With the parents back from their latest sojourn abroad I had Sunday lunch in East Rudham, and picked up some good rural photographs. Also in the added media you will see a pic that has gone out on the Great Auction facebook and twitter pages.
England in the course of approximately half a day threw away a test match they seemed to have in the bag. When Sri Lanka lost their seventh second innings wicket they were still under 200 to the good, and one would have backed England to make a successful chase. It was at that point that the wheels began to come off, as Alastair Cook went for the “strategy” of feeding the established batsman (Angelo Mathews) singles so as to attack the tailender. I have never been greatly enamoured of such a practice, believing that it is better to encourage your bowlers to look for wickets whoever is on strike, and the moment I became absolutely 100% dead set against it was in Australia in 2009 when I saw Mohammed Yousuf gift the home side a test match that Pakistan should have strolled by doing the same things. On that occasion Mike Hussey and Peter Siddle batted for more than a session together, and instead of a token run chase at the end Pakistan faced a target of 176 and collapsed, Yousuf compounding his failure as captain by surrendering his wicket to an awful shot at a critical time. On this occasion, Mathews destroyed England with a magnificent 160, Herath the tailender made 48 (actually with no pressure being applied to the senior partner, there ends up being less pressure on the junior), and Sri Lanka’s lead mushroomed to 350, more than enough to defend in the fourth innings a match at most test match venues. Cook then compounded has failings as captain by falling cheaply to initiate a collapse that ended in the last over of the day when night-watchman Plunkett was inexcusably caught at cover playing a loose drive to leave England right in the cart at 57-5 needing a mere 293 more for victory. The only worse response to a mini session at the end of a penultimate day that I can remember from England was in Trinidad in 1994, when chasing 194 for victory they were 40-8 at the close, and there were mitigating factors in the combined form of Ambrose, Walsh and murky light on that occasion. For more details about a defeat from the jaws of victory such as even England (all-time masters of this dubious art) have seldom engineered check out cricinfo.
Now for some photos…
aspiblog 