Nasser Hussain says the hard conditions shouldn’t hide the simple fact that England’s bowlers had a poor day at Old Trafford.
Let’s be fair, England were poor today. However, I think you need to place it it’s turned into day for bowling. Any bowler who has performed windy conditions, it was icy cold will inform you’ve got tough it is to get to any type of rhythm.
After a long hard summermonths, a day like this has been hard work and in addition, it seems somewhat flat. The pitch is a absolute belter and also after what happened in the Headingley, what will seem a little bit flat. You’ve gone from one extreme to the next.
Just the body language on a freezing cold day like this – and it was arctic cold out there – players do walk around with their hands in their pockets as you’ve got handwarmers on your pockets so it looks somewhat flat.
doesn’t take away from the fact that I believed they were poor although you have to give it a little context.
Stuart Broad bowled a brilliant spell, however I believed it was incorrect that Jofra Archer bowled seven balls at Steve Smith.
That was and Joe Root had 2 options: to maintain Archer going after he had bowled five overs and bowl him for a spell, nine or eight overs, and go once Smith had been at. Or then put him back just prior to lunch and take off him, you have given a break to him so you can request him to really steam in for three or four overs of bitterness.
We got that and neither enabled Smith to settle once he settles he is a hard rock and all of us know.
He has not really looked bothered but has there actually been a time of sustained hostility in him? Has anyone gone round the wicket at him? Has anyone really targeted him? A tiny bit but not very, and it is also a better pitch to play the brief ball.
Smith explained himself on vacation this morning because it goes through, that he was awaiting batting on it, it’s a bit like a pitch. It is not quick but you can expect the rebound so when it does go in summary, you can get in it out of the way.
A number of these pitches within this series are two-paced and you don’t know whether to duck or sway. I believe they have changed their technique marginally also, Smith and Marnus Labuschagne were still rocking to attempt to avoid Archer’s bouncers but because he nips the ball at the chunk was following them so what they have done now is duck out of the way, offside of it and also let the ball move.
Personally, I want to have he was left out and a little more of an excuse on Chris Woakes. He’s a really great cricketer and England might know something about his fitness, he is currently going into the’zone’ or his knee but, for me, a Woakes would nevertheless maintain my hands. That’s nothing against Craig Overton, he’s a good cricketer now, and he has done fairly well.
The ball for Labuschagne was a complete beauty, there is not a lot in the pitch and what I have said about the conditions during the afternoon applies to Overton as it will to Archer and everybody else – it has not been an easy day.
I was surprised they didn’t have the thick bails at Old Trafford. I could not think that, especially up here and using the prediction being what it was.
I have played many a match where they’ve known for the heavy bails and the other day I was watching my son play in the Essex league where they only took the bails off, as they did today, so I have seen it in club cricket although not in international cricket earlier!
For a while, conditions were dreadful; it was freezing cold, crisp packets breeze, and the bails fell off all the time, and also in one point a beach ball blew round the floor.
It was a very challenging afternoon and fair play to the spectators who watched all that because you have to be a real cricket buff along with a soul to do that and stumbled through it.
Watch day two of the fourth Test between Australia and England on Sky Sports The Ashes from 10am.
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