Lack of spin control makes it so hard for a skipper
When my fellow Mail Sport columnist David Lloyd was england coach, he used to say to us: ‘Whoever’s in the opposition doing your job, be better than him.’
Spare a thought then for Phil Tufnell who was up against Shane Warne. Or imagine Robert Croft’s face when Muttiah Muralitharan was spinning it four yards.
Equally, talking about england’s current spin incumbents alongside India’s stellar trio of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel is a chalk and cheese conversation. It has to be an unfair comparison, given their record of a combined 815 Test wickets prior to this match, and the fact Jack Leach is coming back from a long-term injury, teenager Rehan Ahmed is playing only his second Test and Tom hartley is on debut.
However, this is international cricket, that is what they are up against and this fledgling england attack will have witnessed their counterparts landing it on a sixpence while they have been all over the place.
Naturally, given the differences in levels of experience, the difference between them across the first two days has been pretty stark. India’s trio provide not only wicket-taking potential but control through their extreme accuracy, even against an attacking side like england.
What was noticeable from Ahmed, in only his 14th first-class match, and hartley, in his 21st, was their lack of it, and the huge variations in the lengths they bowled. Full tosses and drag downs make it really hard for a captain, because while you know the odd ball is going to spin and bounce, and you therefore want to keep men around the bat catching, the inevitable loose deliveries require men in the deep to stop boundaries and also take chances — as was the case for half of the six wickets that fell yesterday.
When you consider they were gifted dismissals, and a needless run-out, things could have been a lot worse for england. I’d have fielded an attack of two seamers and two frontline spinners — remember, Jimmy Anderson is a world great with a deep knowledge about bowling on these subcontinental pitches.
And also remember that in this line-up, england don’t just have three spinners, they have four. Joe Root in these conditions is one of your better options, and arguably england’s best bowler yesterday, and therefore I couldn’t work out why he didn’t bowl at all on the opening day, especially with left-hander Yashasvi Jaiswal batting throughout.
Although one of the reasons he was kept out of the attack was that Stokes was typically backing debutant hartley to the hilt, even when India’s batters targeted him. There’s nothing worse, as we remember in the 2013 Ashes with Simon Kerrigan, than being taken out of the attack, not to be seen again, but it is a fine balance between supporting the young lad in the corner of the dressing room and looking after your team and the match situation.