How the No3 and No4 batsmen respond to their disappointing series could be a key to the team’s immediate future

That was an extremely impressive performance by South Africa. Not many teams would have been able to respond in such convincing fashion after going 1‑0 down after three Tests and enduring two such frustrating draws along the way. They annihilated England, and Graeme Smith and the management deserve credit for holding the side together as they did.

In this form and on that pitch South Africa’s bowling attack was formidable. That makes it difficult to assess just how poor England’s batting was. Certainly the two low totals should not deflect attention from the team’s other flaws. The decision to leave out Graham Onions was puzzling. His close-to-the-wicket bowling style and ability to move the ball off the seam would have made him perfectly suited to the conditions at the Wanderers. And the bowlers who did play did not perform as well as they should have.

Clearly, though, England have one big concern. That is the form of Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen at No3 and No4. Pietersen has had a tour he will want to forget. Before the series had started, he asked me if I would be able to work with him to help correct some technical issues in his batting. As I am contracted as a consultant to South Africa I had to refuse, but it is clear to me that there are two glitches he should work on.

Firstly, he has been getting too low in his stance at the crease. He is bending his knees too much. In any game played with a moving ball, it is crucial to keep the head and the eyes still. In cricket a batsman needs to keep his gaze as parallel to the ground as possible. Because Pietersen is dropping so low, he has to rise up again as the ball is coming at him. His eyes are travelling in the opposite direction to the trajectory of the delivery, moving up as the ball is coming down. This is affecting his ability to properly judge line and length.

The second problem is that he is moving his feet too early, before the bowler has even bowled. That means he is getting into position and then having to wait for the ball to reach him. There should a rhythm to hitting the ball. That is why I always advocated the use of a Read more…

Administrator England Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, Jonathan Trott, Pietersen

A MAGNIFICENT sporting contest which produced a pulsating climax and edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting drama should be reason to celebrate and to be grateful for the joy that Test cricket provides.

There will be a hundred “what if?” questions asked, and understandably so given S A ’s proximity to a glorious victory, but blame should be avoided at all costs and those inclined towards post-match wisdom must remember that hindsight is the prerogative of the smug.

Those now tempted to question the wisdom and timing of Graeme Smith’s declaration on the fourth evening are profoundly missing the point. The extra runs which took the game away from England and made it “safe” allowed SA to remain on the attack for the entire day.

On two occasions the “extra” close catcher, which would not have been in place in a conventional field, resulted in a wicket, Smith’s own catch at the luxury position of leg gulley to remove Alistair Cook might not have been a possibility had the captain been concerned about saving runs and AB de Villiers might not have been able to make his spectacular grab at third slip to remove Jonathan Trott if England had been in the game.

But the captain did not only get the declaration right, he also managed to maintain an intensity and belief among the team which most teams would have abandoned when Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott batted for more than 43 overs to take England to within 35 overs of safety with seven wickets in hand.

The bowlers were rotated smartly and kept as fresh as possible and the move to bring Paul Harris back at the death for a single over, in which he took a wicket, and then to remove him from the attack was both inspired and brave. Even more inspiration came from Friedel de Wet who proved an old adage that the best people make the best cricketers because they appreciate everything the game has to offer them and take nothing for granted.

De Wet always had raw pace and talent but two back operations and a stuttering career persuaded him to seek an alternative life away from the game. He moved back home to Krugersdorp and started his own nursery business which he has continued to run Read more…

Administrator South Africa AB de Villiers, Alistair Cook, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, Graeme Smith, Jonathan Trott, Makhaya Ntini, SA

England’s adopted star may have learnt his cricket in Cape Town, but he is in no doubt where his allegiance lies

Jonathan Trott arrived home yesterday. Or rather he came back to Cape Town, the place where he was born, raised, learned how to play cricket well enough to represent South Africa Under-19s and recognised that he might be talented enough to become a professional. But it is no longer home. Birmingham, England, is home.

“The last few times I have been here I couldn’t wait to get back to England,” he said yesterday. “A lot of people have asked if I’d come back here when I retire, but there’s no way. I am very happy in Birmingham. Coming back here is a holiday now.”

Cape Town: temperate, by the sea, Table Mountain forming a sensational backdrop at every turn, still opulent for the middle class of any colour, if not for the dirt poor blacks. But it’s Birmingham for Trotty.

Not that this is a holiday. Trott is here to work as England’s new one-day opening batsman. He has hit the turf running as an international cricketer. There was the century on his Test debut at The Oval in the match that decided the Ashes last August. There was 51 in the second Twenty20 match on this tour and on Sunday at Centurion in only his second one-day international, having been invited to open, he made a thoroughly composed 87 as England won by seven wickets and took a 1-0 lead in the one-day series against South Africa.

