Cricket season is off to a high scoring start

What an odd and interesting start to the cricket season it has been and how little attention even our so-called or self-styled quality newspapers give to County cricket compared to the acres of space they devote to football.

Perhaps I’m out of date in this as in so many things, but I still think it’s likely that many readers of The Times, Telegraph and Guardian are as likely to be as enthusiastic followers of cricket as of football.

I admit to being old-fashioned. I still think you pick batsmen to score runs and bowlers to take wickets. The announcement of the first Test squad of the summer has had people posting moans about the likely length of the English tail. Well, it’s obviously nice if your bowlers can contribute a bit with the bat, but that’s not, or shouldn’t be, why you select them.

The first rounds of the County Championship have seen unusually high scoring, whereas we have been accustomed to green wickets and a seam bowlers’ delight in April and May.

A decree went out, commanding groundsmen to prepare better pitches, and perhaps they have overdone it, first-innings scores of over 500 having been quite usual. There have also been bowlers’ complaints about the batches of the Dukes ball being used; they have gone soft very quickly, to the despair of bowlers. 

Too many high scores are as bad for the game as too many low ones. The ideal wicket offers something to both bowlers and batsmen. I’ve long thought that the ideal match sees first innings scores of 350 to 400 for both teams and second ones of 200-250.

It will, however, surprise many if this high scoring is replicated in the three-match series against New Zealand. England’s batting looks as fragile as it has been for the last few years. The openers from the West Indies series have been retained, more in hope, one thinks, than as an expression of confidence. 

Alex Lees, like Dom Sibley before him, spent a long time at the wicket without making many runs but did just enough to deserve to keep his place. His partner, Zac Crawley, is a lucky man.

Few doubt his ability; he strikes the ball splendidly. But his judgement is poor. He keeps getting out to rash or careless shots. Even in this run-happy Spring, he hasn’t made many runs for Kent in the County second division.

It seems that Ollie Pope will bat at first- wicket down. Again his talent is unquestionable; he has a first-class average of over 50. But his recent Test record has been very disappointing, and he seemed technically confused in Australia a few months ago. 

He usually bats at 5 for Surrey; now he is quite likely to come to the wicket with fewer than 20 runs on the board. There is some fashionable concern about batsmen’s place in the order these days; certainly, more than there used to be. 

Colin Cowdrey made Test centuries batting at 2,3,4,5,6 and even 8. Pope certainly needs a good score. There are mutterings comparing him to Mark Ramprakash, the best English batsman of his generation, but one whose Test record was overall very disappointing and who had an in-and-out Test career. 

He is the last man to have made a hundred first-class centuries, but only two of them were in Test matches. Nevertheless, he was a delight to watch, just as young Pope is now. Artist batsmen who make the game look easy when they are going well are always more harshly judged than some with less grace and less natural talent.

Joe Root will be at 4, and may be all the better for being freed from the burden of captaincy. A hundred for Yorkshire against Lancashire last week suggests he is in fine form; a second-innings duck, victim of a beauty from Jimmy Anderson, hardly calling that judgement into question.

Another Yorkshireman will be at 5, though whether this will be Jonny Bairstow or the new star of the White Rose, Harry Brook, is unclear. Bairstow, with two hundreds in his last four Tests probably deserves to keep his place, but he has been away hitting sixes in the IPL, not necessarily the best preparation for Test cricket, while young Brook has been enjoying a wonderful run of form in the County Championship. 

It would be a shame to leave him out. Of course, both could play with Bairstow keeping wicket and batting at 7, but this would mean dropping Ben Foakes whom many judge to be the best keeper in England and who has also been in splendid form with the bat.

The captain Ben Stokes will be at 6 which is where Gary Sobers usually placed himself when he was the West Indies captain. Sobers of course was a great batsman, one of the greatest indeed. Stokes isn’t that. Like Ian Botham, he is a batsman who sometimes plays a great innings. While Sobers had a Test average of just under 58, Stokes, like Botham, averages 36.

There is a lot of talk about the need for big hundreds from at least two batsmen. Fair enough, but it’s just as important to have very few individual scores of less than 20 from your top order. Avoid that and a team can make a first-innings 400 without any really big individual scores.

In truth, there’s as much doubt about England’s bowling as their batting at present. Though Anderson and Broad have a marvellous record and are still capable of deliveries that will get anyone out, neither can now be used as a workhorse and the supporting cast is not one to alarm a good Test match side like New Zealand’s cricket team. 

The young Durham fast or fastish Matthew Potts looks promising and I trust he is preferred to Somerset’s Craig Overton. Indeed both may play if the new English management shows as little confidence in spin bowlers as the previous one and prefers Overton to his county colleague, Jack Leach. I hope they don’t.

Otherwise, almost all English pace bowlers with Test experience and several with Test aspirations appear to be injured, several with stress fractures in the back. Lord knows why or what is wrong. 

My guess is that players today are often gym-fit rather than cricket-fit. Several have front-on actions rather than the classical side-on (like Anderson and Broad), which imposes less strain on the back. 

They might be better walking the roads or the hills than spending hours in the gym. I don’t recall either Fred Trueman or Brian Statham suffering from stress fractures — and they bowled many more overs in an English summer than anyone does today. Finally, success or failure for England may depend on the quality of their close catching. 

It was a wretched Ashes series for England and a happy one for Australia, but it would have been somewhat different if Australia had dropped more catches and England fewer. 

New Zealand is almost always a good fielding side. England has recently poor one, close to the wicket anyway. Almost everyone who made a hundred for Australia was dropped at least once before he had made 50. No wonder we lost heavily.