da bwin： ngland turned their day off into a double nets session in a bid to bring themselves up to speed for a challenging tour of India.
da bet7k： George Dobell in Mumbai04-Nov-2016At first it was meant to be a day off. Then it became an optional training day. But, by the time England left the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai on Friday, every member of the squad had undergone not one but two full training sessions.The positive – and entirely accurate – interpretation of such behaviour is that it reflects their determination to perform far better than they did on the last afternoon in Dhaka. The less positive – and also partially true – interpretation is that the first session really hadn’t gone very well and they came to the collective realisation that improvement was required.Certainly on-lookers didn’t have to wait long to watch a batsman lose his wicket in the nets. And while they were coming to terms with the bounce and turn gained by the spinners, Jonny Bairstow – who enjoyed a much-improved series with the gloves in Bangladesh – was kicking the stumps away in frustration at a fumbled take. Gareth Batty also took a painful blow on the left arm that required treatment, but it is not thought to be a serious problem.But, at the team meeting that followed, a couple of the players – notably Joe Root and Jos Buttler – expressed a wish to have another go and every member of the squad agreed. This England team is far from perfect, but there is something admirable about their willingness to confront their failings and their desire to improve.”India pose a big threat, and we’ve just got to make sure we’re prepared very well and try to prove a lot of people wrong that we can perform extremely well on this tour,” Root said.”But it’s good to see everyone working extremely hard and doing everything they can to put their claim forward for that spot.”Nobody is under any illusions about the task ahead of England in India. They go into the series not just expected to lose, but with many predicting a whitewash. And anyone who witnessed them lose 10 wickets in a session in Dhaka would struggle to take issue too strongly with such pessimism. The weaknesses remain – the unsettled top-order and the issues in both bowling and batting against spin – and we are now at the stage where England must hope it all comes together on the night if they are to prevail.It would be wrong to completely dismiss their chances, though. Their preponderance of allrounders provides unusual depth and, in Root and Alastair Cook, they have good quality batsmen. The likes of Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali have made fitful progress in recent times and, as England showed in 2012, when they came back to beat India having been thrashed in Ahmedabad, or in 2015, when they won the Ashes after being crushed at Lord’s, there is a resilience to this modern England team that was not always there in the past.”It was obviously a disappointing way to finish the series out in Bangladesh, but we’ve got some good time now to get ready and get our heads round what India are going to put up against us,” said Root.”You have to make sure you learn some of the lessons of that mad hour-and-a-half, but at the same time understand it’s a completely new challenge, new surfaces and we played some really good cricket over there as well as that [collapse].”Alastair Cook and Joe Root head to the nets at the Brabourne Stadium•AFP
Any firm decision on the XI for Rajkot will only be made after an inspection of the pitch. But, for now, it seems likely that England will retain an attack of three seamers and three spinners and that Buttler will replace Gary Ballance in the middle order. It is not a perfect solution – Buttler has played just one red-ball match since he was dropped a year ago – but it may be the least bad option.While Haseeb Hameed looks perfectly capable of coming into the team as opener, Ben Duckett made a decent fist of the job in the final innings in Dhaka and Hameed is not a natural No. 4. Buttler’s talent, if not his record, are not disputed and he is increasingly emerging as a leader of this generation of players. Still, it is a sign of how much the game has changed – and how quickly – that a man with so little cricket behind him is being considered for such a role.It was noticeable that Root bowled a little more in practice on Friday. He also talked of having spent some time with Saqlain Mushtaq in an attempt to improve his spin bowling. It is hard to believe Root is ready to play a major part as a spinner, though, not least as his importance to England’s batting is such that it seems foolish to risk exacerbating his long-standing back problem.We can also expect confirmation over James Anderson’s involvement in the tour in the next 24 hours or so. It is currently anticipated that he will be India in time for the second Test and available to play in the third. The management are determined not to risk compounding any injury issues he may have, but they are not in a position where they can manage without a bowler of his class, control and experience for long. Again, it says much for his character that he is, at his age and confronted by the prospect of unforgiving pitches (for his style of bowling, at least) and a daunting batting line-up, desperately keen to play.The England squad are pretty much laughing off any suggestion that the tour could be abandoned. They will not be required to pay any hotel bills – the BCCI has a contract with the hotels accommodating England on this trip and cannot wriggle out of that obligation.Only a few days ago, there were attempts to plant stories in the media about England not being given the warm-up game they wanted ahead of the first Test as the BCCI could not afford to stage it. It was news to England. Their schedule is an on-going problem and squeezing in a warm-up game between the end of the Bangladesh tour and the first Test in India was not an appealing prospect for a squad that go through life in a constant state of near exhaustion.There is little reason to doubt that England will train again on Saturday, depart for Rajkot on Sunday and start the next leg in their never-ending tour on Wednesday when the first Test begins.
