Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2016 17:39:28 GMT
Michael Atherton's Times' view of England's defeat below.
He is critical of England's shortcomings today but it is balanced and nuanced and he gives full credit to Bangladesh. "If these conditions are replicated, they will challenge everyone at home," he says.
For those who can't get behind the paywall, I offer it as a counterweight to a risible piece of tabloid hysteria on cricinfo about England's "catalogue of shame" and "Halloween horror show". Atherton shows that you can be fair and truthful in criticising England without invoking visions of Armageddon. National sporting pride is a serious matter, he seems to be saying; but at close of play, it's only a game of cricket and not the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
English cricket and batting collapses go together like rum and water but rarely in the annals of the game has there been such a collapse as this. At tea, with Ben Duckett easing past a maiden half-century and Alastair Cook showing all of his old authority, the game was there for the taking. Less than two hours later it was all over.
The air hung heavy and close, with the light fading fast, the call to prayers having already drifted hauntingly over the ground in Mirpur, when Steven Finn was given out uncomprehendingly leg-before to complete the remarkable turnaround. Summing up the confusion that enveloped England in a session of mayhem, Finn looked blankly at the umpire and called for a player review even though England had none left. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
The scenes were memorable for Bangladesh’s long-suffering supporters. The ground had begun to fill in the afternoon, so that 9,000 or so were there to witness the moment, as the home team celebrated initially and then gathered in a huddle to give thanks. They had fallen at the last in Chittagong and many doubted that they had the experience, the knowledge and the wherewithal to get over the line. They did so emphatically here, validating the risky strategy of playing on pitches that spun from the outset.
Having been the whipping boys of cricket for so long, this was the most memorable day in Bangladesh’s Test history, it being only their eighth win in all, following five over Zimbabwe and two over a weakened West Indies. Losing to Bangladesh was always going to happen sooner rather than later but there should be no stigma attached to losing to this Bangladesh team in these conditions.
Bangladesh will struggle away from home because of the lack of fast bowlers, but if these conditions are replicated, they will challenge everyone at home. It may be of small consolation that Australia are even more clueless playing spin than England’s players were yesterday, although the next six weeks in India may have our Australian friends looking on with a measure of schadenfreude. It could be painful, with England no clearer about their best XI than they were before Chittagong.
Fittingly, it was the 19-year old off-spinner Mehedi Hasan who took the final wicket of the game. It gave him his third six-wicket haul in four innings, and his 19th wicket in the two-match series. Bright-eyed, full of enthusiasm and energy, not cowed by the expectations on his young shoulders, nor tainted with the defeats of the past, he was both man of the match and man of the series. His excellence put the dismal efforts of England’s spinners, who bowled only eight maidens in all, five of those by Moeen Ali, into sharp focus.
Not since Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, who took six wickets in three consecutive innings in India in 1984, or Shane Warne in the 1993 Ashes series has a relatively unknown spinner had such a mesmeric impact on England’s batsmen. Mehedi was particularly devastating against the left-handers that dominated the top order, 13 of his 19 wickets coming as a result, albeit in extreme conditions that were specifically designed to exploit traditional English weakness.
Sivaramakrishnan and Warne were wrist spinners with a little bit of “mystery”, but Mehedi is an old-fashioned finger spinner, the type of which were ten-a-penny in English cricket once upon a time - accurate, nagging, relentless - but are a rare now. What Cook would have given for such a spinner in Chittagong and Dhaka, rather than the profligate trio at his disposal?
So, while much of the immediate focus will fall on the batsmen who were blown away in the final session, there should be an accounting for the bowling and catching in the morning, which meant that England were chasing far more than ought to have been the case. It usually takes one bad session to lose a match, but England suffered two yesterday. The second was more dramatic; the first was just as troubling.
The day was in the balance when play began, Bangladesh’s lead just 128 with seven wickets remaining. Had catches been taken, had the bowling been less unreliable and had Cook chosen his reviews more wisely, England could have been chasing fewer than 230 and it would have been a very different game. As it was, four catches of varying degrees of difficulty, from the easy (Duckett at deep mid-wicket) to the very difficult (Joe Root at slip), went down with Zafar Ansari the unlucky bowler more often than not. He ended up with two wickets, but could have had five, and instead watched as Adil Rashid nipped in with four.
It was clear at this point that England were rattled. Ben Stokes was later to be fined 15 per cent of his match fee for ignoring repeated requests from the umpires to stop engaging in a verbal battle with Sabbir Rahman, a sparky young batsmen with a little of Stokes’s own penchant for a contest. As the players left the field, Bangladesh having scored 116 runs in the morning in only 29 overs, both Cook and Root were summoned for discussions with the umpires. England’s composure had gone, just as the game was going away from them, the lead a perilous 244 at this point.
The only bright point of the day was to come shortly afterwards, when Duckett and Cook set off in pursuit of what would have been England’s highest ever successful fourth-innings run chase in Asia. The context of Duckett’s remarkable and rapid half-century, full of inventive and brilliant strokeplay, should be noted. Until this point he had scored just 36 runs in three innings, with scores of 14, 15 and 7 and nothing had worked for him. Added to that, he had dropped a sitter in the deep just a short while before. It had been an undistinguished start.
