This blogger is sick and tired with Sir Ian Botham. I don’t particularly care how frustrating he finds the fact that England lost a series we should have won – sorry, a team we should have “spanked out of sight” (memo, no team other than the great Aussies, or the Vaughan bandwagon has ever spanked the Windies out of sight on their own turf) – and that he is annoyed by the tag “heroic failure”. (On the last point, rarely, I’m with him. England are world champions at heroic failure and it makes me vomit).
No, my main grouse about Botham is he’s the world’s biggest advocate of positive, i.e. reckless, cricket in the universe. The one line in the article that made me most annoyed is this one…
“Did captain Andrew Strauss not realise the West Indies had no intention of chasing anything down? All they wanted to do was draw the game and walk away 1-0 winners, so I was astonished we denied ourselves an extra 10 overs at them.”
“I just can’t get my head round Strauss’s decision to keep batting until lunch even though he had more than enough runs when Matt Prior was out – the Windies were never going to try to chase any total down.”
IF, and it was by no means a certainty that England would take wickets on a deck flatter than that woman who I can’t recall on the TV last night, the West Indies had got off to a good start, and were, say 50 for 0 in the first 15 overs, the rest would have been a cakewalk – 210 in 70 overs would be 160 in 55 and no-one would need to break sweat to do it. Pressure was only exerted because the squeeze was put on and the target became one they couldn’t chase and attacking fields could be deployed. For the first few overs the Windies were tempted. When they lost wickets, the temptation wasn’t there. If we’d have declared when Prior was out, we’d have had 5 more overs and a target of 210. In hindsight, sure you declare, but at the time I thought Strauss got it right. Just as he pulled out in the 1st innings at the right time. God, Botham always wants us to declare early, because he’s not on the hook when it fucks up. Like Adelaide 2006 when we should have batted Australia out of it. Like pulling out, albeit nine down, in Chennai.
Botham castigates Strauss for Antigua, when nine down we couldn’t get the last pair out in 36 minutes of bowling, as if an axtra 20 would have done the trick. Of course, Botham ignores the play lost at the start of Day 5, but there you go. He’s never going to be accountable for his actions, and if we had a captaincy record like Mike Brearley to base his declaration knowledge upon, I might listen.
Instead of wimpering on about declarations, I prefer Tom Fordyce on the BBC blog and his take..
“Successful Test teams come out on top in the decisive sessions. They might not dominate entire matches, but they’ll find a different gear or an individual match-winner when the situation demands it.”
This series wasn’t decided on a couple of cautious declarations (and in my view, Strauss’s in Trinidad is only cautious in hindsight, which has 20-20 vision) but on England’s inability to bowl out the West Indies twice in plenty of time in every test, AND the shocking 51 all out in Kingston.
The last piece of bluster is pure tabloidesque crap…
“Whoever is in charge of the England think tank needs to start sending the side out to win games of cricket and not just avoid defeat.
If you’re not prepared to risk losing for a chance to win, then what’s the point?”
I can accuse this England team of many things, and I do. But 1 down in the series England have made the running in the matches following, been denied victories in two tests with the hosts clinging on, while the other was a bore on a road which England could only lose on Day 5. England created an opportunity to win the last test thanks to KP and Prior. I don’t think they ever went out playing not to lose. They gave a declaration that was tempting to the Windies if they started well. They shut up shop, as they were always going to do, at the first hint of trouble. We could not dislodge the tail. Botham pins it on caution, I pin it on inability. Sir Ian Hindsight does what he does best.
