Sri Lanka 2007: Fraser and Brenkley at the Test - Galle, day three
Bedraggled, bewildered, shortly to be beaten. When a huge afternoon storm hit Galle, England were 61 for six, in supposed pursuit of Sri Lanka's total of 499 for 8 declared. That represented something of a recovery from 33 for six. It was a limp, ill-disciplined effort by a side kept in the field for more than two days. To be confronted, as they were, by two bowlers, one of whom was swinging it hugely (Chaminda Vaas) and the other of whom was peppering them with extremely rapid, accurate short balls (Lasith Malinga) was not what they wanted. They weren't up to it and they looked frayed and shattered. Even Gus Fraser may assume that it will be hard for England to save it from here. Sri Lanka have been, pure and simple, the better side. And no harm in that.
Only rain can save England from a 2-0 series defeat. It is hard to remember a more one-sided session than that this morning. Sri Lanka scored 115-2 in 20 overs and England were 22-4 at lunch.
There was an air of inevitability about England's batting - how often does a team battered in to the soil then capitulate with the bat. Inevitably there is a run out somewhere too and that moment summed up the difference between the two sides.
It was always felt there was more in the pitch than met the eye and that England's bowlers had not bowled particularly well. It is not a 61-2 pitch but Vaas has shown what can be achieved if you bowl staright and on a good length.
Posted by: Angus Fraser | 20 December 2007 at 09:58 AM
There are bound to be some recriminations, there always are after defeats. It was known that this England side are a work in progress and that it is invariably hard to do well on the sub-continent. But it has been a hard, hard struggle since they had the home side at 42 for five on the first morning of the series. The question that now begs itself is: is there sufficient talent and desire in this side for it to improve sufficiently to win series home and away against good sides including you know who? Or will changes be needed? Selectorial loyalty can only go so far. England have had an extremely indifferent Test year.
Posted by: Stephen Brenkley | 20 December 2007 at 10:07 AM
England have had a pretty ordinary Test year, although India are a very good side, as are Sri Lanka, especially at home. England's aim, obviously, is to win the two series they will now have lost but who should go and who should replace them.
England's bowlers? Hoggard and Harmison have been around for a long time, do they go? Should Panesar and Sidebottom because their figures here are not very good?
Prior - he kep well in the first two Tests and has played two important innings.
What about Vaughan as captain? In a soon to be printed interview in The Independent Collingwood says he is not ready for the Test job yet.
Cook, Pietersen, Bell?
Lots of questions but not many answers. Broad, Denly, Hildreth, Rashid - are they more likely to bring Test victories? I don't think so.
England can't be complacent and loyalty can only go so far but change for changes sake?
Posted by: Angus Fraser | 20 December 2007 at 10:27 AM
Agreed. But these players have not performed as well as they ought to have done. They had Sri Lanka by the throat in Kandy. Here, they did not respond as they should have done. The four players you mention - Broad perhaps apart, and who can with proper handling have a glittering future - are not yet ready.
Vaughan is the obvious captain and two series after this against a weak New Zealand side should temporarily bolster his position. South Africa later in the summer will be extremely tough to beat. That's the worry - for all their occasional posturing England have been soft when it mattered.
Posted by: Stephen Brenkley | 20 December 2007 at 10:43 AM
England have underperformed at crucial points but is that softness. Sometimes you have to accept that you are up against a better opponent. No side is close to Australia but the next five or six compete quite nicely with each other. Four years ago England lost in India and drew at home, the last time it was the other way round. All you can gleam from it is that India are a slightly better side than England.
England won in South Africa and drew with them at home. South Africa stuffed India at home. It is very hard to judge who is better than who. I suppose the rankings try to do that but they do little for me. How can a team slip from second to fifth after losing one game?
Ultimately England miss Flintoff, Trescothick and Jones, even possibly Ashley Giles. Those that have replaced them are not quite as good. Hoggard and Harmison are getting older too. Sadly I do not have a manifesto that corrects all these issues. Do you?
Posted by: Angus Fraser | 20 December 2007 at 11:06 AM
I agreee with Mr Brenkley that England's team have shown a soft under belly when push has come to shove which is a complete contrast with the team of the two years previous to this one.
Nasser Hussain's greatest achievement was to instill some real toughness in England sides so that when their backs were to the wall - and they often were - his team refused to roll over.
It continued with Vaughan's first side when the likes of Hussain, Graham Thorpe and Alec Stewart were still around and was taken on by the side that came to a halt in 2005. The question is whether this current team who have all joined the England bubble since its upward curve have the same obdurate abilities as their predecessors. On the basis of some of the shot selections and dismissals in this series possibly not.
Posted by: David Watkins | 20 December 2007 at 11:12 AM
No manifesto here, though I wasn't on the Schofield Review charged with having one. Should we set up another panel? As I said at the outset no harm (indeed no shame) in being beaten by a better side. But the fact is that England have been in decline since the Ashes win. DW seems to have a sensible point. Gus, England want tough cricketers, which is different from talent and flair, and Sri Lanka have shown themselves to be tougher, have they not?
Posted by: Stephen Brenkley | 20 December 2007 at 11:20 AM
In reply to Mr Watkins comments - I do not believe nay of those he mentions won The Ashes, the toughest contest to win. Yes Nasser was needed to give English cricket a kick up the backside, but with that in place the more relaxed attitude of Vaughan allowed the players to express themselves in a way they were afraid to under Hussain.
England's obduracy under those players was created by the selfish, unsuccessful period that preceded Nasser's reign, a relatively miserable time for English cricket. Do we need to go back to the dark days of the nineties to produce another group of these cricketers?
