Reflecting on a glorious summer of Test Cricket
The series against India has been good, satisfying and enjoyable. I just wish that commentators and players didn’t now feel the need to tell us, repeatedly, that Test cricket remains the pre-eminent form of the game. It is that of course, but till recently this was taken for granted. Now the repeated assurance sounds a bit lacking in confidence; it’s as if players and commentators are struggling to convince themselves, let alone us. In England there’s no real problem. If grounds aren’t full on the fourth day, it’s partly because no sensible person will nowadays book a ticket for anything after the first three days. One of the delights of the Test at The Oval was that the match went quite deep into the final session. Indeed, at tea-time all four results were possible. This is very rare these days; and actually it always was quite rare.
England have a lot to satisfy them. Beating India 4-1 is a good comeback after the disasters of last winter. India have reason to be disappointed, but they played some very good cricket. Virat Kohli batted beautifully: not quite Bradman, but as well as Gavaskar and Tendulkar. The Indian pace attack was good, and though most of their batsman failed too often, Pujara and Rahane were hard to shift and the partnership at The Oval between Rahul and the young wicket-keeper Pant was magnificent. Selection was dodgy. How on earth Jadeja was left out of the first four Tests is what Sherlock Holmes would have called a three-pipe problem. He’s one of the best all-rounders in the world, and his fielding is a delight. He swoops on the ball one-handed and throws in without breaking stride, just like Neil Harvey and Colin Bland of old, the two best out-fielders I’ve seen.
Ed Smith’s first summer must be accounted a success; no need for him to slip out by the back door wearing a false beard. I have to say “mea culpa”; writing here I disapproved of his selections of Jos Buttler and Adil Rashid, less on cricketing grounds than because of my old-fogeyish belief that Test players should play first-class county cricket and be chosen on the basis of their performance there. Well, I still think that, but both Buttler and Rashid justified Mr Smith’s confidence. There were times when Joe Root seemed to have less confidence in Rashid than Mr Smith. The notion that he is effective only against the tail is disproved by the fact that among his ten victims were Kohli (twice), Rahul (twice), Pant (twice), Dhawan and Rahane. Not a rabbit there. Rashid of course still suffers from the curious English conviction that wrist-spinners are inevitably more expensive than other bowlers. Actually, this summer Rashid conceded much the same number of runs per over as Ben Stokes.
Mr Smith’s brightest choice was young Sam Curran. “If they’re good enough, they’re old enough.” Denis Compton and Neil Harvey both scored Test hundreds at Sam’s age – and if he didn’t make a century this summer, it was probably because he ran out of partners. The general view is that he will prove to be more batsman than bowler, and certainly one has no difficulty in imagining him scoring hundreds at number five or six, possibly higher. He plays straight in defence and scores all around the wicket; a joy to watch. But his bowling is more than useful. He almost always took wickets, top of the order ones too. Some say he needs to get faster. Really? Vernon Philander does pretty well – at a pace slower than Curran’s. So, long ago, did that Surrey master, Alec Bedser. One of Australia’s finest bowlers, Alan Davidson (186 Test wickets at 20) was, I think, much the same pace as Curran now. If you can bowl left-arm either over or round the wicket, and move the ball either way, you don’t need to be express.
England’s top-order batting – well what’s to be said? It’s good-bye and thank you muchly to Alastair Cook, whose last two innings at The Oval were the perfect way to walk into the sunset. His opening partner, Keaton Jennings, had a wretched series, but may, it seems, survive to go to Sri Lanka where he may find conditions better suited to him. He is lucky to be living now when selectors are slower to play the Red Queen and shriek “off with his head”. In his first dozen Tests or so, 1937-9, Len Hutton had seven opening partners. Some pundits, Bob Willis among them, would have Jennings consigned to the dark. Neither performance nor results give reason to retain him.
Yet, as one who argues for county form to be taken into account, I should point out that earlier this summer in 14 innings for Lancashire in the First Division of the County Championship, Jennings hit four hundreds and one fifty at an average of 44. So there is something there. He may however prove to be one of the many fine batsmen who have failed to translate county form to Test matches.
Joe Root had a disappointing series with the bat till he scored a fine hundred at The Oval, helped there perhaps by the knowledge that attention was less on him than on Alastair Cook. His record would have been a lot better however if he hadn’t contrived to get himself run out twice, at Edgbaston when he was on 80 and at the Aegis Bowl on 48. Of course, you are just as surely back in the pavilion when you are run out as when dismissed in any other way, but it is not necessarily your mistake. Root was batting very well in both these innings.
Nevertheless, I had the impression that his technique wasn’t quite right much of the time, and that the same might be said of Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes, all three seemingly bringing a game suited to ODIs to Test cricket. Root and Stokes were playing a lot of shots on the walk, and were therefore unbalanced and unable to adapt to any late movement by the ball. Bairstow, who was coming from a wonderful ODI summer, was out several times trying to hit through the line which a batsman can do with impunity on a flat wicket in white-ball cricket. Of course, it may just be that his glorious midsummer form had deserted him; certainly he played well enough in the first two Tests, with a 70 at Edgbaston and a 90 at Lord’s.
Anderson and Broad go on and on, and Anderson at least seems as good as ever. If his Test career had ended four or five years ago when he was 31 or 32 he would have been judged a very good bowler, not quite one of the really great ones. He’s securely in that second category now. Alastair Cook called him England’s greatest–ever cricketer, perhaps to divert attention from himself, perhaps as a tribute to one of his best friends; he’s godfather to Anderson’s eldest daughter. Of course, we all make such comparisons and assertions, and, if we are honest, know that they are meaningless. What is certainly true is that very few English bowlers have bowled as well as Anderson has since the summer of 2014.
His action is so smooth, his craft so assured, that there seems no reason for him not to flourish for some time yet. But any sportsman can lose whatever sets him apart from the rest quite quickly. In 1963 Fred Trueman was, as John Arlott put it, “in his pomp”. He had a marvellous series, in which he took more than 30 wickets, against a West Indian side that included Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Conrad Hunte, Basil Butcher and Frank Worrell. He was never as good again. Likewise Alec Bedser took 39 wickets against Australia in 1953, and his Test career was effectively over a year later.
It’s not for nothing that Old Father Time with his scythe watches over the cricket at Lord’s. “Memento Mori” – as a cricketer anyway – is his message.