Will England finally drop Jade Dernbach?
Sounds like it wasn't a great toss to lose, but England were never quite in the 4th ODI out in India. I couldn't hear the commentary but Sharma looked unlucky to be given out so the margin could have been far greater, even though many will (wrongly) point to the fact that Raina was caught at slip and then recalled when Finn knocked the stumps over at the bowler's end in his delivery stride (again) as crucial. [Clearly it's a nonsense to recall a batsman, or to chalk off their four, if the bails come off at the bowler's end - no player ever notices it until the umpire tells them it's happened, but that's been covered at length here and elsewhere before].
I've got one plea for the England management, which is consistent with all supporters and journalists from what I can gather. Please drop Jade Dernbach. Once again he was expensive - don't be fooled by the fact he got Dhoni out....it was a long hop which Dhoni kindly placed into the hands of backward point. As I mentioned in the comments on King Cricket, why does Dernbach have to bowl so much (or at all) at the start of the innings if he does play? His only skill is death bowling, so why use him early on? He bowled 7 of his 10 overs before the powerplay came in over 36, so why have him in the side?
3 comments:
The standard of umpiring has been very low throughout the series. As well as the decisions to which you refer, Cook's "lbw" was ridiculous and given by the home umpire almost before the appeal. Even club umpires know that a right-arm over bowler bowling to a lefthander has to bring it back quite sharply for the ball to be hitting the stumps and not pitching outside the leg stump. I don't understand why the Indians refuse the DRS, the wrong decisions in the present series have gone just as much against them as for them. As to Finn kicking over the bowler's end wicket, whilst I agree with you that the facing batsman doesn't notice it and therefore isn't distracted, surely with the vast number of coaches within the England setup someone should be able to train him never to do it, and thus remove the opportunity for a pernickity umpire to call "dead ball".
I absolutely agree with you about Dernbach too. His "variations" appear to be just an excuse for a bowler who has very little control over either length or direction. There is no all-purpose field placing that covers all the intended variations (as well as the numerous unintended bad balls) and no captain can keep changing the field every ball; even if it could be done it would just give away to the batsman which variation was intended to be bowled next.
Agreed on all of that. I can only assume the BCCI don't want to proceed with it (a) because it wasn't their idea, and (b) because as a result they can't make any money out of it. If there was an Indian company set to make money from the ball tracking systems and a dodgy back-hander could be done to allow the BCCI to profit from it, I'm pretty confident it would have happened long ago.
The problem is that it's now become everyone else v India. The BCCI have to give in somehow without losing face. And such is the stupidity of their current position it's very difficult for them to change their position without losing face.
It'll happen eventually but in the mean time the likes of Cook and Sharma have to deal with the BCCI's intransigence.
Once it's there for all matches, the next thing will be to use if for decisions the umpire wants to use it for rather than based on the player's having 2 reviews....but that's a future problem.
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