24/06/2021
Firstly a heartiest congratulations to the New Zealand boys for lifting up the First WTC. They planned exceptionally and executed it to perfection.
But arguably I saw a lot of technical errors in judgement, assessment and application on our part. Let's start with a few which I observed, the first was we forgot where we were playing, England not South Africa or Australia. In the UK the most difficult part is to adjust to the moving ball as far as batting is concerned, pace here is not much of a worry, we have seen over the years Kapil Dev, Sir Iain Botham, Terry Alderman were not super quicks, but were very effective in fact the great Past Malom Marshall said when I bowl in England I cut down on pace and try to make the ball move. so not picking Bhubaneswar Kumar( who can also bat) was a mistake, Looking at the conditions and the forecast, playing 2 spinners was a legacy, we also didn't think about the ball we were playing with, "DUKE" not "KOOKABURA" the Duke ball holds it hardness and shine for a lot longer period hence playing against a KOOKABURA ball gets easier as the innings progresses unlike the DUKE ball. Except for Shami all our 2 quicks were similar hit the deck bowlers. we have now got used to playing power cricket and bowling at 145kmph, forgotten how to play the moving ball at 135kmph, hard hands, front press., forgotten soft hands and going back and across, rather keep our feet planted because now we are used to clear our front leg to play T-20 cricket. The Kiwis were picture perfect with their planning and none of our batsman were let to drive, the got plenty to score of the back foot but the fault in their feet movement didn't allow them to do so.
Having played cricket in the Uk for 20 years at different levels it is essential to mix patience and aggression, we lacked there, we were too defensive, look at the yester years of batsmen who were successful in England, Sourav and Sachin none of them were over cautious, Rahul was an exception as none of our players can back up with the kind of flawless technique which he had.
Remember England's Test series win in India in 2013 where we couldn't handle Monty Panesar and Greame Swann, they were prepared and applied their plan.
It is going to be torrid time in UK for the next 5 tests, we have the firepower and the ability but need better application if we are to do better in the tests to come.
