England Cricket

To make it worse Banjo, the 'expert' reporters (old England Test players) all said that the pitch was not really bad.

I am taking that with a pinch of salt though as Panesar did take 6 wickets & he rarely takes wickets without a lot of pitch support...

England were poor & deserved to lose the first Test. Management put that down to lack of preparation in unfamiliar conditions. Their fault, basically.
It is difficult to put the fault of this loss anywhere except the home of the players.

It is difficult to see how a number of the players can expect to be picked for England again.

Well the second day of the final test between England & Pakistan has finished.
Thank goodness when the complete fiasco is over I think. As an experiment it has proved a disaster.
England have been quite awful, the pitches not anything that suggests there is a future for cricket in the Middle East & the crowds minuscule.
After the mess of the first two Tests Andy Flower made a great deal of press noise saying that he was not afraid to drop batsmen. After the debacle of 4 innings I think action was a bit more vital than words...as it turned out the same batsmen took to the pitch as previously.

Anyway, swiftly on to the facts of the game.
Pakistan won the toss & decided to bat. It proved a horrendous decision. All out for 99 in just 44 overs were the figures. Anderson took 3 & Broad 4.
England hardly troubled the scorers more though. A lead of 42, or 141 all out was the reply. As Strauss scored 56, Pietersen 32 & bowler Swann 16 the rest didn't contribute much. I guess Pietersen could claim a success as second highest scorer....I am joking...
Rehman got another 5 for & Ajmal got another 3 as spin worked again.
It seemed like it was going to be over in 3 days when Pakistan managed to lose 2 swift wickets for only 28 runs in their second innings.....but that was the end of joy for the English team.
Y Khan scored a nice 115 off a swift 195 balls (well swift scoring for Pakistan in this series) Azhar Ali made a far more leisurely 75 off 246 as Pakistan ended the day on double nelson (222) for 2. As that gives them a lead of 180 with only two down you can probably get exceptional odds on England winning this one...

Tough & long day in the field for England.
They eventually got Pakistan all out for 365, a lead of 323.
That was fairly swiftly accumulated by Y Khan who was first man out today for a tidy 127 off 221 balls. His overnight partner, Azhar Ali, was last but 1 man out. By that time he had accumulated 157 runs, but it did take a slow 442 balls to do it. For quite a while he & super fast scorer ( ), Misbah-ul-Haq, were both at the crease. That must have been a time not to miss, or maybe go for a long slow lunch, as the captained raced to 31 off just 115 runs.

England have just started to try & knock off the 300+ runs in their second innings & are currently on 14 without loss.
On a pitch that seems to need concentration & huge amount of time to accumulate runs I do wonder if any of the English batsmen actually have the will necessary to try & win the 3rd. & last game when they have already lost the series...

Well it ended yesterday, on day 4, with England slumping to a 3 nil series whitewash. The official verdict was..

Pakistan beat England by 71 runs

It was another poor display by the batsmen, especially 3, 4 & 5 again.
I know that the series was played on pitches that encouraged spin (to put it mildly ) but that should not really have come to much of a surprise to the touring party. Indeed they added Panesar who fields like a carthorse & bats only slightly better just because of that. To take batsmen who had little to show the England set up that was not already known about them & who were notoriously poor against spin is the real puzzle.
Did the England management think that Pakistani cricket was at such a low point because of player corruption issues that they would not put up a decent effort??
Is so they were rightly given a real comeuppance.

They have a series of 1 day matches against Pakistan in the Middle East before a tour of Sri Lanka at the end of March/April. One can only pray that the selectors see far greater sense when selecting that touring side then when selecting this. If the same old faces go to Sri Lanka then it is really time for another change at the top of the sport in England....