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Just as with the moving finger of Omar Khayyam — not a new mystery spinner — which having writ, moves on, so with cricket tours. The considerable dust of the Emirates has scarcely had a chance to settle but the thoughts of the England team, those that are staying, now turn to coloured clothing and white-ball cricket.
The four One-day Internationals and three Twenty20 matches that follow the Tests will be no less challenging, the ordeal by spin certain to become even more challenging. Unless Andy Flower and his batsmen can find a solution, and fast, then it is hard to see how England can add to the single success — a T20 match in Kolkata — they have managed to sandwich in the middle of eight losses in all their competitive matches since last summer.
Whether the next Test match challenge, to come soon in Sri Lanka, and the overseas visit of next winter, to India, prove as tough as this series has proved is open to debate. Neither the Sri Lankans Rangana Herath and Suraj Randiv nor Indian spinners such as Ravichandran Ashwin (although very good) and Pragyan Ojha ought to pose quite the threat that did Saeed Ajmal, Abdur Rehman and to an extent Mohammad Hafeez on the slow, low turners produced in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
England may have faced as stern a test as they will get.
Which is not to say that the manner in which they have attempted to play quality spin, on pitches that surprised them given the brief history of Test matches here, against extremely canny opposition, is not open to the strongest criticism and will prove a problem in the future unless they can sort it out and fast.
Andrew Strauss’s bowlers were superb; his batsmen generally so abject that as Flower pointed out on Tuesday, Pakistan’s leading five batsmen emerged with more runs, at a higher average, than any of England’s top six.
At the end of last summer, Flower was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, with the exception of the ODI series in India, there was a chance for a break which would not arise again even in the medium term; on the other, he feared the lack of focus that might follow, against a side that had been playing competitive cricket. In the two warm-up matches, he recognised, worryingly, that his batsmen were simply not up to speed. The team left England on January 2 for a series that did not start until 15 days later, yet still the batsmen (bowlers exempted) were undercooked.
“Just looking at how we played out here in comparison to the Pakistanis,” Flower said, “Preparation is perhaps an area we could have used slightly differently, perhaps had a camp of some description for five days or so to switch on mentally to the tasks at hand.”
There were opportunities before the tour. Some batsmen encountered the Indian spinners in the ODIs. Strauss, not in that series, attended, along with the performance squad, a special camp in India specifically to deal with spin.
More might have been done in this regard immediately pre-tour and Flower further admitted that Strauss and Ian Bell in particular, neither remaining in the UAE, would be preparing for Sri Lanka in a different way yet to be finalised.
“The crux of the matter, though, is that we lost the series not because of a lack of focus but because of how we played spin,” he added.
“Our bowling was outstanding from the seamers, the spinners were good and we created pressure and chances, enough chances to win two of the Tests, but it was our method against spin that was found wanting.”
Footage of the manner in which Younis Khan, in particular, constructed a brilliant match-winning century in the third Test should be compulsory viewing.
“If you look at the method that he employed very successfully to combat the two good spinners and the DRS system which has changed the dangers of lbw quite significantly you can see you can employ a method that succeeds,” Flower said.
“Hardly a ball touched his front pad during that whole innings and it was really nice to watch. So we acknowledge the historical reasons but actually that’s quite exciting because that’s our challenge to try and overcome it in whatever chances we have, me as a coach, the players as the guys on the field.
“I don’t think it’s, as people say, brain surgery, but it does need a change of approach, or technique or method or whatever you’d like to call it.”
There is a danger, however, that the double century partnership between Younis and Azhar Ali, freakish in the context of everything else in the series, and made so effortlessly that it might have been on a different pitch, served to over-emphasise how poor the rest of the batting was. This partnership aside, the Pakistan batsmen were made to struggle as well. Good batsmen on both sides were made to look indifferent.
“Without a doubt,” Flower replied when asked whether the one-day series would provide a showcase for someone with the skills to play spin.
“We have got to find players that are good at playing spin. Those skills are transferable from the one-dayers to the Test or the other way round and if we find players that are knocking on the door, that are good against spin then we would be stupid not to look at them as options to play spin in Test matches as well.” —The Guardian
By Mike Selvey
