England were facing an uphill task after losing five first-innings wickets and may face a decision on whether to persist with Ben Duckett
George Dobell in Visakhapatnam18-Nov-20162:28
Compton: Duckett doesn’t seem to fit in at No.4
For much of the day it seemed the school girls in the stands in Visakhapatnam were screaming for their heroes in the India team. But as the last session unfolded, with England losing three top-order wickets for eight runs at one stage, the thought occurred that they might have been screaming in horror at England’s prospects in this match. Perhaps the pitch of the screaming had changed or perhaps, after several hours subjected to it, the mentality of those listening had.Or maybe the noise was just the soul of the England team. For England are in desperate trouble in this game. Already, with only two days of the game gone, they need a miracle of biblical proportions to save them. Rain won’t come to their rescue – it’s not due to rain here until January – and, it says much for their predicament, that their best hope of saving this game really might be a plague of locusts. Or, seeing as it is Vizag, dogs.It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that losing the toss in these circumstances is a substantial disadvantage. India took advantage of the pitch at its best for batting and England were condemned to replying as the deterioration began. Already, some good-length deliveries that batsmen might expect to play at hip height are scuttling along the deck and some deliveries are turning sharply. It will only grow more difficult for batsmen. It is fiendishly tough and any criticism of them has to be tempered by that knowledge.There’s no future in feeling sorry for themselves, though. Such challenges are part of the experience of touring India, just as dealing with green pitches is part of the challenge of touring England. England won the toss in the first Test in Rajkot – albeit not with just such disproportionate consequences – and they may yet win a toss later in the series with similar results.Besides, it would be quite wrong to accept the inevitability of future events from the moment the toss is taken. Had England placed a better fielder for their hook trap and had they placed a gully for the second new ball, it is entirely possible India’s total would be substantially smaller. You have to give the India batsmen credit, too. Virat Kohli has long been established as a great limited-overs player and he is well on the way to proving his class in the longest format. At times, he looks almost impossibly good. You suspect his bat will cause England a lot more pain before this series is done.Most of all, England had the opportunity to bat on the second afternoon when the conditions might be termed tricky rather than impossible. They had the chance to show they had learned from Dhaka, taken confidence from Rajkot and were able to put all that into action.There were some encouraging moments. Haseeb Hameed dealt comfortably with some good pace bowling by India’s seamers – including a few more short balls – and Ben Stokes demonstrated his tighter technique against spin. And there was the sight of Joe Root playing the ball off the back foot with a straight bat to try and adjust to the spin and variable bounce. For a while, he did it very well.
“Wherever in the world you go to, there will always be something different to your home. The best players in the world adapt quickly”Paul Farbrace, England’s assistant coach
But Test cricket isn’t about batting nicely for a while. It is not about cameos and half-centuries. And Root knows that as well as anyone.His dismissal here – attempting to hit R Ashwin over the top but instead finding the fielder at long-off – probably looked worse than it was. Kohli had just moved long-on to mid-on and the previous ball had spun pretty sharply into Root’ pads. So the shot was just about on and, had it proved successful, we might have praised Root’s positive intent and his refusal to allow Ashwin to settle.Instead, Ashwin persuaded the ball to drift away from the bat (it may have been natural variation, but he is a terrific bowler so let us give him the credit) and Root was only able to make contact with the outside third of his bat. It didn’t look pretty but it wasn’t such an unreasonable ploy. And perhaps we have to remind ourselves that Root is only 25. He will not need telling that the risk-reward ratio was not good. He will not need telling that this was a day for nudges and rotation and defence rather than such counter-attacking.That was exactly the message of Paul Farbrace, England’s assistant coach, at the close of play. “When a high-quality player like Joe gets to fifty and gets out, it is massively disappointing,” Farbrace said. “And it looks a whole lot worse when you get out that way. But if he hit that one bounce for four down the ground then we say ‘great shot’.”But this is a time when Joe will look back and say he could have done things better. He does not need telling.”Nor will Alastair Cook – who was the victim of a magnificent delivery that looked as if it was passing outside off stump, but crept back and beat his forward push – or Moeen Ali, who thought that coming down the pitch would save him from not knowing how much the ball would spin but became the latest victim of a DRS decision that would never have been out a few years ago.There will be more worry about Ben Duckett’s dismissal. For the third time in six Test innings he fell in strikingly similar fashion: placing his front foot on – or even outside – leg stump and nowhere near the pitch of the ball to allow himself the opportunity to hit an offspinner through the off side, he was bowled when the turn took the delivery away and into the top of off stump. He was bowled in similar fashion by Mehedi Hasan in Chittagong and edged to slip off Ashwin in Rajkot.It was always asking a lot of Duckett to cope with the spin on this tour. Spin plays a peripheral part in the lower division of the County Championship – only one spinner in the entire division managed even 25 wickets in 2016 and that was his Northants team-mate, Rob Keogh – and he will never have experienced conditions like this. Or bowlers so adept at exploiting them.But Farbrace was having none of that. Pointing to Stokes as an example of a man who has learned to deal with such challenges, Farbrace insisted Duckett had to “find a way” to cope.Ben Duckett again struggled facing the offspin of R Ashwin•AFP”Wherever in the world you go to, there will always be something different to your home,” Farbrace said. “And the best players in the world adapt quickly. That’s why Root and Cook have runs all around the world. Now Stokes is showing he has got the capacity to adapt and play in different conditions.”Our younger players have got to find a way to adapt cope with the conditions. And of course we would love to have more spinning wickets and more spin bowlers in England. That’s something we are always looking to address. Same as Australians are looking to address the swinging and seaming ball. Every team around the world are always looking at ways to improve the way they are playing.”We are not panicking over Ben but we know, and he knows, that he has to find a way to cope. It is a massive step going from playing for Northants to facing Ashwin on a wicket in India that is turning and bouncing. You have to be able to adapt your game or any chink in your armoury, top players exploit it.”It leaves England facing a tricky decision. Should they replace Duckett for the third Test or stick with him in the hope he can improve his technique during the course of the series? Both actions risk damaging his confidence, but England’s only other options on the tour are Jos Buttler – who has played only one first-class match since he was dropped a year ago – and Gary Ballance, who was dropped in Rajkot after a grim run of form.While recent history would suggest England will give Duckett more opportunities – James Vince, for example, was given seven Tests to prove himself without making a half-century – it is asking a great deal to tinker with his technique during such a condensed Test series. Aged 22, he has the time – and the talent – to reinvent himself. He also has the second innings.”He’s practised extremely hard,” Farbrace said. “He has had long sessions against spin and he has made an adjustment already on this trip. But the danger is you don’t want to be offering too many changes to a young player. You brought him into the side because he is talented, because he has got runs, and you have to trust him to play his way.”He’s also got to trust himself to … have a solid defence so that when you do get a bad ball, you can put it away. Getting 13s, 15s, 20s, 30s are not good enough. He knows that. But he’s got to find a way of improving and keep working on his defensive technique.”Most all, Farbrace made it clear that he would accept no excuses from any of the England side. There are bound to be challenges like this in India. England either learn to deal with them or they settle for a place among the also-rans of world cricket.”There’s no point bleating and making excuses,” he said. “We didn’t show enough fight. Those are times when we need to show a bit more resilience and get stuck in. It was a bad session. We have to find a way to cut that out if we’re serious about being one of the best teams in the world.”