Courage comes in many forms in sport. Mostly, you think of physical courage, the ability or otherwise to cope with fast bowling, for example, in cricket or the immense physical challenges in a contact sport such as rugby. Duckett’s courage was of a different kind, but just as important: the courage to stay true to himself and his instincts, so he met the challenge with an array of sweeps and reverse sweeps and one extraordinary shot against the spin of Shakib Al Hasan over mid-off for six. Duckett posted a half-century in 61 balls and - glory be - there was a century opening partnership to celebrate as well. For a while, it looked easy, and Cook allowed himself to sail along in Duckett’s slipstream.
But the lesson of cricket in this part of the world is that appearances, like the pitches, can be deceptive and the change came immediately after tea, when Duckett went back to a ball to which he ought to have moved forward. The false ease with which both openers had played soon became apparent when Root, playing forward on the wrong line, Gary Ballance and Ali all fell in single figures.
Ballance’s dismissal was especially egregious and he must now be vulnerable in a reshuffle that will surely come ahead of the opening Test in Rajkot. Given a rare loose delivery from Mehedi, a ball so short that he could have pulled or clipped it to any leg-side position, he played with no conviction, almost as if he had too much time to contemplate the consequences, and sent a leading edge soaring to mid-off. He has endured a miserable series.
With Cook, went England’s hopes. His defence and the way he structured his innings was a lesson to others, but pushing well forward, he was deceived in the flight and could only pop a catch to silly point, where Mominul Haque pounced fielding perilously close. Like all Asian teams, Bangladesh’s fielders are expert around the bat to the spinners.
Stokes sought to change things the only way he knows how, which was to meet the ball aggressively, not the easiest thing to do when some deliveries are spitting from a length, and others creeping along the floor. Now the boot was on the other foot: Mahmudullah, who had been the recipient of a decent amount of chirping the evening before when he batted, loosened his vocal chords and began to enjoy himself immensely in Stokes’s earshot at slip. Such is the creed that Stokes plays by.
The end was coming, and quickly. Jonny Bairstow was snapped up off an inside edge, and Stokes was bowled playing for spin that, for once, didn’t materialise. England moved the right-handers, Chris Woakes and Rashid, up the order ahead of the left-handed Ansari, a belated acknowledgment that the strategy of picking so many left-handers had misfired. Rashid lasted three balls only, palpably leg-before to Shakib. Ansari lasted one fewer, brilliantly caught close in again.
It was a remarkable afternoon. The only consolation was that, if every series right now seems to be a referendum on the validity of the five-day game, this was another enthralling contest.
He is critical of England's shortcomings today but it is balanced and nuanced and he gives full credit to Bangladesh. "If these conditions are replicated, they will challenge everyone at home," he says.
For those who can't get behind the paywall, I offer it as a counterweight to a risible piece of tabloid hysteria on cricinfo about England's "catalogue of shame" and "Halloween horror show". Atherton shows that you can be fair and truthful in criticising England without invoking visions of Armageddon. National sporting pride is a serious matter, he seems to be saying; but at close of play, it's only a game of cricket and not the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
English cricket and batting collapses go together like rum and water but rarely in the annals of the game has there been such a collapse as this. At tea, with Ben Duckett easing past a maiden half-century and Alastair Cook showing all of his old authority, the game was there for the taking. Less than two hours later it was all over.
The air hung heavy and close, with the light fading fast, the call to prayers having already drifted hauntingly over the ground in Mirpur, when Steven Finn was given out uncomprehendingly leg-before to complete the remarkable turnaround. Summing up the confusion that enveloped England in a session of mayhem, Finn looked blankly at the umpire and called for a player review even though England had none left. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
The scenes were memorable for Bangladesh’s long-suffering supporters. The ground had begun to fill in the afternoon, so that 9,000 or so were there to witness the moment, as the home team celebrated initially and then gathered in a huddle to give thanks. They had fallen at the last in Chittagong and many doubted that they had the experience, the knowledge and the wherewithal to get over the line. They did so emphatically here, validating the risky strategy of playing on pitches that spun from the outset.
Having been the whipping boys of cricket for so long, this was the most memorable day in Bangladesh’s Test history, it being only their eighth win in all, following five over Zimbabwe and two over a weakened West Indies. Losing to Bangladesh was always going to happen sooner rather than later but there should be no stigma attached to losing to this Bangladesh team in these conditions.
Bangladesh will struggle away from home because of the lack of fast bowlers, but if these conditions are replicated, they will challenge everyone at home. It may be of small consolation that Australia are even more clueless playing spin than England’s players were yesterday, although the next six weeks in India may have our Australian friends looking on with a measure of schadenfreude. It could be painful, with England no clearer about their best XI than they were before Chittagong.
Fittingly, it was the 19-year old off-spinner Mehedi Hasan who took the final wicket of the game. It gave him his third six-wicket haul in four innings, and his 19th wicket in the two-match series. Bright-eyed, full of enthusiasm and energy, not cowed by the expectations on his young shoulders, nor tainted with the defeats of the past, he was both man of the match and man of the series. His excellence put the dismal efforts of England’s spinners, who bowled only eight maidens in all, five of those by Moeen Ali, into sharp focus.
