Posted by The scorecard says Dean Elgar was bowled by James Anderson. The scorecard is keeping a lot of important detail to itself there.
To recap what happened, Anderson hit Elgar on the thigh, the ball bounced back towards the bowler, only for Elgar to inadvertently elbow it backwards again.
The ball bounced twice behind him and then very limply made contact with the very base of the stumps.
The next bit’s the wonderful bit.
We often talk about a delivery ‘dislodging the bails’. If you hear this term, it’s usually a glancing blow that has unseated them. No-one talks about ‘dislodging’ the bails when middle stump is cartwheeling towards the sightscreen.
We would argue that Dean Elgar’s dismissal was the purest example of dislodging the bails there’s ever been.
Just look at them fly!
Yes, that bit of yellowy-green. That’s a bail.
Both bails positively slithered down the stumps and came to rest nestled against them.
You can’t really move bails much less than this and still bowl someone out.
We suppose you could only dislodge one bail instead of two, but beyond that this is pretty much the minimum amount of bail disruption to achieve a ‘bowled’ dismissal.
We think that’s worth celebrating.
Elgar b Anderson for 47.
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And that’s that, huh. Is the England test team on their way to mirroring the ODI team? Can only win on flat tracks?
Yes. (Although technically it’s the ball.)
We also wouldn’t bank on them winning on flat tracks too regularly with this attack.
So basically, exactly like Eoin Morgan’s white ball sides, only with very little winning.
“That’s the way they’re going to play” said some pundit in the immediate aftermath. I’m not sure they really did much playing at all let alone in a particular ‘way’, unless that way was ‘abject dogshit’.
No, they just got beaten. It didn’t really smack of hell-for-leather overconfidence in some trumped-up ‘brand’ of cricket.
‘Brendon, thanks so much for joining us at the cart…what do you make of this phrase ‘Abject Dogshit’, it seems to be catching on…’
‘Haha, I don’t know about that mate. We just try to take the pressure off the guys and tell them to play positively. If people want to give it a label, ‘Abject Dogshit’ or anything else, that’s not for me to worry about.’
There wasn’t even too much Bazball, just a very poor batting team ruthlessly exposed. And some weird bowling and fielding choices. With all the Baz talk, maybe people forgot that England as a team are rubbish at batting.
That’s fair I think. England haven’t had a good opener since Cook retired. They haven’t had a good opening pair since Strauss-Cook.
Root is a true batting great, but around him, it is darkness (the odd YJB/Stokes spark not withstanding).
I would argue they’ve got the batting order sorted other than the openers. Pope looks to be improving all the time.
I know what you mean re Pope, Root, Bairstow 22 model. But Stokes at 6 doesn’t seem to give himself a chance these days. Then I’m not sure I’d say numbers 7 and 8 are sorted.