RELEASE SHOT CAN HELP DENLY ESCAPE BUNKER

Joe Denly has impressed me in his Test career and looks to have the game to be a no 3 in international cricket, but he clearly has to work on his tempo.

Perhaps we have all taken Chris Silverwood’s desire for england to bat time a little too literally, just as Trevor Bayliss did not mean he wanted to see fours and sixes all the time when he asked his Test top three to be positive.

But the bottom line is that batting is about making runs and at times on this tour Denly has been retreating into his bunker and getting stuck.

That has happened to him twice in consecutive first innings against the spin of Keshav Maharaj and to deal with that he must come up with a release shot.

Denly (right) likes to slog-sweep in Twenty20 cricket for Kent but does not really do it in the longer form and is not one for the paddle sweep. Remember, though, that he is a white-ball contracted player and much of his success has come in the shorter forms of the game, so he can play the shot.

Compare Denly to the way Joe Root started against Maharaj yesterday. Immediately there was a hard sweep so Faf du Plessis was forced to move a fielder. Then the england captain played a paddle sweep and his opposite number moved a fielder finer. So Root played another in front of square and Maharaj didn’t know where to bowl. It is the shot spinners hate the most, because a good sweeper of the ball can hit you off your length and line and leave a captain with no place to go with his field placings.

Ben Stokes is another one Denly should look at. I know he’s a left-hander but the way he slogsweeps the spinner makes him extremely difficult to bowl at.

That is what Denly needs to try to do, particularly if he wants to tour Sri lanka in March and India next winter, because england can’t afford for him to get bogged down there.

He needs to go into the nets and work at re-introducing the sweep into his game with assistant coach Graham Thorpe, who knows all about the importance of the shot.

Denly had made 13 off 83 balls at tea, whereas Root was on the same score off 34 deliveries, and while the captain did not go on to a big score yesterday, that busy style against spin is where Root’s natural rhythm and fluency come from.

you could make the same point about all of england’s top three. yes, I know they are trying to guard against top-order collapses but that first session was the best time to bat yesterday and Root had won an important toss. As it was, Du Plessis dried things up because he knew Maharaj would come into the game after lunch.

We have to remember the top three are inexperienced — the most inexperienced england have fielded since my debut in 1990, when we had Alec Stewart, Wayne larkins and Rob Bailey — so it will come and it will take time.

And we can’t go from saying they play too many shots to complaining they don’t play enough.

But part of batting is understanding the best time to score and the best batsmen always know when to sit in and when to accelerate.

They erred on the side of caution yesterday and we need to give them some leeway.