Good sides do not keep making these sloppy mistakes
England’s first-innings wobbles are happening too often and the batsmen need to toughen up
England’s old trait of slumping to 100-odd for five resurfaced yesterday. The top order failed to capitalise on batting first on a good pitch and left the engine room to dig them out of trouble again.
A good team should be scoring 450500 on this surface, and the major worry for coach Trevor Bayliss is that his batting line-up has a habit of making mistakes. The patient, disciplined first innings they produced in Rajkot should happen more often for a team with so much talent.
This batting line-up has high-class players capable of making big scores on a regular basis but even on decent pitches, such as Lord’s, they struggle to make big totals.
The question for Bayliss is why are England so inconsistent in the first innings on good pitches? High-quality teams do not gift the opposition a route into a Test match and it is a habit that has contributed to them losing so many Test matches (six) in 2016.
Last week England had an excuse because they lost the toss, although being beaten by 246 runs was a hammering regardless of which team enjoyed the best conditions. England won the toss here and had everything in their favour. If they go on to lose this match then they will face far harder questions because they will be unable to hide behind the toss.
During the afternoon session yesterday England scored 113 runs for the loss of one wicket, which tells me the type of wicket the team were batting on. It was a quick outfield which rewarded hard cricket strokes. England scored 113 without trying too hard. The ball did not go aerial, was played mainly along the floor and they batted nice and straight. It was how they should have batted in the morning to set up the innings.
Moeen Ali could be the right player to bat at four but he has to find the balance between attack and defence and understand when the opposition are trying to set him up. He fell right into the trap yesterday, top-edging a short ball to fine leg when there were two men out in the deep for the stroke.
Joe Root is a world-class player who scores a lot of runs but I think he should, and could, score even more. Why was he trying to premeditate his shot? He is the one England player who never needs to premeditate where he has to hit the ball in Test cricket because he has so much time, lots of scoring options and shots. He scores freely playing the ball on its merits, so put the premeditated shots away.
He needs to go back and look at replays of his innings at Old Trafford against Pakistan last summer and understand why he scored a double century. He put away the high-risk shots and stuck to his low-risk strokes for eight hours.
Haseeb Hameed’s strength is his concentration. He has an ability to look calm and composed and his body language out it in the middle makes him look like he has played Test cricket for years. It is a great sign from a young player. You always ask do they look part of the set-up? Yes he does.
He has a lot of time to play his shots. What impressed me in the second innings in Visakhapatnam was how he reacted to being hit first ball by a bouncer. Three balls later he ducked under the same delivery. It is the sign of a player who can learn quickly and assess conditions.
He was dismissed here by a ball that bounced off a length, which happens, but there are a couple of areas where he can improve his game. His hands are quite low when he defends. He just needs to get a ball that rises a bit higher, like it did yesterday, for it to take the glove. When he plays in Australia next year on bouncy pitches that will be more of an issue.
Playing the ball that shapes away from him will need work too. His right shoulder comes into play early, which is why he is batting on off stump. It frees him up to play on the leg side. He played and missed at a few balls bowled on a fourth-stump line. Now teams have seen that they will be aggressive by bowling short to push him back and then bowl on the line of the fourth or fifth stump with that bit of movement shaping away from the eye line.
It is why Test cricket is the hardest form of the game. People like me write articles about your technique, television commentators analyse your batting and opponents study footage. Hameed is only three Tests into a career and he already looks like a player who is going to be around for many years. These are just minute problems for a young kid.
He scored 82 in his first Test but he has also had three low scores and the pressure might start to build up in his own mind. It can escalate quickly at this level and that is the challenge a young player has to learn to handle.
Why was Joe Root trying to premeditate his shot? He is the one England player who never needs to