Specifically test batting🏏, for now anyway
Inconsequential — a word that best summarizes England’s test cricket batting. And that is becoming a real problem for the English International Test Cricket team. To be fair, it is clearly consequential for the other side: in the sense that they win.
How does the nation that birthed cricket, produce batting as listless as this? It has two world class bowlers who are pushing 35 and 40 — so they are about to retire (I already have seen one of them on the cricket commentary circuit). But other than that, English Cricket does not seem to have any spark at the moment.
Bottom line at the moment: High quality test cricket can no longer be associated with England.
But let’s dig a little deeper into what is obviously wrong with England’s batting. And it is often the obvious things you need to start with.
I collected England’s Fall of Wickets for its last three test series all in 2021:
- the ongoing Ashes (3 tests and 6 English batting innings, so far);
- India’s tour of England (4 tests and 7 English batting innings); and
- England’s tour of India (4 tests and 8 English batting innings).
And I plotted the fall of wickets for every English batting innings from all those tests: they total about 21 batting innings.
I plotted the Runs on the y-axis and the Wickets on the x-axis, and got this:
See the obvious issues yet? No? Allow me.
Let’s zoom-in a bit to the 3-wicket mark, add some annotations, and “voila!”
England is terrible at opening its batting.
- Losing the 1st wicket cheaply: In 19 out of those 21 innings, England managed to lose its 1st wicket before it ever reached 50 runs. Only 3 times did it cross 50 runs by the time it lost a wicket; and only twice did England manage 100+ runs before losing its first wicket in an innings.
- Losing the 2nd wicket just as cheaply: 18 times England lost 2 wickets before reaching 50 runs. And only reaching scores of 50+ only 4 times, by the time they lose 2 wickets.
- Getting slightly more for that 3rd wicket: 7 times England were above 100 runs at the loss of 3 wickets; 7 times England were below 50 runs, and 7 times between 50 and 100.
That is lousy. As an international cricket squad, you cannot lose 2 wickets before reaching 50 runs, in more than 85% (18/21) of your innings in one year.
Here is the next big obvious tidbit:
England’s middle order is flat-lining
Let’s zoom up to the 6-wicket mark:
England’s middle order are simply not pushing the scorecard enough. I can do a full statistical analysis here but the flat lines between wickets 3 and 6 paint the next obvious picture: England’s middle-order is flatlining (and this is worth repeating).
By the time you lose the 5th and even the 6th wicket, you expect to start with the tail of the batting line up. So really, we should be focused on region between wickets 2 through 5. And it is still not a pretty picture. You certainly see some fight at the 2nd and 3rd wicket marks, but the lower-middle order is just giving up.
I am not asking for centuries here folks. Just scoring 20’s and 30’s really does the trick. But there is just a vacuum of intent here, leave alone runs.
Sadly, this is accompanied by a wag-less tail, which is not all that surprising given the listless state of the middle-order. But good teams tend to have strong rear-guards when their top-/middle-order batsmen fail.
Finally, the 3rd big obvious/odd thing that i noticed: In every innings, the opposing team was able to get all 10 English wickets. In every fall of wickets, not once was England ever in a position to end an innings with wickets in hand: either by wining in the second innings while batting, or by declaring early. They somehow always seem to be gasping for runs. Some might argue that is not necessarily a sign of weakness. That’s fair. But in all 21 innings of the year? This is the same country that won the last Cricket World Cup, correct?
Say what you will, ending every innings with “10 wickets lost” seems odd. I am still double checking this data on my end, and perhaps I made a mistake somewhere. But if I am right, it is very odd indeed.
To dig yourself out of any situation, you need baby steps. Big ambitions are nice, but they are often too abstract to be tractable. Overall, England need the following baby steps … micro-goals, if you will:
- England need to not lose more than one wicket till they reach 50 runs.
- England’s middle-order needs to think in terms of 20s and 30s; and not just fold like paper. Root is consistently hitting the big runs any way. So all they need to do is to hang in there long enough to score those 30s.
- England’s tail can do bit of wagging. But I get it, it is easier said than done. But consider this: if England were to score a total of 50 runs through wickets 7 to 10 — just 50 — I bet they would find themselves in more comfortable positions.
I am sure England knows all this. I am just a guy with an abacus, counting beans. I am sure England will bounce back next year with a stronger crop of international players. But, if not … then the numbers offer both problems and solutions.
Good luck England!
If you want to dig deeper into this, here in the interactive analysis i built to help me collect data and generate the plots above. Feel free to toggle some check boxes and dig more:
Winter Rant 
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