Who should be England's third seamer?

[Furball]

I cringed when I was re-reading what I'd written about him during the Ashes.

 

[Howe_zat]

For now, I will accept an apology.

 

[wpdavid]

My view is that it's optimistic in the extreme to expect Swann to take loads of wickets against the best players against spin in world cricket in conditions that probably won't suit him. Therefore our third seamer needs to pose a genuine wicket-taking threat rather than simply control, otherwise we're relying on two bowlers to take best part of 20 wickets if we want to win a test.

Whether that threat is better posed by Bresnan, Finn or Onions, I really don't know for sure. My gut feeling is that Finn is a moderate bowler who has got lucky from time to time. I have a lot of time for Onions, but his county performances have been solid rather than spectacular this season, so I wonder how match-fit he really is. That probably leads me to picking Bresnan. And as someone said earlier, reuniting the attack that won us the Melbourne and Sydney tests doesn't look the worst idea ever.

 

[Furball]

My view is that it's optimistic in the extreme to expect Swann to take loads of wickets against the best players against spin in world cricket in conditions that probably won't suit him. Therefore our third seamer needs to pose a genuine wicket-taking threat rather than simply control, otherwise we're relying on two bowlers to take best part of 20 wickets if we want to win a test.

Whether that threat is better posed by Bresnan, Finn or Onions, I really don't know for sure. My gut feeling is that Finn is a moderate bowler who has got lucky from time to time. I have a lot of time for Onions, but his county performances have been solid rather than spectacular this season, so I wonder how match-fit he really is. That probably leads me to picking Bresnan. And as someone said earlier, reuniting the attack that won us the Melbourne and Sydney tests doesn't look the worst idea ever.

English pitches generally take a bit of turn (English decks IMO are far more spin friendly than they're given credit for) and they're Swann's home conditions in which he's taken 61 Test wickets @ 23.73.

 

[Howe_zat]

The Indians being far better players of spin seems to be taken a bit far here. Before the Sri Lanka series, many people were saying that guys like Samaraweera et al would play Swann much better than our other bowlers just because, but that's not what happened. Tremlett bowled far better than Swann for the majority, but Swann wasn't played as well and so picked up just as good an average.

 

[Uppercut]

English pitches really aren't too bad at all for spinners and Swann definitely gets a say in how the series goes, but I'd be seriously reluctant to downplay the ability against spin of a team with a top four of Sehwag/Gambhir/Dravid/Tendulkar. They've already justified whatever hype we can come up with in this department.

 

[FBU]

We will be playing India at the following grounds

Lords
Onions 19.30
Swann 20.00
Finn 22.76
Anderson 28.19
Tremlett 31.42
Broad 41.11
Bresnan 46.50
Shahzad -

Trent Bridge
Tremlett 15.33
Finn 15.60
Anderson 15.89
Broad 24.14
Swann 2 overs
Onions -
Shahzad -
Bresnan -

Edgbaston
Finn 22.33
Swann 23.50
Broad 24.12
Onions 26.40
Anderson 29.44
Shahzad -
Bresnan -

Oval
Swann 18.40
Broad 24.53
Anderson 34.77
Tremlett 63.33
Finn 92.00
Shahzad -
Onions -
Bresnan -

Bowling in England

Anderson 143 wickets at 27.22
Broad 63 wickets at 34.30
Swann 61 wickets at 23.73
Finn 32 wickets at 22.03
Tremlett 26 wickets at 26.32
Onions 20 wickets at 25.15
Bresnan 7 wickets at 38.00
Shahzad 4 wickets at 15.75

 

[vcs]

Indian batsmen are excellent against spin, but I keep thinking one of these days a spinner is due to have a great series against us. Bishoo isn't doing bad in the current series BTW, though obviously Sehwag-Gambhir-Tendulkar aren't playing.

 

[Howe_zat]

English pitches really aren't too bad at all for spinners and Swann definitely gets a say in how the series goes, but I'd be seriously reluctant to downplay the ability against spin of a team with a top four of Sehwag/Gambhir/Dravid/Tendulkar. They've already justified whatever hype we can come up with in this department.