He has devoted himself to England hook, line and sinker. He has married an English rose, Abi Dollery, granddaughter of Tom Dollery, himself a Warwickshire captain and England cricketer. There is no mistaking his fondness for Warwickshire, the county which gave him his chance, and one day it is possible to think that the unmistakable Cape Town twang will be Read more…

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Andrew Strauss tells us that the South African origins of himself, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Jonathan Trott are “a non-issue” for England’s cricketers. Which is fair enough, but you can bet your last rand that they won’t be treated as a non-issue by the during the forthcoming series of five one-day internationals and four Test matches. If the South Africa captain, Graeme Smith, doesn’t encourage his men to target these perceived turncoats in the England team, then he’s not the chest-thumping patriot I took him to be. And even if he doesn’t – for he does seem to be mellowing somewhat – the home supporters in Durban and Johannesburg will most certainly let the abuse fly at those biltong-flavoured Englishmen, reserving particular vehemence for Pietersen, who is scheduled to join the party next week.

That prospect won’t trouble Pietersen in the slightest, of course. He got fearful stick when he first played one-day cricket with England in South Africa, to which he responded, after scoring his first international century (108 not out from 96 balls at Bloemfontein), by not so much kissing the three lions on his helmet, as snogging them. He finished as Player of the Series, some achievement given that the South Africans had won 4-1. And now he is five years older and wiser, witness the disappearance of that preposterous white stripe from his hair. It has been replaced, moreover, by an eminently sensible Brylcreem bounce, which augurs well, because the last Brylcreem Boy to play cricket in South Africa, in 1948-49, scored what remains the fastest triple century in first-class cricket. Playing for MCC against North-Eastern Transvaal, Denis Compton took one minute over three hours to reach his 300, hitting five sixes and 42 fours. He completed the last third of it in just 37 minutes.

Strictly speaking, Compton didn’t become the first official Brylcreem Boy until 1950, but we won’t let trifling details interfere with the parallels between the man they called Compo and the man they call KP. I was gratified, when I interviewed Pietersen a few weeks ago, to find that he had done his homework on Compton. “I know he was a pretty flamboyant batter, a chinaman bowler, a pretty cool guy,” he said. Cooler, in fact, than Pietersen knew. He’d done some of his homework but not all of it, and had no idea that his Brylcreemed predecessor also played for Read more…

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Until Jonathan Trott plays some more emphatic innings for England, Michael Vaughan’s caustic observations will continue to ring in his ears.

Having revealed that Trott celebrated with the South Africans when they won the Test series in England in 2008, and that “it hit home what English cricket has become like”, Vaughan was having a pop at England’s open-door policy towards overseas opportunists.

He was not the first to cast aspersions on Trott’s patriotism. During Trott’s Test debut at the Oval in August, Ricky Ponting strolled past him and said loudly enough to wicketkeeper Brad Haddin to ensure Trott overheard: “Does he speak like a Pom or a Yarpy?”

Undeterred, Trott contributed a confident 41 in his first Test innings, and that unflappable, Ashes-clinching hundred in his second. What he achieved on such an occasion is a testament to him and the men who chose him and should eclipse any doubts about an expatriate South African’s commitment to the England cause.

We have been here many times before. There was a vivid irony in the 1890s when KS Ranjitsinjhi, born and raised in India but making mountains of runs for Cambridge University and Sussex, was blocked from England selection by the president of the MCC, Lord Harris, because he said only “native-born” players could be chosen.

Harris, a former England captain, was born in Trinidad. Harris was overruled for the next Test, and Ranji exceeded even Trott’s debut, making 62 and 154 not out.

Ranji never got to play a Test against the country of his birth, and neither did Basil D’Oliveira, Tony Greig or Allan Lamb. But you would never have questioned their resolve against Read more…

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South Africa are top of tree but England can knock them down a branch or two

After England won the Ashes in 2005, they had a party to end all parties. Sometime during this, it could be said, any potential legacy of the great triumph was flushed down the toilet.

The following winter the team went to Pakistan, and partly because they considered their work was done, partly because of untimely injuries, they were well beaten. Things were never to be the same, no combination of the 12 players who had prevailed against Australia ever took the field again. This time it will be different. This time, England are aware, Ashes or no Ashes, that they ain’t done nothing yet.

In the immediate aftermath of their victory against Australia in the summer just gone, they might have wished for a less exacting assignment than a tour of South Africa. Not only are South Africa the world’s best side in both one-day and Test cricket but their vastly accomplished captain, Graeme Smith, has propelled the downfall of two recent England captains. Both Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan felt compelled to resign during Test series against Smith’s South Africa.

“Let’s hope,” said the present incumbent, Andrew Strauss, yesterday, the humorous aside doubtless tinged with a hint of worry, “that I’m not resigning in three months’ time. He [Smith] is a very worthy adversary and combines being an excellent captain with being a formidable presence at the top of the order.”

Smith has been captain of South Africa for six years, has led them in 68 Test matches and 121 one-day internationals and personifies their unyieldingly tough yet intermittently vulnerable nature. He has probably been waiting for this moment for four long years since England won the Test series in South Africa, and he will not have been exactly delighted by his side’s Read more…

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International cricket is littered with players who were only fortunate enough to represent their country on one occasion. As it currently stands, there are 386 One Test wonders, 173 One ODI wonders and 65 women have played just the solitary One Day International match. Of course, some may yet continue their international careers, but here we present a tribute to those cricketers who achieved the highest Reliance Mobile ICC Player Ranking after their fleeting moment in the sun.

