Everyone is crucifying the bowlers. I think the bowlers have performed well. The batsmen haven't scored enough runs simple as that
I totally agree.
Elequently put here by Scyld Berry in the Telegraph (p.s. decline and fall is a reference to a book by Evelyn Waugh - worth a read if you don't know it)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9486591/England-v-South-Africa-Decline-and-fall-of-batsmen-behind-fall-from-summit-of-Test-cricket.htmlEngland v South Africa: Decline and fall of batsmen behind fall from summit of Test cricket
Assuming that England do not score 330 runs on the final day, against the world’s best pace attack, their demotion from No 1 in the world Test rankings will have to be attributed primarily to their batsmen.
Every one of England’s batsmen has averaged less in this calendar year than in their overall Test careers. Since England went to No 1 last autumn their bowlers, Broadly and Andersonly speaking, have maintained their standard; their batsmen have under-performed.
The decline began in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, when Pakistan’s bowlers entangled England’s batsmen in the webs they spun, and none has emerged from that slump for long, except the absentee Kevin Pietersen. What Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman began, South Africa’s pace bowlers have maintained with their speed, bounce, lateral movement and horribly astute game plans.
The batsmen in this England side have scored four Test centuries, in addition to the two by Pietersen, starting in January. Even if Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell score brilliant hundreds today, this productivity is not sufficient. As it stands, England have scored six Test hundreds in their 11 Tests this year, against the 12 scored against them.
Andrew Strauss’s average has been 33 this year, compared to his overall 43. He made two hundreds against the West Indies, but their opening bowlers did not go around the wicket as Morne Morkel has done and bowl full-length balls amid the short stuff. Nobody had, in his England career, until this series.
Alastair Cook’s technique has been similarly dissected. He has been dragged half-forward and trapped by the fullish ball swinging back in. His Test average is still a proud 47, but this year it is down to 36.
To start them off on the highest successful run-chase in their history, England needed one of their top-order left-handers, Strauss or Cook, to do a Mark Butcher. None of the players who knocked off 332 against Australia in 1928-29, England’s highest run-chase to date, is alive to tell the tale; but Mark Butcher, who scored 173 out of the 315 to beat Australia at Headingley in 2001, has been watching this match.
Butcher batted with sublime fluency after Adam Gilchrist, Australia’s vice-captain, had felt obliged to set England a last-day target after rain. The vocabulary of Australia’s official captain Steve Waugh, injured for that game, did not contain the phrase ‘sporting declaration’.
The trajectory of Jonathan Trott’s career graph has inevitably gone downwards after he started with England’s highest-ever batting average.
The centuries have dried up. He might make another today, but if he does it is more likely to be a match-saver than a match-winner: scoring six runs off 39 balls in the intensity of last evening was Herculean in itself, and South Africa will have a second new ball at their disposal soon after tea.
If England’s third-wicket pair do put a partnership together, the South Africans can always dry up the runs as they are the past masters of attritional bowling. Even when Morkel and Dale Steyn are resting, the tourists will have Vernon Philander reverse-swinging the old ball, or Jacques Kallis bowling outside off stump, or Imran Tahir bowling round the wicket from the Nursery End into the rough.
When chasing down 332 to defeat Australia at Melbourne, England had time on their side. They scored at the leisurely pace of 2.07 runs an over, and got home on the seventh day of a timeless Test. Today they have to score at 3.6 per over.
Bell knows that he owes England today because he has under-performed more than any of their regular batsmen this year, averaging 33 against his normal 47.
He has rather ‘lost’ his off stump since being bowled while leaving a ball from Kallis at the Oval; and it was his two drops against the West Indies at Edgbaston that started England’s run of fallible fielding.
Being in their early twenties, James Taylor and Jonny Bairstow know plenty about run-a-ball run-chases. But today’s bowling will be quicker than anything they have faced in domestic cricket, the fielders will be sharper and none of them will have to field inside semi-circles. Taylor, Bairstow and Matt Prior will chase so long as they are in, but it is not only history that is stacked against them.
So it goes on, downwards. The batting outputs of Prior, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, and James Anderson are all down this year. Tim Bresnan has tailed off most of all, his batting average down 16 points, his bowling average up 16 points.
To set against Bairstow and Steven Finn, the only players in this England side to have grown in this series, South Africa have had plenty kicking on: Alviro Petersen, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers as a keeper/batsman, J P Duminy, Philander and, above all, Morkel. When taking over as the No1 Test side on Monday, South Africa are entitled to feel they have the growth potential to remain there longer than England.
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Topic: Rebuilding the England team (Read 12901 times)