Saturday 5 September 2009

England's Misfiring Top Order

Ahead of the second ODI against Australia at Lord's tomorrow, Strauss has called upon the top order to contribute more runs, and in doing so has highlighted his teams' main problem across all forms of the game.

He said, "If you want to win consistently one of your top four or five needs to get hundreds more often than not. That is an area we are looking to an address."

They're focussing their attention on the right area.

The bowling unit is in good shape, and has depth - it restricted Australia to 260 yesterday, and enabled England to win the Ashes, despite their inferior batting. Indeed, the likes of Swann, Broad, Anderson and yesterday Rashid, have contributed with the bat too and in doing so, disguised, to some extent, the frailty of the specialist batting line-up.

Take the Ashes series. Of the seven innings in which every member of the team batted, the players selected for their batting alone (numbers one to five in the batting order) - were outscored by the all-rounders and bowlers (numbers six to eleven, plus extras) on five occasions, coming out on top just twice. Take extras out of the equation and the non-specialist batsmen still come out on top, four-three.

The Ashes averages back-up this evidence. Removing KP and Trott, who played two and one Tests respectively, leaves Andrew Strauss as the only specialist batsman - though you could argue that as captain, he's an all-rounder - in the top four; where he's joined by Swann, Flintoff and Prior - all primarily in the side to fulfill a different role.

The problem resurfaced yesterday in the 50 over game. Ideally, one of a team's specialist batsman would make a century once in every three/four - five at the most - ODIs. A side would expect at least three half-centuries in the absence of a three figure score. No Englishman passed 50 yesterday, which is no basis on which to expect to win a match.

It's not all bad news for England though. Their tail are wagging like never before, and gone are the days when they stutter from being six wickets down to all out in under five overs. James Anderson is as decent a Test number 11 as England have ever had.

Also, when their top batsmen do perform, they win. The two occasions when the specialist batsmen did outdo their all-rounder/bowling team-mates in the Ashes, were at Lord's and The Oval. So either England should play all their matches in London, or concentrate on sorting out their top order - something which Jonathan Trott's immediate success has ensured will happen anyway. Factor in too that England were without their best batsman for 60 per cent of the series, and Strauss may soon be blessed with the improvement he seeks.

No comments:

Post a Comment