push from the bowlers tomorrow to really ram home their advantage. First time this series India have been really behind in the game, let's see how they respond...

I think Strauss actually made a decent point that England may as well get the runs while they had guys there scoring fast and in form. It is after all better that they score an extra 50 or whatever it was runs in the last 6 or so overs of this innings than it take them say 10 overs in the 2nd innings.

Also, I suspect in their minds was that they wanted a newish ball still tomorrow.

It is quite possible that had they bowled say 20 or even 25 overs India's openers (Dhawan in particular) would have played more naturally rather than hesitantly and India finished on 80odd for none.

I suspect unless it looks like that's the only option that England won't enforce a follow-on. This pitch looks like it might get a bit up and down to me.

Mike Selig wrote:I think Strauss actually made a decent point that England may as well get the runs while they had guys there scoring fast and in form. It is after all better that they score an extra 50 or whatever it was runs in the last 6 or so overs of this innings than it take them say 10 overs in the 2nd innings.

.

that is a self defeating logic
The last 6 overs could have started 26 overs earlier ( even then Eng were in a solid position)...i.e the whole acceleration process should have started about an hour and 15 minutes earlier...if Eng knew they do not intend to enforce follow-on.

they used 20 overs more today at least...and the further you go in the match keeping these 20 overs in hand the more you become aware whether you need to use these 20 overs with the bat or to bowl out India.

because India dropped shutter so early...this game time ( or overs ) have become more rlevant

Not really because the true acceleration could only really start when Buttler was settled and had his eye in. Given he came in not long before tea, about half an hour after tea was realistically the earliest that could happen.

I guess that in an ideal world England would have liked to declare 4 or 5 overs earlier, but because of the way Buttler was going, it was reasonable to bat on a bit, as Strauss explained.

Not saying they were right, just that it's not necessarily wrong logic either. World not black and white remember?

Going into the various declaration scenarrii in a bit more detail, starting from England's position overnight:

First off, England had pretty much the ideal opening session. I don't think anybody is seriously arguing England could have accelerated much more in the morning session (whether they could have scored an extra 30-50 runs yesterday is a different point which may have merit). From there England as far as I see it had basically 3 options:

1) Decide they needed to take 20 wickets to win and were planning on batting twice anyway, so they may as well start as soon as possible. Accelerate from after lunch (promoting Buttler to 6 along the way) and declare on 450-480 half an hour before tea. As far as I understand this is KPF's "extra 20 overs" scenario.

2) Play it pretty much as they did, aiming for 550ish and giving themselves 15-20 overs before the close.

3) go for the bat once strategy, so play as in the first session for the rest of the day, maybe even bat again a bit in the morning, aiming for 600+.

I do not however see how England could have reached 550 much quicker than they did. It's not an easy pitch to score quickly on when you first come in (see all the batsmen, Buttler included), so accelerating earlier would probably have left England short of that 550 mark.

My argument against 3) remains: I think the pitch will deteriorate, and with England mainly relying on 4 seamers bowling twice consecutively is not that clever.

There is a decent argument in favour of 1). It is the slightly more attacking move. It means you have to be confident enough that you're not offering your opponents a way to win the game (by getting level or in front on first innings and then a twitchy 3rd innings) and my feeling is England aren't a side with enough confidence at the moment to pull that off. Much easier for a dominant team to declare early.
My other argument against 1) is that it is easier to bat for 40 overs than 15-20; for 40 overs it is basically just bat normally, whereas I think Dhawan and even Pujara were made uncomfortable by exactly the fact that it was a short period with nothing to gain.

Of course 2) comes with various spectrum. Warne was arguing for a few less runs and a few more overs (the number of extra overs he wanted seemed to grow as the evening went on, but it started as 5-6). His argument was that if you could pick up an extra wicket in the evening then the extra 40 or 50 runs you had didn't matter. Strauss's counter argument is if you accept you're batting twice then you're going to need those runs at some stage, so you may as well get them when you've got batsmen in form smashing it all over the place than in a 2nd dig scrap; i.e. in the absolute you are scoring those runs as quickly as you can so actually gaining time by batting a bit longer.