Not since Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, who took six wickets in three consecutive innings in India in 1984, or Shane Warne in the 1993 Ashes series has a relatively unknown spinner had such a mesmeric impact on England’s batsmen. Mehedi was particularly devastating against the left-handers that dominated the top order, 13 of his 19 wickets coming as a result, albeit in extreme conditions that were specifically designed to exploit traditional English weakness.
Sivaramakrishnan and Warne were wrist spinners with a little bit of “mystery”, but Mehedi is an old-fashioned finger spinner, the type of which were ten-a-penny in English cricket once upon a time - accurate, nagging, relentless - but are a rare now. What Cook would have given for such a spinner in Chittagong and Dhaka, rather than the profligate trio at his disposal?
So, while much of the immediate focus will fall on the batsmen who were blown away in the final session, there should be an accounting for the bowling and catching in the morning, which meant that England were chasing far more than ought to have been the case. It usually takes one bad session to lose a match, but England suffered two yesterday. The second was more dramatic; the first was just as troubling.
The day was in the balance when play began, Bangladesh’s lead just 128 with seven wickets remaining. Had catches been taken, had the bowling been less unreliable and had Cook chosen his reviews more wisely, England could have been chasing fewer than 230 and it would have been a very different game. As it was, four catches of varying degrees of difficulty, from the easy (Duckett at deep mid-wicket) to the very difficult (Joe Root at slip), went down with Zafar Ansari the unlucky bowler more often than not. He ended up with two wickets, but could have had five, and instead watched as Adil Rashid nipped in with four.
It was clear at this point that England were rattled. Ben Stokes was later to be fined 15 per cent of his match fee for ignoring repeated requests from the umpires to stop engaging in a verbal battle with Sabbir Rahman, a sparky young batsmen with a little of Stokes’s own penchant for a contest. As the players left the field, Bangladesh having scored 116 runs in the morning in only 29 overs, both Cook and Root were summoned for discussions with the umpires. England’s composure had gone, just as the game was going away from them, the lead a perilous 244 at this point.
The only bright point of the day was to come shortly afterwards, when Duckett and Cook set off in pursuit of what would have been England’s highest ever successful fourth-innings run chase in Asia. The context of Duckett’s remarkable and rapid half-century, full of inventive and brilliant strokeplay, should be noted. Until this point he had scored just 36 runs in three innings, with scores of 14, 15 and 7 and nothing had worked for him. Added to that, he had dropped a sitter in the deep just a short while before. It had been an undistinguished start.
Courage comes in many forms in sport. Mostly, you think of physical courage, the ability or otherwise to cope with fast bowling, for example, in cricket or the immense physical challenges in a contact sport such as rugby. Duckett’s courage was of a different kind, but just as important: the courage to stay true to himself and his instincts, so he met the challenge with an array of sweeps and reverse sweeps and one extraordinary shot against the spin of Shakib Al Hasan over mid-off for six. Duckett posted a half-century in 61 balls and - glory be - there was a century opening partnership to celebrate as well. For a while, it looked easy, and Cook allowed himself to sail along in Duckett’s slipstream.
But the lesson of cricket in this part of the world is that appearances, like the pitches, can be deceptive and the change came immediately after tea, when Duckett went back to a ball to which he ought to have moved forward. The false ease with which both openers had played soon became apparent when Root, playing forward on the wrong line, Gary Ballance and Ali all fell in single figures.
Ballance’s dismissal was especially egregious and he must now be vulnerable in a reshuffle that will surely come ahead of the opening Test in Rajkot. Given a rare loose delivery from Mehedi, a ball so short that he could have pulled or clipped it to any leg-side position, he played with no conviction, almost as if he had too much time to contemplate the consequences, and sent a leading edge soaring to mid-off. He has endured a miserable series.
With Cook, went England’s hopes. His defence and the way he structured his innings was a lesson to others, but pushing well forward, he was deceived in the flight and could only pop a catch to silly point, where Mominul Haque pounced fielding perilously close. Like all Asian teams, Bangladesh’s fielders are expert around the bat to the spinners.
Stokes sought to change things the only way he knows how, which was to meet the ball aggressively, not the easiest thing to do when some deliveries are spitting from a length, and others creeping along the floor. Now the boot was on the other foot: Mahmudullah, who had been the recipient of a decent amount of chirping the evening before when he batted, loosened his vocal chords and began to enjoy himself immensely in Stokes’s earshot at slip. Such is the creed that Stokes plays by.
The end was coming, and quickly. Jonny Bairstow was snapped up off an inside edge, and Stokes was bowled playing for spin that, for once, didn’t materialise. England moved the right-handers, Chris Woakes and Rashid, up the order ahead of the left-handed Ansari, a belated acknowledgment that the strategy of picking so many left-handers had misfired. Rashid lasted three balls only, palpably leg-before to Shakib. Ansari lasted one fewer, brilliantly caught close in again.
It was a remarkable afternoon. The only consolation was that, if every series right now seems to be a referendum on the validity of the five-day game, this was another enthralling contest.