With the series already lost, England would seek to restore some pride in the final One-dayer
Jos Buttler came for the pre-match press conference ahead of the second ODI in Cuttack. He spoke with humility and candour, describing the IPL as his “best cricket experience”. Roy and Buttler represent the new-age England cricketers—fresh-faced, fearless and without the fabled stiff upper lip. They prefer to bat with aggression.
In endgame, Ajinkya Rahane senses a rare opening
Roy gave India enough trouble in both the ODIs. His 61-ball 73 with 12 fours in Pune had set up his team’s total, 350. His 73-ball 82 at Barabati was better. The hosts had been on tenterhooks till the penultimate over even after posting 381. And if Eoin Morgan had kept the game alive at the death, Roy’s rollicking start provided him with the platform to launch an assault.
For Roy, however, it was a case of leaving the job half-done on both occasions. Daddy tons would have served England a lot better. As England return to the venue of their World T20 final heartbreak, Roy rued the missed opportunities. “I’m never happy with just a good start. A good start is a good start but winning games is obviously at the forefront of my mind. So I have to be a bit disappointed getting out at the 70s and 80s,” he said, on the eve of the third ODI here on Sunday.
Squad depth
England’s squad depth allows them to bring in an assured limited-overs hand like Sam Billings in place of the injured Alex Hales. Billings had opened in one game in Bangladesh and scored a half-century. His ODI strike-rate is 110.94. In many ways, Buttler should have been England’s X-factor in this series, because of his experience in Indian conditions and batting range. Buttler is yet to get a half-century in the series. Even KL Rahul had confessed about India’s uncertainty, when the England middle-order batsman was in the middle. Indian camp’s respect quotient for a non-Asian batsman on subcontinent pitches is usually not high, unless a great or a special player is in business. Rahul’s comment for this young England team was respectful.
Yes, they are trailing the three-match ODI series 2-0. But England’s approach, the free-spiritedness in their batting, has won many hearts. Unlike the Australians that came here in 2013 and gave the hosts a run for their money before losing the seven-match ODI series 3-2—two matches were abandoned because of bad weather—the Poms don’t have a truckload of (IPL) experience of playing in these conditions. Unlike the Saffers, who won the T20 and ODI series in India in 2015, they don’t have the world’s greatest-ever limited-overs player or a retinue of limited-over exponents either. The English touring party doesn’t have a superstar. They are thriving in collective effort, batting-wise, and making serious impressions, adverse results notwithstanding.
With a bit more disciplined bowling, England could have been up 2-0 by now. In the first ODI, they had India on the mat, accounting for four wickets inside the first 12 overs. That they let the game slip and wilted in the face of Kohli’s class and Kedar Jadhav’s counter-punch was basically down to their spin-bowling mediocrity. Adil Rashid leaked 50 runs in five overs. Moeen Ali gave away 48 in 6.1. In the three matches Rashid had played against Bangladesh earlier this season, he took 10 wickets at 14.50.
But only five scalps at 45.40 in five games against South Africa last year highlighted his struggles against superior opponents. The leggie appears too innocuous to make an impact against heavyweights like India. Ali’s career average, 46.23, suggests he can, at best, be a batting allrounder and never a frontline spinner. Little wonder then that England picked five quicks for the second ODI, ignoring a Barabati featherbed and giving their lone tweaker only six overs.
In a spin
Not many moons ago, Graeme Swann had bemoaned how spinners were treated as “third-class citizens” in England. There’s a mounting allegation that the counties don’t encourage their spinners . They are happy with bits and pieces. Roy begged to differ. “No, we have got some good spin bowlers. We don’t disregard it at all. We have got a few good young players coming through and it’s just the way it is. Just the way cricket goes, we don’t have the amount of spin bowlers that India do. Their bowlers are terrific, but no, I think we have got the skill and ability to put it into play.”
All said and done, a quality spinner remains England’s missing piece of the jigsaw, but this side with an average age of 26, has all the other ingredients to be become world-beaters. At 25 for three in the last match, the visitors had an opening. But Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni slammed the door shut with a 256-run fourth wicket partnership. England played into their hands by bowling too many boundary balls.
They conceded 120 in the last 10 overs as the fast bowlers repeatedly missed the yorker-length. In comparison, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, was consistent with his yorkers at the death and conceded only 40 runs in his final five overs. In the end, it proved to be decisive.
It’s not easy to bowl yorkers when a cricket ball becomes like a soap cake because of dew. Bhuvneshwar Kumar revealed how India had prepared to counter the problem. “It was difficult. But before that (Cuttack) match, at the start of the series, we practised bowling (yorkers) with the wet ball. That was one of the plans to execute in pressure situations.”
At the Eden Gardens nets on Saturday, Woakes was repeatedly aiming the base of the middle stump with coach Trevor Bayliss keeping a close eye. The consistency he showed was impressive. Getting it right under pressure and in front of 65,000 fans would be a different ball game, though.
PS: On a hot April evening last year, in the World T20 final at Eden, world had turned upside down for Ben Stokes. He had 19 runs to defend in the final over and victory looked firmly in sight. He conceded four sixes in his first four balls as a lower-order West Indies batsman, hitherto unknown and answering to the name of Carlos Brathwaite, became a hero. Stokes sat on his haunches, devastated.
The bad memory is now akin to the water under the Howrah Bridge. The England allrounder looked intense at the nets . This game can be a great leveller and Stokes would like to be in the thick of it – the facile nature of this contest, a dead rubber, notwithstanding.
கருத்துகள் இல்லை:
கருத்துரையிடுக