The Schofield reviews brief was to look at England's cricket for the previous four years and to make recommendations over structure, schedules etc that will hopefully produce a successful team in the future. There were no specifics about picking a certain side, that is up to the selectors. Even we, with our vast array of skills, could not magic up a Murali.
Sri Lanka have been tougher than England and they have outplayed them when it mattered most.
Posted by: Angus Fraser | 20 December 2007 at 11:54 AM
Quite. No shame at all. But England could, maybe should have been tougher. They can partially redeem themselves by displaying some fighting qualities in the second innings.
Posted by: Stephen Brenkley | 20 December 2007 at 12:00 PM
I agree. Excuses should not be made and hopefully they will put up a better show second time round, although I bet Phil Neale, the team manager, is looking at flights out of Colombo on Friday night.
Posted by: Angus Fraser | 20 December 2007 at 12:12 PM
Well, I know that Sri Lanka is a "tough" tour, but this really is a wake-up call for England. How often have the current players vowed to improve, and failed to do so? How many columns have we seen pledging to start again with more purpose? Yes, it was hot, yes, it was humid, yes, they were tired. All true - and all a chance for a team to fight, compete, refuse to give in. Australia would have fought bitterly - although I doubt their current attack would have done much better that England. The bowlers can't be blamed for this, with the exception of Panesar, who seems to have learned little or nothing. How many catches were spilled off Sidebottom alone? No, the blame goes to bad, at times appalling, fielding, coupled with batting that lacked discipline and concentration. This is not new - England have shown a willingness to collapse in recent years that is simply depressing. They have lost series that should have been drawn, and that is what is dropped them from being worth the number 2 slot to deserving number 5. England need some real change in the system as a whole - not juggling a couple of players. The system behind the team is not competitive enough, and so mediocrity clogs the county game, coupled with mercenary Kolpaks who are played by counties too lazy, too poor, or too complacent to really work on, train, and develop young English players. Until we cut the number of counties, make the new teams financially viable, get rid of one of the sillier competitions, and really make players and their development a priority, we are wasting our time, and our teams will continue to underperform. Equally, I think we need more time for dedicated practice, rather than playing every possible day of cricket. You can't improve or develop in mid-game - that's what nets, practice, training are for. But how can you ask anyone to put in more hours when they are being overworked to begin with?
Posted by: olympian | 21 December 2007 at 01:07 AM
The Aussie media is loving every minute of this debacle. Invariably, they don't bother covering the England team on tour but their newsreaders are smirking their way through this disgraceful performance.
Firstly, I think it needs to be mentioned that there are a number of players on tour who do not wish to be in Sri Lanka. The most obvious case is Harmison. We witnessed some hostile, short pitched pace bowling from Malinga who extracted much life out of, what looked like, a benign pitch. What did we get from Harmison? Medium pacers, barely quicker than Vaas and certainly without the variation of Chaminda. It's hard to recollect more than a couple of his deliveries going above the knee roll let alone the waist. Good bye Steve; you have been picked on the back of those cheap wickets against a dreadfully poor West Indies in 2004 for far too long. It's time to put you out to pasture in the meadows of Durham and leave you to the less testing demands of county cricket.
It is worrying that our 'pace' (sic) attack is so heavily reliant on two medium pace swing bowlers. No matter how well Hoggard and Sidebottom have bowled in the past what options does Vaughan have when they don't perform?
I really thought the days of the major batting collapse were over for England as we seem to have a talented and strong middle order. Alas, this optimism seems to have been misplaced. Batting is as much about mental application as scoring runs and only Bell and Collingwood seem to have that grit and determination to bat session through session.
Unfortunately, Matt Prior is becoming a liability. Many people got on his band wagon recently after performing admirably with the bat but his main job is to keep competently behind the stumps and this he has failed to do for a considerable amount of time now.
And finally, to Monty who has endured a torrid and frustrating test series. I'm not quite sure why he has struggled on these wickets. Agreed, the Sri Lankans have played him with consumate ease but he does seem to bowling too flat and fast. However, I find it hard to witness, when he is showing signs of angst, that not one senior player wanders over to him, puts a comforting arm around his shoulders and offers advice or suggestions.
We do not deserve to get anything out of this test and that includes a draw. The Sri Lankans have played positive, aggressive cricket in the spirit of the game and shown a shambolic England exactly how a test match can and should be approached.
Posted by: Rick Parker | 21 December 2007 at 01:18 AM
I suspect that English sporting culture suffers from a double-bind. We are not competing on the playing field at home - too many counties, too many mediocre players, too many foreign imports to save money and effort - but we are far too competitive when it comes to discussing the team, reviewing their performance, and thinking about the future. This is true in cricket, football, rugby - any major team sport you care to name. We underinvest in the crucial areas - developing players who had to fight for their places in the league/county game, and then we spend far more time (and money) hammering them for their failures. Until English sport reverses this equation, we are going to see overhyped players being punished for being the products of mediocre, badly organized, shoddily run systems. There is no "natural" reason why Australia play better. They are built from the same basic human material, not alien genetic samples. The difference is that they have to fight extremely hard to get into their state teams, have to play on true, honest pitches that make you either bowl genuinely fast, spin the ball with some real venom, or be extremely accurate. Added to which, the kookaburra is a mediocre ball - but it does force bowlers to a higher level of craft and discipline, precisely because it gives them so little to work with. In England, there are too many counties, pitches are often too helpful, the Duke ball is much more seamer-friendly, and so we produce medium-pace bowlers, poor spinners, and batsmen who have not developed the technique to play high-quality bowling, or the patience to fight for every run. In Australia, if you don't perform, you don't last. In England, you become a county pro, with a modest average, limited skills, and no reason to develop your game. These are the problems we face - and which we have done nothing to resolve.
Posted by: anotherdayanotherduck | 21 December 2007 at 01:42 AM