Both arguments have merits. Strauss's argument gives England a newer ball in the morning, but makes the game into a bit of a mathematical equation and ignores that not all overs are equal, so that just because mathematically you are giving yourself maybe 5 extra overs to get the wickets doesn't mean you are more likely to do so.

As I say, there are plus and minus points to all of the various scenarii. Neither is absolutely right, and neither absolutely wrong. That remains the case whatever happens next.

For what it's worth I would probably have declared one over earlier. 85 not out is far enough from a ton that you can declare with a guy on it.

The thing is with Warne, he was saying earlier in the day how he hoped England didn't bat too long so that they didn't have the normal 5 overs at the end, but instead should give themselves 15. Then when England did that(near enough), he was saying England should have declared earlier.

Sometimes I think warne likes to criticise for the sake of it. If england had declared earlier he would probably be saying that they should have batted longer to give england two goes with the new ball.

Mike, I thought may be England should have gone for option 3 though your argument against it is a very valid one. Even when Buttler got out, they had Woakes who is a good batsman, and Jordan and Broad who are bowling all-rounders. Perhaps they should have batted on and push pass 600. Scoring 400 to avoid the follow-on is a huge ask, and a significant psychological barriers as well. Unless there is a dramatic collapse from India, it won't be easy for England to bowl them out cheaply on this track, though the follow-on target is still very stiff.
If India bat some 110 overs more, they would be close to that follow-on target, and Cook might have to bat again even if India can't go pass the follow-on mark. Then Cook will have to bat again and bat long enough to set a safe enough 4th innings target on a 5th day pitch with Moeen Ali as his led spinner with the track expected to spin a bit.
So tomorrow will be a massive day in deermining the direction of the game.
If India can survive the day with at least 4 wickets remaining, then they go a long way in saving the test match. But if they can't last the day, the series lead would in all likelihood be gone by lunch on day 5.

England declared just at the right time for me, maybe would've had 3-4 more overs to get over 600 

Declaring earlier would've been nonsense, make your runs in the first innings while you can and apply scoreboard pressure

Moeen Ali could be in trouble after wearing wristbands in support of Palestine.

My view can perhaps best be expressed by this tweet from Peter Miller: "The ICC need to concentrate more on not appointing people under investigation for corruption as chairman, and less on wristbands"

Somewhat less flippantly...

The idea that sports and politics shouldn't mix doesn't work. Countries have long used their hosting of major sporting events to show off their political clout and continue to do so (going back to the German olympics in 1936, and carrying on to Russia hosting pretty much everything, to the use of the London Olympics by both political parties here in the UK). Boycotts of events or countries have had their effect (apartheid South Africa being the obvious example). And athletes are in a privileged position whereby they can make statements publicly to billions of people and due to their celebrity probably get away with it.

We cannot applaud the gay kiss at the opening ceremony of the commonwealths, orthe various rainbow signs worn more or less subtely and the World athletics last year, or (admittedly in retrospect) the black power salute, and then shout about somebody making a political statement which is somehow more blurred, or with which we may even disagree, unless it is offensive in an obvious way (by being racist, or islamophobic, or anti-semitic, or homophobic, etc.).

As far as I understand Moeen Ali's two wristbands read "Save Gaza" and "Free Palestine". I have no wish to enter the debate over the rights and wrongs of both sides involved in the mess in Gaza (and I suspect this post would quickly be deleted if I did), but I cannot see that you could construe either of those messages as being anti-semitic. Similarly somebody wearing a wrist-band with "Israel has a right to defend itself" or "6 million dead - never forget" could not be said to be Islamophobic.

