South Africa suffer from Lord's curse

Since 2000, there have been 7 instances where the touring team sent England in to bat at Lord's. The data is fairly emphatically indicative of the fact that touring teams almost always get it wrong when they opt to field first at Lord's. This is something I mentioned in a post on AOL's cricket blogs section last year before the India v England test at Lord's.

I probably don't have the stats to back me up, but I've seen many visiting teams (not named Australia) flounder at Lord's and opting to bowl first. Then they repent for a couple of days. After that, they realise that the pitch has changed character and the game is out of their grasp before either of the two captains can say 'inexperienced bowling attack'.

England's first innings scores have been 391, 187, 472, 173, 568, 553 & 593. Only Australia (2001) & South Africa (2003) shot out England for a low score.

There're far too many people who're credited with having given advice to the effect of "If you win the toss, you should bat first 9 times out of 10. On that one other instance, you think again, and bat first." I read a similar line in Ashley Mallett's book featuring Ian Chappell - "Chappelli Speaks Out" a couple of weeks ago and Mike Brearley's "The Art of Captaincy". I've also seen this sort of quote attributed to the likes of Richie Benaud & Don Bradman.

That last total of 593 came in the on-going England v South Africa test, the first of an eagerly awaited series. Graeme Smith sent England in and watched with horror as his bowlers failed to pick up a wicket before lunch on day one and England piled up 309/3 at stumps on the first day. First, Kevin Pietersen got a century in his first test against South Africa. He now has 13 centuries from 74 innings, the most for any current English batsman not named Michael Vaughan (assuming that Trescothick is unlikely to make a comeback).

Ian Bell is actually the interesting part of this post. He now has 8 centuries from 71 innings, but all his centuries have had the cushion of someone else also scoring a hundred. You could look at it in two ways.

• He cashes in when someone else does, implying that the conditions are good for batting most of the time.
  
• He strings together big partnerships when his team is in a spot of bother.

But when I looked at his centuries, there've really been only 2 instances (aside from the on-going test where he came in after England had dramatically collapsed from 114/0 to 117/3) when he has come in and done a good job when England was in trouble. These were at Faisalabad (which was quite a dramatic game since Shahid Afridi first smashed 92 in 85 balls and was then caught on TV damaging the pitch while Pakistan was fielding. After Afridi's innings, Inzamam was wrongly ruled run out when he took evasive action after Harmison hurled the ball on the striker's stumps) and at Napier earlier this year when England & New Zealand were in the early stages of their love affair lasting 19 consecutive internationals.

I'm not saying he's not a good batsman. He obviously is. But he'd rate far more highly if he made centuries when others made 30s and 40s. Patrick Kidd from the Times Online is also thinking on similar lines.

Labels: england, ian bell, lord's, pietersen, south africa, statistic, toss

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:00 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Sobers' record safe

Ian Bell was all set to repeat Sobers' feat of scoring 6 sixers in an over (or atleast 5 sixers and a three) at Chester-le-Street yesterday, but for Sangakkara effected a run-out and saved his team from such an ignominy. Wondering why? Especially, when it comes from me, you have every right to wonder, but that's the only way he could have reached a hundred yesterday. But the writer at CricInfo believes so, as Strauss was too worried about World Cup plans. By the way, is there anyone here who knows if England had a plan for the World Cup? I thought, they just wanted to retain the Ashes and not worry about the World Cup especially with 10 of the 11 spots sealed for World Cup.

Labels: ian bell, sobers

Thus spake Ganesh @ 5:30 pm | Sledge/Read 5 sledge(s)
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Rod Marsh joins the rest of the English media in hailing the performances of Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen against Zimbabwe. I wonder how performances against a team which has lost its last 15 games mean anything. Zimbabwe have lost six of those games by margins greater than 5 wickets and five of them by margins greater than 50 runs. Effectively, they've managed to compete [if that is the word] in just 4 out of their last 15 onedayers.

The strange thing is that the English team and the media never misses an opportunity to point out how poor Zimbabwe are, yet they find happiness in performances made against this Zimbabwe side! Bring on the Aussies, eh?

Labels: ian bell, pietersen

Thus spake Jagadish @ 5:03 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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The ECB is quite wild about the fact that a Zimbabwe newspaper used quotes from an interview with Ian Bell to indicate that England's cricketers were actually quite happy being in Zimbabwe and were enjoying the experience.

Labels: ian bell

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:11 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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The English selectors leave out Ian Bell from the squad to South Africa and instead go for the quasi allrounder Collingwood. Derek Pringle seems to indicate that it wasnt cricketing ability which influenced the decision. From Paul Colli to Paul Jolly, eh?

Labels: ian bell

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:17 am | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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