Starting in the Test arena, there is a surprising name at the top of the list. Drafted into England’s team for the final Ashes match this summer, Jonathan Trott distinguished himself with 41 in the first innings before becoming the eighteenth Englishman to make a century on his Test debut second time around. That double enabled him to reach 445 points and 52nd place overall. Of course, when he plays his next Test – in all likelihood on England’s upcoming tour of South Africa – the record will revert to New Zealander Rodney Redmond, who reached 434 points after scoring 107 and 56 against Pakistan at Auckland in February 1973. He couldn’t adapt to wearing contact lenses and never represented his country again.

With the ball, it is far more clear cut. Charles “Father” Marriott was picked to play the final Test for England against the West Indies at The Oval in the summer of 1933. Things didn’t look so good when he was dismissed for a duck by Manny Martindale, but he roared back to take 5-37 and 6-59 with his leg-breaks as England triumphed by an innings and 17 runs. Marriott turned 38 before England toured India the following winter, but he wasn’t selected for any of the Tests and never played again. In a distant second place is Aubrey Smith – the only England captain to star in a Hollywood film with Elizabeth Taylor – who reached 262 points after taking seven wickets in England’s first-ever Test in South Africa in 1889.

The late 1980s and early 1990s was a time when the England selectors were notoriously fickle with their selections, so it is perhaps unsurprising that two more Englishmen top the respective lists in the shorter format of the game. Kim Barnett only played one ODI which Read more…

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The Oval - I know it is a sweeping generalisation but from my experience South Africans are not known for being the shy and retiring type.

Which is why I was pretty confident Cape Town-born Jonathan Trott would not look like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights when he stepped out at The Oval for his England Test match debut. And so it proved.

He has made a hugely impressive debut by scoring a maiden Test century - becoming the 18th England player to do so and only the third at The Oval behind Frank Hayes and WG Grace.

And we must not forget his great catch in the first innings when he snaffled Australia dangerman Michael Clarke at short extra cover to augment England’s chances of regaining the Ashes urn….

It seems foolish now to wind back a week to when the media was full of speculation that Mark Ramprakash, Rob Key and even the retired Marcus Trescothick could come back for the do-or-die fifth Ashes Test against the Aussies, with Ravi Bopara looking like a broken man after scoring just 105 runs in seven innings at an average of 15.

But the England selectors should be praised for sticking to their guns by employing their next-man-in policy - and that happened to be Trott.

After being named in the Headingley squad but subsequently not used, they finally Read more…

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If you bump into somebody at Wimbledon, you can more or less guarantee that the bumpee will say sorry. Try it: it works, even of you do it on purpose and quite hard. An anthropologist has figures to prove that this is the classic English reaction to being bumped at a railway station. There are certain England batsmen who make the same response after they have creamed a half-volley from an Australia bowler.

I must try making the same experiment at the railway terminus in Sydney. I don’t think I’d get many sorries, not unless the England cricket team and their followers were in town. I’d anticipate something along the lines of “Steady, mite”, or maybe “Easy, mite”. Perfectly acceptable, not at all rude, but not even slightly deferential.

Everybody has been trying to pinpoint what has been amiss with the England middle order in this series. I have the answer: it is that the England middle order is too Wimbledon, too Victoria, too Waterloo. It’s been ever so slightly apologetic. The problem with Nos 3, 4 and 5 is diffidence.

In fact, the trouble with the England cricket team has almost always been diffidence, at least when they play Australia. Every now and then, diffidence is set aside, but in the three centuries in which the two nations have played each other at cricket, more often than not, when Read more…

Administrator Ashes Ashes, Australia, Bell, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, Headingley, Jonathan Trott, Paul Collingwood

I thought today couldn’t get any worse when I got bowled out for one by Ryan Sidebottom and then found that Jonathan Trott had stolen my Official Team England dinner plate and spoon set in order to eat one of his disgusting biltong and melktert sandwiches that he says his nana used to make all the time when they was growing up in Shipton-Under-Witwatersrand and which he says is actually as English as warm beer, red post boxes and a crushing sense of being trapped by soul-sucking mediocrity and I dunno about that but to be fair he’s here now and that’s the main thing, stolen plate notwithstanding.

I get out the iPhone and there’s like six missed calls from Colin Gibson, who is what’s called a Director Of Communications at the ECB which is not as the name might suggest someone you go to if you can’t get a signal on your phone or Andersony’s hogging the official team laptop and you want to play Murder Death Kill IV: Revenge Of The Third Umpire online against some bloke in Myanmar but is in fact a sort of Public Relations person.

Anyway this Gibson isn’t your usual Public Relations person in that he doesn’t have blonde hair and a kind reassuring smile and say “Hi I’m Kyla / Katie / Klare / Keithetta etc” and offer to get you a hot or cold beverage before they make you answer the questions from the Bad People with the notebooks but in fact this Gibson is a large, angry man and he’s already on the iPhone again and I have to say he’s using some industrial language and not quietly neither. Read more…

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