See, of those I'd only really consider Gambhir significantly better against spin, and Dravid I always thought of as stronger against pace. Sehwag treats every bowler the same way and Tendulkar is just Tendulkar. It's simply an excellent top order, and I think Swann, at home, has as much a chance of having an impact as anyone.

 

[wpdavid]

English pitches generally take a bit of turn (English decks IMO are far more spin friendly than they're given credit for) and they're Swann's home conditions in which he's taken 61 Test wickets @ 23.73.

A series-by-series breakdown would be interesting: there's some pretty weak batting line-ups in those 63 tests IIRC, especially compared to who he'll be facing in a few weeks time. That being said, I'm sure he'll feature at some point, but I don't think he'll be a regular threat.

Of course, if he proves me wrong and repeats what he did in his first ever over against India then I'll be delighted.

 

[Furball]

A series-by-series breakdown would be interesting: there's some pretty weak batting line-ups in those 63 tests IIRC, especially compared to who he'll be facing in a few weeks time. That being said, I'm sure he'll feature at some point, but I don't think he'll be a regular threat.

Of course, if he proves me wrong and repeats what he did in his first ever over against India then I'll be delighted.

I agree, it was the 'conditions that won't suit' argument I was disagreeing with.

 

[centurymaker]

See, of those I'd only really consider Gambhir significantly better against spin, and Dravid I always thought of as stronger against pace. Sehwag treats every bowler the same way and Tendulkar is just Tendulkar. It's simply an excellent top order, and I think Swann, at home, has as much a chance of having an impact as anyone.

Sehwag ain't playing.

 

[Howe_zat]

I was replying to Uppercut's post.

 

[Cevno]

Sehwag ain't playing.

Only the first match or maybe the second at most.

 

[centurymaker]

Only the first match or maybe the second at most.

he'll still be somewhat unfit
he wont fully recover anytime soon... it'll be a gamble to play him.

 

[Spark]

The Indians being far better players of spin seems to be taken a bit far here. Before the Sri Lanka series, many people were saying that guys like Samaraweera et al would play Swann much better than our other bowlers just because, but that's not what happened. Tremlett bowled far better than Swann for the majority, but Swann wasn't played as well and so picked up just as good an average.

I would argue that, madness at Cardiff aside, this is precisely what happened. One must also consider that Swann also bowled much better, on average, than the other bowlers for a good amount of the time.

 

[Howe_zat]

Well, I'd disagree.

 

[wpdavid]

I would argue that, madness at Cardiff aside, this is precisely what happened. One must also consider that Swann also bowled much better, on average, than the other bowlers for a good amount of the time.

That looks fair enough to me. Taking the final couple of hours at Cardiff out of the equation, Swann took 8 for 267 in the series. And 6 of those 8 were bowlers (albeit one of them had stuck around for a while as a night-watchman).

Obviously removing anyone's best figures is going to make them look less effective, and nobody's saying that Swann bowled badly. However, most of the time when bowling at SL's top order, he wasn't penetrative at all. That's not his fault - a finger spinner bowling at SC batsmen in the first half of the English summer is always going to struggle. But it's why I think we need to be thinking first & foremost about wicket-taking when picking our third seamer for the India series. We certainly need to make damned sure we make the most of the new ball.

 

[GIMH]

Wouldn't bother picking a third seamer at Trent Bridge. Or Swann. Anderson and Tremlett will get the job done in about 18 overs there (that's accumulative from both innings).

At the rest of the games though, I think Broad is in a bad place at the minute. Against Saffa in the WC he put in arguably one of the best bowling performances of the tournament. Since that injury, you're just happy to get five decent overs in a row from him. I don't think its terminal and still want him around but I'd be inclined to go with either Bresnan or Onions for the first Test, depending on the extent to which they can prove their form and fitness.

Finn hard done by but there you go.

 

[Bun]

which one of the tests are we referring tto?