I don't believe Andy Flower or Henry Olonga were banned for their black armband stunt in the WC. Everybody applauding their stand then should agree that Ali has the right to make his stand now, even if they don't agree with his position.

To return to my flippancy, for the ICC to consider lecturing anybody about morals pushes my irony boat out a long long long way.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india-2014/content/story/765187.html

ICC are looking into the matter. The relevant ICC code reads: "Players and team officials shall not be permitted to wear, display or otherwise convey messages through arm bands or other items affixed to clothing or equipment unless approved in advance by the player or team official's Board. Approval shall not be granted for messages which relate to political, religious or racial activities or causes." and going by that Moeen could well be facing a fine. ECB are arguing that his statement was "humanitarian not political" which is probably stretching things a little, but I'm pleased they've stood up for him.

An excellent post by Mike, to which I have little to add . The old saying "Sports and politics don't mix" has always seemed a little odd to me, given that they patently do, and always have. Also it seems to usually be the line trotted out by (ironically) sports "politicians" when trying to basically cover their rear-ends...

Moeen Ali should not have worn an arm band or wrist band like that if he did,

you not only should ideally not mix religion or politics with sports.....but if you do do you must bear in mind the popular sentiment in your country and your own country's stand on the issue.

I think Moeen Ali is in trouble here. Not only is he likely to be fined.
He will be implicitly branded

Duty281 wrote:

Olly wrote:

Duty281 wrote:Pretty confident of England's chances for this Test.

I reckon Cook or Bell will make a large score, and that the England bowlers will finally be clinical!

Wish I could share such optimism Duty!

Hampshire's groundsman has said he expects to pitch to be spinning a lot by day five. Gotta have a bat first I reckon, don't wanna be batting last against Jadeja/Ashwin (who should come in for Binny)

We'll be fine lad!

The second Test defeat is the short sharp shock that England need to jolt them back into the better times.

Congrats on your predictions regarding Cook and Bell   but this match is well heading to a draw, just look at English run rate abysmal on the first day somehow recovered by Butler, Ballace and Bell , my prediction is Pujara to bat the full 3rd day out and make a big score and even take a first innings lead.   

KP_fan wrote:Moeen Ali should not have worn an arm band or wrist band like that if he did,

you not only should ideally not mix religion or politics with sports.....but if you do do you must bear in mind the popular sentiment in your country and your own country's stand on the issue.

I think Moeen Ali is in trouble here. Not only is he likely to be fined.
He will be implicitly branded

Why? And does that make the times when sport has had a visual and positive impact on politics (Apartheid, Black power salute, Flower and Olonga's "death of democracy" gesture, the homosexual kiss, etc.) worng? Most of these gestures were certainly against the country's stand on the issue... As Mike says, once you accept the right of people to make these sorts of statements you can't pick and choose just because you don't agree with some of the messages. Also, as far as I know, the UK doesn't really have a stand on the Gaza issue (admittedly I don't live there so not hugely certain) beyond "let's not upset the US" maybe? As for popular sentiment, I'm sure most sensible people identify with the suffering in Gaza, though like Mike I don't think it's sensible to get into a political discussion here.

Moeen will probably be fined given the ICC's strange sense of ethics, but I'm happy the ECB is defending him on the issue. I don't think he'll be "implicitly branded" anything other than a proud Muslim, something we all already knew anyway...

Ali might end up getting fined, but I don't see why that should be.

Well England have backed their man. Which is the right thing to do. I've got my own opinion on the Gaza matter, which I also suspect would be quite rightly deleted.

I hope Moeen Ali gets banned for a test or two. Disgraceful stuff.

Now how's today going to go? I had a dream that India were 89/4 at lunch, so I'll hope for that!

Duty281 wrote:I hope Moeen Ali gets banned for a test or two. Disgraceful stuff.

Now how's today going to go? I had a dream that India were 89/4 at lunch, so I'll hope for that!

Why disgraceful?