Ageas Bowl defeat a manifestation of England's progress in last 12 months

Ageas Bowl defeat a manifestation of England's progress in last 12 months

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England are headed in the right direction

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Getty

When John Campbell nudged the ball towards square leg off Ben Stokes and hobbled his way towards the non-strikers’ end, it marked yet another Test defeat for England. It was their third in the last six home Tests, fourth in their last six games versus the Windies and the fifth in the last 12 months.

These are numbers that no country would be proud of, let alone a nation like England that takes immense pride in its red-ball results and considers Test cricket as numero uno. If you’d told the English fans after the Old Trafford Test against Australia last year that their Test team would, within a year, undergo a quick transition and would be driven forward by a group of youngsters who would want nothing to do with the glamours of T20 cricket and would, instead, be keen on achieving results the old-school way, they would have pooh-poohed the idea within seconds. 

That’s how hopeless their Test unit looked a year ago, and that’s how much trust and faith the fans had in their own team. So in disarray were the English side post the Ashes that albeit the World Cup triumph being relatively fresh, the players were admonished and castigated publicly. The team lacked structure and cohesion and the players gave off the vibe that most of them wanted nothing to do with this format called Test cricket, where patience triumphs aggression and skill triumphs smartness. 

Their result against the Windies at the Ageas Bowl last week was exactly what their fans would have expected it to be if you’d asked them last year to predict the outcome: a defeat. But results, sometimes, can be deceiving. All defeats don’t equate to troubles and all victories don’t indicate progress. Ask South Africa - they reveled in false dawn after beating England at Centurion last year, thinking it was the birth of a new era under Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher, only to find out a month later that they were still a bang average side. 

One victory will not magically wipe away inherent flaws. Likewise, though, one defeat will not and cannot roll-back progress that’s been made. And if there was one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb from England’s showing at the Ageas Bowl last week, it was the progress they had made over the course of the last 12 months. 

Starting from the first ball faced by Rory Burns - which he carefully blocked - the Southampton Test, for England, was filled with moments of hope, especially for the future. Much in contrast to the unit that took to the field some 12 months ago, this side struck the right chords and, albeit it’s a result that would go down as an ‘L’ in the record books, the progress the side had made over the course of the last one year resonated across the whole game. 

When the 2019 Ashes came to a conclusion, England had multiple problems at their hands, but none so more than the problem of finding a decent opening partnership - something they had failed to do since the days of Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss. The incredibly gritty partnership that Burns and Dom Sibley shared in the second innings was in itself a reminder of how far the team had come - and what they had at their disposal heading into the future. Between them, in the First Test, Sibley and Burns accumulated a total of 122 runs, but really, the runs mattered for little; it was all about their attitude and application, something that had been missing in English openers not named Alastair Cook for the past 8 years. 

The two openers batted out a staggering 357 balls in the game between them and it was their achingly grafty display in the second innings - where they shared a 72-run stand and made the Windies bowlers toil hard for 36 overs - which, in fact, enabled their side to stay in the game and set their opponents a somewhat-difficult target. 

The value the two men put on their wickets and their stubbornness to just keep batting at all cost, unphased by the match situation, in a way personified the amelioration of the side. It is easy to forget that it was only 8 Tests ago that they had a desolate Jason Roy, who looked like fish out of water, opening the batting, after which his absence had to be made up for by utilizing Joe Denly as an emergency, makeshift opener. 

Zak Crawley hit a career best 76 at the Ageas Bowl © Getty

But the determination of Burns and Sibley was not even the biggest silver lining for English batting from the Southampton Test. That came in the form of young Zak Crawley. For both England and Crawley, his knock in the second innings - a fluent 76 which was arguably the best knock of the whole Test - was a giant leap forward in the right direction. Ever since being thrown into the line of fire against New Zealand last year, Crawley has improved on his high score in every single Test he’s played and has brought to the No.3 position a combination of positivity and prolificity that both England and skipper Joe Root have yearned for. And, in all likelihood, it does look like he might have finally put an end to the career of Denly that was hanging by a slender thread. What this, in turn, means is that England can, finally, thanks to the emergence of Sibley, Crawley and Pope, dwell and drool at the prospect of having a young and reliable batting core, something they’ve not had in years. It is a long shot, no doubt, but with every passing game, the seeds are being planted for the same. 

The positives for England from the Ageas Bowl Test were also not restricted to just the batting. While the move to leave out Broad invoked controversy, it did, also, like Stokes suggested, prove the strength in depth in the pace department. They were able to field a potent bowling attack in the form of Anderson, Wood and Archer, knowing that they had the likes of Broad, Sam Curran and Woakes waiting in the sheds. While the bowlers who were picked did not really fire as much as everyone expected them to, it did indicate the fact that England had multiple trump cards up their sleeves in the pace department, heading forward. 

The exquisite control and consistency displayed by Dom Bess across both the innings also proved that he is a cricketer who is rapidly on the rise and has a ceiling higher than what many thought. The rise of Bess, honestly, couldn’t have come at a better time for England, given the fact that in all likelihood, they are going to end up playing a total of eight Tests against India and Sri Lanka in the sub-continent sometime within the next year. With Jack Leach already proving his mettle as an international spinner, one cannot blame them for fantasizing about the two becoming the next Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar. The success of both Bess and Leach is also a significant step in the right direction, especially given the fact that it was less than a year ago that their premier spinner, Moeen Ali, returned figures of 3/172 in what was England’s most important Test match of 2019. 

And for what’s worth it, England might have also, during the Southampton Test, got their answer for the age-old question that has plagued them now for years, “Will Ben Stokes make a good captain?”.  In simple terms, from every ounce of evidence that was available from the first Test, the answer is a big yes. Stokes was bold with his decisions, marshalled his troops like a true leader, rotated the bowlers better than his skips Root ever did and, most importantly, shone like a star with both bat and ball. Him captaining England just felt right and the 342-odd overs that were bowled at the Ageas Bowl indicated that the all-rounder is more than ready to don the captain’s armband if and when the time arises. 

That can wait, but heading into Old Trafford, it is important for England to realize that while they’ve not quite started the summer off perfectly like they would have envisioned, they are not far off from doing so. Yes, them losing the first Test could also be attributed to their own slip-ups and blunders - be it the drop catches, no balls, missed run-outs or even the batting collapses - but what looks pellucid is that they are a team headed in the right direction - one that has no connection or association to the side that twelve months ago looked like it despised Test cricket. Should the deductions from the first Test hold true, then, one presumes that, with better execution, they should walk away as victors from Old Trafford. 

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