Rachael

Firstly, I'm not disputing that Sidebottom is generally a good, consistent left arm swing bowler, he adds variation to the side and just as importantly creates footmarks for Panesar. His strength is that he bowls a consistent line and length, but on this tour he's generally bowled too short, as have all the bowlers. If you cannot control the swing reliably bowling seam up, then you have to resort to scrambled seam bowling until you can. Hoggard himself has admitted in the past when the ball is either swinging prodigously conventionally or in reverse that quite often he has no control over which way it goes, but that still didn't stop him taking wickets for the simple reason that he was bowling a good line and length to the batsman.

It doesn't matter one iota how much the ball is swinging, if you're bowling the wrong line or too short or inconsistently you won't take wickets, unless you get really lucky of course.

I don't understand why you're reposting cricinfo commentary here, personally I'm not interested in what cricinfo commentators say - only what I see with my own eyes, no wonder you hold such fanciful notions about cricket if you rely heavily on what the numpties at Cricinfo have to say about things, they're frequently wrong, incorrect or inaccurate.

You talk about commentators saying that England created enough chances to bowl Sri Lanka out for 250, my response to that would be 'If ifs and but's were pots and pans...' They didn't take those chances therefore it doesn't really matter much does it?

England have consistently failed to create enough wicket taking opportunities to bowl Sri Lanka out for 'gettable scores' it doesn't matter that what chances they have created were not taken, they didn't go on to create another wicket taking chance. If you give a batsman like Jaywardene even one lifeline - he'll punish you which is exactly what he's done.

Yes I do, because that's the only way you're going to take wickets on these pitches. Sure, you'll get hit for runs when the ball either doesn't swing or swings wide, but you'll also be creating wicket taking opportunities with the balls that do, do what you expect them to do and that's the most effective method I know of, of slowing the run rate down - take regular wickets. Your way, of pulling the length back as a means of controlling the swing simply means the bad balls will be whacked for 4 and the good ones defended as they're not posing much of a threat and that's precisely what the Sri Lankan batsmen did and put themselves into a winning position in the process.

I find this quite a bizarre attitude to be honest. If you don't take the chances you create, of course you have to keep creating chances to take wickets! The problem is, England have created too few chances and taken even fewer of them, meaning that they've consistently failed to bowl Sri Lanka out. This is no different to when England won the Ashes, they didn't just create 20 chances per match they created hundreds of chances, some were taken and some wern't, but enough chances were created to make the ones that wern't taken irrelevant, and even then they only just won that series.

I don't see the relevance of any of this Rachael. Malcolm Marshall was probably the best fast bowler to ever grace a Cricket field and it was only towards the end of his career that he developed his 'cutter' balls, but the point you're missing is that a 'cutter' is simply a 'variation' ball, just like a slower ball, a bouncer, an inswingner or an outswinger, it is not a stock or standard ball at all. Your statement earlier was that 'Hoggard was fit enough to bowl cutter's' if he's not fit enough to bowl his entire repertoire of balls then he's not fit enough to play - simple.