There has been some good test cricket this test summer, but most (not all) innings seem to follow a certain pattern.
1) Flurry of wickets with new ball so that there are around 3 or 4 down fairly quickly.
2) Mid order recovery, balls gets old, batting side gets up to about 250.
3) New ball taken, followed by another clatter of wickets falling.
4) Then tail wags as ball gets a bit older, and bowlers get tired.
This seems to happen at the moment around 90% of the time, advantage ultimately with home side who have wickets prepared to suit them, and the games rarely last past 4 days.
Pretty much agree but at least it’s better than the “Golden Days” when the side that batted first made 550 on a flat pitch then the opposition tried, usually in vain, to make it through the last three days. Whilst the bish-bash-bosh can sometimes get too much and middle-order collapses seem compulsory was it really that great to watch the likes of Boycott bat for endless hours whilst his captain prayed that the promised rain was a-coming?
True. Ideally, it would be somewhere in between with a little less predictability.
That reminds me of a remark Ian Botham made in question of sport. The question I think was which cricketer was the first to reach a hundred first class centuries. The answer was Geoffrey Boycott. Botham didn’t get it right but when the answer was announced he said ‘thank God I didn’t have to watch them all’
Somebody wrote recently about how their roles were reversed once they retired and became commentators. The brilliant, flamboyant one became a bore while the bore may not have exactly become a brilliant and flamboyant commentator, but certainly a more interesting one.
Sir Geoffrey was the first to make his 100th century in a test match. Many batsmen had scored 100 hundreds before him.
I think this has actually been a pretty good series and while each innings might tend to the predictable who has been top has swung to and fro pretty frequently. Bumrah is a real discovery, SAM Curran a joy, the Buttler redemption, fin de Cook, Kohli giving a good impression of a man carrying an entire batting lineup. Nothing does subplot like a good test series.
And Pant – great name – crazy diving keeper guy. The trials of Keaton.
Subplots agogo.
I agree, it’s been an absolutely fascinating series. More twists and turns than the proverbial.
Jasprit Bumrah is surely the best name in cricket ever. With one of the strangest actions for a bowler?
I swear I could bowl faster than Bumrah. Until he actually bowls of course. In twenty years he’ll need a shoulder op for sure
He has the weirdest run up too. There’s a little hesitation a few steps in, like he’s just remembered something else really important that he’s supposed to be doing instead
I was at The Oval on Friday sitting square on to the wicket and, it looks like he’s trying to imitate a horse- but like a five year old would do. Most amusing !
One day he’ll forget to let go of the ball and his arm and shoulder will go hurtling down the crease.
I used to have a kid in my class who would have “toileting issues”. His run to the toilet was almost identical to Bumrah’s run-in – except for the one hand covering his posterior which he generally employed, sadly to little effect.
Thought this was the most entertaining series for a good while – a shame there’s no more tests in England now until late July!!
Why is that? Cricket scheduling in England seems to be a complete mess. There was hardly any test cricket this year in June and July I think, then it is all crammed into a few weeks with apparently random days of the week to start on.
I liked the old days when all tests started on Thursday, and you also knew on which days county cricket and limited overs games would be played.
Next year is the Cricket World Cup in England in June. I’m in the ballot for Eng v Ind at Edgbaston. Fingers crossed. Probably end up watching NZ/SA.
Well that’s worthwhile I suppose although, unlike other sports, it isn’t the pinnacle of achievement in cricket.
Ballot result in – didn’t get eng v India but did get NZ v Pak –
Reasonable price and unsurprising given demand
No ‘seems to be’ about it. There was a conscious decision this year to have a block of international white ball cricket in midsummer (including a pointless 5 match series against a less than half strength Australian team), which meant that the India tests were crammed into 7 weeks.
The domestic schedule is an utter shambles. The Championship is basically crammed into April and September when the conditions are loaded in favour of the dobbers (and they wonder why England is stuggling for top order batsmen and spin bowlers). Meanwhile, the height of summer is given over to T20 slogging. And then they’ve got the farce that will be the 100 ball nonsense to shoehorn in as well from 2020.
Newsflash: As I type, Jimmy Anderson has just taken the 10th Indian wicket to win the test, and go past Glenn McGrath to become the highest wicket taking seam bowler in test history. Not bad for a Lanky…
Count, you seem knowledgeable about these things – why the varying starting days for Tests this Summer? I don’t think it has helped ticket sales
I think it’s something to do with the ICC regulations that require a specific number of days between Test matches – so if one is due to finish on a Tuesday, the next cannot begin until the Sunday. I agree that it doesn’t help sell tickets, although it seems that over 100,000 have watched the excellent match that has just finished. And I’m not sure that the series has been predictable as posited in the OP – there have been three magnificent matches and two one-sided contests which is a pretty good ratio for a five match series. I’m not sure how England have won 4-1 with their top order collapses but how wonderful to see Alistair Cook bow out with a hundred – I cannot think of a more admirable cricketer to have played the game and provided such a fine role model over so many years. He will be sorely missed.
The ICC regulation is that there must be a gap of at least 3 days between the scheduled final day of one test and the first day of the next, to allow a reasonable rest period between games. In effect, this means that if one game starts on a Thursday, the next cannot start earlier than the following Friday.
This does lead to situations like this year when the Trent Bridge test started on a Saturday, which is not ideal for the hosts, as the peak days for attendances and especially corporate sales are normally Thursday and Friday (so the suits can have 2 days on the piss whilst still getting paid).