11 August 2011

England tactics to set batsmen with tailenders

I didn't watch any of yesterday's play but I hear that when Dhoni was out England had 8 players round the boundary and Strauss at slip, where he was caught. Dhoni had a wild swish so was presumably trying to clear the rope and came unstuck. I'm torn - I hate the idea of having everyone round the boundary with the opposition in so much trouble, but perhaps Dhoni didn't have the patience to score the occassional boundary, the odd 2 and a 1 of the 5th ball to farm the strike for a bit.....in which case, good tactics.


Difficult to criticise when it works but having everyone round the boundary feels very wrong somehow! Any thoughts...?


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1 comment:

Jez said...

A viable tactic should the captain choose to adopt it. Not one i am a massive fan of though since i think it can quite easily hand back the initiative to the batting side. Gives the impression that the bowling side have given up trying to get the recognised batsman out and are prepared to leak the odd run to get the tailender on strike. Tailender survives and runs can keep on flowing. I think England have proven so far this series that they are good enough to get any batsman out so should continue to back themselves to do just that.