Jerome Taylor bowls fast, full and straight

Jerome Taylor routed a batting side. You have to like someone who does that, even if they do it against your team. Given a choice between England ‘bowling with discipline’ again or Jerome Taylor taking 5-11 again, we’ll go with Taylor’s display thank you very much.

Taylor’s not ludicrously fast, but he’s fast enough and he actually pitched the ball up, which was something of a novelty in this match. The pitch was slow and the shorter you bowled, the more time the batsman had. They still couldn’t score easily, but it was no way to take wickets.

England’s lanky bowlers all bowled fairly short. They all bowled fairly sedately as well. It was by-the-book stuff and was unsuitable for the conditions. Jerome Taylor negated the pitch by barely letting the ball bounce at all. He wasn’t going to get anything much out of the surface, so why bother with it at all?

The ball he bowled to Kevin Pietersen was better than The Wire, evading KP’s bat as he played to leg before leaping into the arms of off stump as if it hadn’t seen it in years. Not many people can bowl balls like that, although Jimmy Anderson is one who comes to mind.