England marks out of ten for the first test

OK just for the sake of it:

Cook 5 (good fielding)
Vorn 4 (should be looking over his shoulder)
Strauss 3 (weak comeback, should be under pressure from Shah)
KP 3 (confidence looks shot)
Colly 3 (forgettable)
Bell 7 (extra points for batting with a bad hand)
Ambrose 7 (good first test innings and kept well)
SiBo 10 (great effort with no support from the senior quick men)
Hoggy 5 (undercooked)
Harmi 1 (mentally gone, time to retire to be with his kids)
Monty 6 (some 2nd dig wickets as he learned to vary pace)

Fair assessment there Rob - I might be tempted to give Colly for 5, for his first innings knock and his bowling.

England's got too soft .. until recently I thought that title went to Enzedders.

How about recruiting a few thuggish blokes from tough backgrounds. Firstly England need to seriously create a buzz about their cricket. Spit venom on the field. Get the body language right, get rascist, discriminate and target against select opposition players known for being hotheads.

Increase their marketability, go all out to create controversies and then when national pride is at stake compel players to play for England and not just to keep their place in the side.

Monty didn't actually vary his pace in the second innings. The ball just turned a bit more. He was still darting them in at just under 60mph.

For saying he's got a degree, he seems to be extraordinarily thick.

I wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on the speed at which Monty bowls. Derek Underwood bowled it a darn sight faster, and he wasn't exactly the worst spinner we ever had. And before anyone mentions uncovered pitches - IIRC, the number of tests when he got to bowl on rain damaged pitches was miniscule.

Monty just has to be confident in his own ability to know when to slip in the odd slower ball.

It's not so much the pace, as the flight. Even though Monty bowled quite quickly, he got wickets with balls he gave a bit of air. Because Monty gets such lovely dip when he's bowling well, he can afford to bowl a bit quicker than most and still bowl it up, as he can do it without it coming out a full toss. Not saying that he couldn't vary his pace a bit more, but it's the loop that's much more important. As far as I could tell from the highlights, it seemed to be slowly returning.

Agree. Commentators seem obsessed with his pace. Yet he was bowling that quick when he's been succesful. It's the flight which has disappeared IMO

I'd go:

Cook: 4 - great catches, but his day job is batting and he failed twice on a flattie.
Vaughan: 4 - Didn't cash in a start in the first innings, uninspired, negative captaincy.
Strauss - 4 - Again didn't make a big score after spending plenty of time getting in.
Pietersen - 4 - See Strauss.
Bell - 6 - Failed to deliver when it counted, again, in the first innings. Gutsy knock second time around.
Collingwood - 6 - The opposite of Bell. Gutsy in the first digs, failed when the collapse was on.
Ambrose - 6 - Kept well, batted well, ducked out nervously in the second innings carnage.
Sidebottom - 9 - England fastest, most accurate, most threatening, most committed and best bowler by miles.
Hoggard - 2 - Couldn't bowl, couldn't bat. Cracking catch in the deep, though.
Harmison - 1 - Might as well have not been there for all he offered.
Panesar - 6 - plugged away without ever really looking threatening in the way Vettori and Patel were.

Winkle Spinner wrote:It's not so much the pace, as the flight. Even though Monty bowled quite quickly, he got wickets with balls he gave a bit of air. Because Monty gets such lovely dip when he's bowling well, he can afford to bowl a bit quicker than most and still bowl it up, as he can do it without it coming out a full toss. Not saying that he couldn't vary his pace a bit more, but it's the loop that's much more important. As far as I could tell from the highlights, it seemed to be slowly returning.

Surely when you give it flight you bowl it slower? If it's looping through the air, it has to be bowled slower. When you bowl it flat (like Monty) it's fast, when you flight it (unlike Monty), it's slower. It has everything to do with pace IMO.

I'm not exactly international standard when it comes to bowling spin, to say the least, but I have bowled enough to know that flight and pace do not necessarily go hand in hand. Like I said, if you put enough work on the ball to get it to dip, then its trajectory can be higher at a fastish pace and still land on a good length. Also, the speed guns, as far as I cant tell, measure the speed of the ball and not its forward velocity. If you bowl a ball a few degrees up from the horizontal at 60 mph, then its velocity towards the batsman will be less than 60, giving the ball time to get up and get down before it lands, rather than if you'd just bowled it with a speed of 60 and flat.

Fair enough, Rip Van. I'm no expert. It just seemed logical to me that flighted balls are bowled slower. It's certainly been the case in my (fairly limited) experience.

Whenever I've tried to give the ball a bit of flight in the nets, it always lands on top of the batting cage.

Perhaps Monty's like me: ruined by the facilities, forced to bowl darts because the roof of the cage is too low.

Damn facilities.

PMSL.

Lara Lara Laughs wrote:Fair enough, Rip Van. I'm no expert. It just seemed logical to me that flighted balls are bowled slower. It's certainly been the case in my (fairly limited) experience.

I was always led to believe that the main way of flighting the ball was to put extra revs on it.

I thought extra revs were to get it to dip.