Strauss' sad waltz plays on
Though he hid it well, Andrew Strauss will have been particularly disappointed to have lost the toss under doom-laden skies at Lord's yesterday. He came into the match with questions hanging over his form, although to be fair it has been a particularly difficult series to open the batting where for the most part, high-quality seamers have had both pitch and overhead conditions in their favour. Sure enough, Strauss got an absolute beauty from Mohammad Asif that was full, swung and then nipped back to catch the England captain's inside edge and bowl him through his gate. It was a wonderful delivery from Asif and in a series of great balls of fire, it is right up there with the best of them.
But in contrast, Cook's leprechaun continues to work his magic
Whilst his opening colleague's poor run of luck continues, the leprechaun on Alastair Cook's shoulder continued to work its magic. After enjoying several large slices of luck at the Oval, before he got going in his place-saving hundred, Cook would have been inwardly smiling at the good fortune that came his way yesterday. Dropped on one by the butter fingered Umar Akmal, Cook was also reprieved by the review system on nine after a ridiculous caught behind decision by Billy Bowden. There were also a number of other edges and Cook again looked anything but assured at the crease. If Cook's luck continues today then the sun will be shining come the start of play and he will go on to make another significant score.
Keeping it in the family
The Pakistan fielding this summer, the Oval apart, has been atrocious and could have even prevented them from winning the series. The worst offender was Kamran Akmal at Trent Bridge where he dropped a series of sitters, missed a straightforward stumping to dismiss Paul Collingwood and took an edge on the bounce from Eoin Morgan because he was standing too far back. So perhaps it was no surprise that the culprit yesterday at third slip who dropped a sitter to reprieve Alastair Cook was none other than Umar Akmal. Definitely a case of keeping it in the family.
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
So sang Eighties cyberpunks Sigue Sigue Sputnik about the city of Rio, but they could just as well have been singing about the schedule produced by the ECB this summer. It was bad enough that England played no test cricket in July, and that Edgbaston was given a test match despite resembling a building site more than a cricket ground. We had thought that the final straw was taking away the last test of the summer from its traditional home at The Oval. But it would seem that staging a test match at Lord's this late in the season has upset the Gods evn more given the dreadful weather yesterday. At this rate the ECB will make their PCB counterparts look competent.
The day Blowers nearly played for England
One of the few good things about rain interrupting play is the material that both television and radio commentaries use to pass the time. The banter was particularly good on Test Match Sofa and the original TMS yesterday. On the latter, Henry Blofeld regaled the time that he nearly made an emergency debut for England during a series in India in the sixties. The England touring party had gone down with a particularly nasty bout of Delhi Belly and had only ten fit players standing the day before the Mumbai test was due to start, So with no-one else to turn to, Blowers, a highly-rated schoolboy cricketer at Eton before losing an argument with a bus, was asked to standby, which he agreed to do providing that if he scored a fifty he would be retained for the next test at Kolkata! In the event, on hearing that England were a man short (and perhaps aghast at the prospect of Blowers playing), Micky Stewart roused himself from his hospital bed and was named in the XI. And the moral of this story? It's not just radio and television cricket commentaries that can pad things out when rain stops play!
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