The England-New Zealand Test series has been fascinating to watch with the teams locked at 1-1 going into the deciding third Test starting today.
It’s always fascinating when real pressure enters the game. Ben Stokes missing a Test for disciplinary reasons wasn’t ideal for his side. Leaders are needed most when things get tough.
Then there’s the battle involving one of the fastest bowlers in world cricket. Jofra Archer is putting batters on their backsides, making them uncomfortable, creating all sorts of problems, yet not finishing them off.
Watching batters survive and go on to score hundreds still gives me a little chuckle. England’s great hope is still just that. Archer still has the potential. I have written about his ability before.
Maybe it will click for him soon, or maybe it won’t. As a Test bowler, you have to bowl lots, back up spells, be ready to go at any time in any conditions and be willing to bend your back when it’s not easy.
I enjoy seeing fast bowlers rip in and watch any series when a genuine quick bowler is having a proper crack at a batter. I find that exciting. I find that battle between bat and ball more exciting than a batter on a flat pitch with a small boundary hitting a million sixes, half of which are misses and thick edges.
As for England, they’re continuing down the same road they’ve been on for a few years now.
Plenty of talk about changing the game, entertaining crowds and playing cricket differently.
That’s all fine.
But eventually, the talk has to match the results.
The first Test at Lord’s wasn’t a terrible pitch. It was a pretty typical Lord’s wicket. It did a bit early. The slope played its role. The ball moved around. That’s what happens there.
The bigger issue wasn’t the pitch. It was the batting.
Not just England’s batting. Plenty of modern batting line-ups would have struggled because so many players have become conditioned by T20 cricket. Fewer batters seem willing to put a real price on their wicket.
Test cricket still demands patience.
You must absorb pressure, survive difficult periods and trust that eventually the bowler will tire or stray. That’s when the scoring opportunities arrive.
Instead, whenever batting collapses happen, the first reaction is often to blame the pitch or the ball. Yes, a few deliveries stayed low. So what? That happens sometimes. What about all the other balls that behaved perfectly normally?
Maybe the answer isn’t always bad luck, which brings me to T20 cricket.
One thing I noticed when watching the IPL is the way commentators talk about wickets.
As a former fast bowler, some people will probably say I’m biased, and that’s probably true. But I genuinely find it strange how often a batter gets out and the immediate reaction is that they were unlucky.
A batter chops one on to their stumps from a wide delivery or even a good one. Unlucky.
A batter gets caught off a half-tracker. Unlucky.
Even the batter’s reaction sometimes looks like they’re thinking, “How did that ball get me out?”
Think of all the luck you might have had before that.
The thing that seems to get forgotten is that T20 cricket is packed with luck. In fact, all forms of cricket have some luck involved. Batters get away with things every single game. Edges fly over slips for four or six. Mis-hits clear small 60-metre boundaries for six. Balls land between three fielders. Top edges sail over the wicketkeeper’s head.
Occasionally, those moments are called unlucky for the bowler.
When a batter gets a thick outside edge that races away for four, commentators don’t spend five minutes discussing how unfortunate the bowler was. It’s just considered part of the game. Yet when a batter gets out from a mistake, suddenly we’re talking about bad luck.
Cricket has always had these swings.
Every player has gone through periods where nothing goes right. As a bowler, you can beat the bat all day and not get a wicket. You can force mistakes and see catches dropped. Batters can nick balls through gaps, survive close chances and keep scoring runs.
Then the opposite happens.
A batter gets dropped early and goes on to make a hundred. A bowler finds edges, and they carry straight to slips. Everything seems to fall your way. That’s cricket.
That’s why I find it almost comical at times listening to some of the T20 commentary, particularly in batting-friendly competitions like the IPL, where bowlers are operating on highways and there are small boundaries with big cricket bats, often good deliveries can disappear for six.
Maybe they’ve bowled six quality deliveries before the wicket arrives. Maybe they’ve been hit for boundaries despite executing their plans. When they finally get a batter chopping on or mistiming a shot, perhaps they’ve earned that wicket rather than simply benefited from luck.
Maybe sometimes it’s just good bowling and poor batting.