Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott-Wozniak  You mean apart from gving the batsman less time to deal with the ball movement? No wonder those Sidebottom deliveries were so 'unplayable' as you mentioned earlier - the Sri Lankan batsmen didn't have to play them! Ask yourself why Vaas did so much better than Sidebottom in the second innings and I wonder if you'll figure out the length he was bowling as the answer. Somehow I very much doubt it. |
The first job of a new ball bowler is to pose difficult questions in the opening over of the innings... and Sidebottom did that beautifully:
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0.1 Sidebottom to Vandort, no run, a beauty from Sidebottom first up! An absolute corker in fact, angling into Vandort before swinging away at the last minute
0.2 Sidebottom to Vandort, no run, and again this swings away from Vandort who tucks his bat inside the line
0.3 Sidebottom to Vandort, no run, straighter this time and it's punched back to the bowler
0.4 Sidebottom to Vandort, 2 runs, outside off stump and Vandort squirts this past gully down to third man
0.5 Sidebottom to Vandort, no run, good grief! That is literally unplayable, bouncing, swinging and seaming away from Vandort. A fast off-break to the left-hander and utterly frightening
0.6 Sidebottom to Vandort, no run, solidly behind it on the front foot
Any seamer would take that opening over... and it's not as if that came as any sort of surprise: Sidebottom has shown himself to be an exemplary new-ball bowler. This was shown later in the same innings, with the second new ball:
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80.6 Sidebottom to Dilshan, no run, what a jaffa - so good that it deserves an exclamation mark! A cracker, swinging and seaming back into Dilshan who is beaten all ends up, the ball missing his bat by an inch and flicking the top of his pad 82.3 Sidebottom to Dilshan, 1 run, dropped! england are having a mare in the field. A thick outside edge to Prior who dived to his right but only got a finger to it, palming into Bell's ankles at first slip. Oh dear
82.5 Sidebottom to Dilshan, no run, big indipping movement from Sidebottom - a cracking delivery which bends back on Dilshan. Prior, rather desperately you feel, roars an appeal. Sidebottom does not
88.2 Sidebottom to DPMD Jayawardene, no run, another cracker from Sidebottom, jags back at Jayawardene and cuts him in half...an appeal from Prior but it only took the thigh pad, still no luck for Sidebottom
The notion that Sidebottom is toothless once the shine has gone is also nonsense:
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48.4 Sidebottom to Silva, no run, a jaffa from Sidebottom! Silva thought it was going to hold its line but it cut away at the last moment, turning him around and beating him all ends up. A cracker
56.4 Sidebottom to Dilshan, no run, ooh, offers a tough chance to Cook at gully, but a chance nevertheless, the batsman outside-edging a drive towards cover
58.2 Sidebottom to Dilshan, FOUR, driven uppishly, backward of point, the edge not going where he intended it and was just short of giving a chance
Sidebottom got Vandort, and created a straightforward chance with Dilshan
and with Jayawardene: on another day he could have bowled to the same level and have walked off with a 5-for. He wasn't getting things absolutely right.... and has bowled a lot better in almost all his other outings for England... but it's indicative of just how good he's become that this performance is regarded as below par.
ps. Do you seriously recommend pitching the ball up when it's sometimes swinging 8" and sometimes not swinging at all? I doubt, somehow, that most impartial observers would agree: surely the first pre-requisite of pitched up bowling is ensuring the swing is predictable enough that a chosen line can be bowled with confidence!
pps. Every commentator I heard said the same thing: that England's bowlers did well enough to get Sri Lanka all out for 250. A combination of missed chances and Jayawardene's excellence in capitalising blew that: the bowlers should not need to create umpteen additional chances in order to take ten wickets! Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott-Wozniak Bowling cutters? I despair. Is Hoggard a swing bowler or not? If he is, why an earth are you content that his fitness allows him to bowl cutters when his main strength lies in swing? |
Marshall was an exceptional swing bowler... who frequently resorted to cutters on the sub-continent.. as did Gough and Cairns. Get the ball swinging lots (as it was at Trent Bridge in 2005) and Hoggard's as good an exponent of swing bowling as anyone: didn't stop him putting in one of the best seam bowling displays of the decade at Adelaide - bowling cutters.