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England slow start v New Zealand in Dunedin - Lawrence Booth

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Last week this column ventured the view that 2013 had the potential to become a land of milk and honey for England’s Test team. Neither was 2014 shaping up too badly. And the sooner we could get to 2015, the better!

Then they went and conceded a first-innings deficit of 293 to New Zealand; only Brendon McCullum’s declaration prevented a record lead in Tests against the English. Like the Top Spin, this team may just have been guilty of getting ahead of themselves.

In the end, the Dunedin Test reverted to type, with New Zealand’s bowlers plugging away gamefully but ineffectually and England’s only wobble coming when the draw had been confirmed. But the trend has been well documented: show England the first Test of an overseas series and they’ll show you an uncanny mixture of tentativeness, complacency and woolly thinking.

All square: England rescued a draw after a shocking start in Dunedin

    More from Lawrence Booth...   THE TOP SPIN: It was a thrilling win but England can't bat away concerns over plodding top order 20/05/13   THE TOP SPIN: Prior's award is a deserved reward for being England's Mr Selfless 14/05/13   THE TOP SPIN: Australia will want to summon up the spirit of '89 but England should leave it well alone 30/04/13   The Top Spin: Weather warning for England's spinners - Is this a golden era for Swann and Panesar? 23/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Compton goes back to the future to show that cricket's past and present can form a solid partnership 16/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Let's hope there's a happy medium pace between slow turn of county game and 90mph barrage from the IPL 08/04/13   THE TOP SPIN: Hunted England wear haunted look as eyes of the world see them struggle in New Zealand 25/03/13   The Top Spin: It's the end of an era as throwback Blackwell calls it a day (and ensures he will be a permanent one-cap wonder) 19/03/13   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE  

In 13 such games since they beat a disorganised South Africa at Port Elizabeth in 2004-05, England have won one, against Bangladesh in 2010, and lost nine – sometimes disastrously (Multan 2005-06, Brisbane 2006-07, Hamilton 2007-08, Kingston 2008-09, Dubai 2011-12).

Time was when such a quirk would have engendered an inquest, possibly even a report. The issue of facial hair might have come under the spotlight; certainly, the county system would have been assailed with a microscope and a scalpel.

For now, Andy Flower has done his part by acknowledging the problem – which at least puts him some way ahead of his Australian counterpart Mickey Arthur. And yet, short of asking the ICC to rebrand every ‘first Test’ as ‘second Test’, what can the coach do about England’s habit of stumbling out of the blocks with their laces tied together?

Some have pointed to the presence of only one warm-up game before the Dunedin Test, but this theory quickly falls flat.

In India, England played three warm-ups before crashing to a nine-wicket loss at Ahmedabad. And it had been the same in Australia two winters earlier, where they conceded a lead of 221 – though with the caveat that Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad bowled with no luck against Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin.

What was baffling about the first half of the game in Dunedin was that England had no excuses. The pitch wasn’t turning. There was an absence of Ashes-style tension. The opposition attack was the very definition of workmanlike.

Have England entered the realm of the pink elephant – a world in which the very mention of the trap into which you must not fall merely increases the chances of falling into it?

The Watford Wall: Steve Finn produced a fine defensive batting display as nightwatchman

Perhaps, although you’d never get anyone to admit to it. But rewind a year to England’s series against Pakistan in the UAE, and a clue emerges. By their own admission, England failed to prepare properly – and lost 3-0. Both the preparation and the result remain the largest blots on Flower’s copybook. Grown men swore it must never happen again.

And then came the second day at Dunedin, when all but a couple of batsmen threw their wickets away in, before their bowlers collectively misfired.

It’s always tricky ascribing complacency from the outside to a professional sports team, especially when that sport can be as random as cricket. But the ease with which England batted in the second innings, on a pitch still crying out for runs, suggested little more than a degree of mental fine-tuning. England decided to come to the races.

As yesterday’s events in India demonstrated, England may have to do little more this year than keep their wits about them. If they do (and, yes, we’re getting ahead of ourselves again), they have a great chance of winning four straight Ashes series for the first time since the late 1880s.

Plenty to ponder: Flower will be demanding his side start the second Test much better than they did the first

THE TOP SPIN ON TWITTER

For cricket-related snippets from England's tour of New Zealand, feel free to go to twitter.com/the_topspin

But that is the kind of call that must be made by onlookers, not the players themselves. Aside from complacency in the UAE, England’s other fault after reaching the top of the Test rankings in 2011 was their tendency to talk of a legacy. Legacies are for others to decide. And they are bestowed retrospectively. Anything else is a distraction.

And distracted is precisely how England appeared on the second and third days of the first Test. The mercy for Flower is that they dealt with the problem mid-game – as they did, to different degrees, at Ahmedabad and Brisbane.

That, ultimately, is the mark of a team: even the excellent South Africans had to dig themselves out of a very large hole to prevail in Australia before Christmas.

But it would be useful if England kicked the habit. And so we end with the good news: their next first Test overseas is in November at Brisbane. And, as things stand, it remains unclear whether Australia will have any players left to give them a game.

The future's bright: England will be hoping for a vast improvement in Wellington

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

The mask slips

Australia don’t have a hell of a lot going for them at the moment. A world-class batsman/captain, for sure. A richly promising seam attack, no doubt, with a strength in depth better even than England’s.

But, until Mickey Arthur ruled four players – vice-captain Shane Watson, seamers James Pattinson and Mitchell Johnson, and batsman Usman Khawaja – out of the third Test in India yesterday after they failed to respond to his request for a three-point plan to improve the team’s performance, they also conveyed an air of toughness.

Some of that may have been bluster, of course, but the mask has slipped – and it will take a while to readjust.

Banished: Australia vice-captain Shane Watson was among those dropped

Meanie Malinga

Lasith Malinga, the Sri Lankan sling bowler whose dodgy knees deprived him of a Test career, is in trouble with his board – for ‘his behaviour when dealing with the press’. According to ESPNcricinfo, Malinga ‘responded gruffly towards television journalists’, and told another poor member of the fourth estate to ‘mind his own business’.

Dark days indeed. Yet how many players would be up in front of their administrators for gruff responses to nosey parkers? The Top Spin hesitates to speak for everyone, but the press can probably take care of themselves.

Hot water: Malinga arrives at the Sri Lanka cricket office to hold talks with selectors in Colombo

Fulfilment for Ashraful – finally

As if Malinga’s shaky relationship with the media wasn’t tough enough for Sri Lankan cricket fans to stomach, how about the first Test at Galle? The arrival of Bangladesh is traditionally cause for celebration among hosts keen to inflate their averages. But after Sri Lanka’s batsmen did their bit by making 570 for four, their bowlers were somehow carted for 638 – an innings that included a fourth-wicket stand of 267 between Mohammad Ashraful (190) and Mushfiqur Rahim (200).

For Ashraful in particular, this was the stuff of dreams. Since scoring a hundred on Test debut way back in September 2001, also against Sri Lanka, he has been nothing if not exasperating, taking his Test average all the way down to 22 before Galle. The hope now, as the debate about two Test divisions gets another airing, is that the bottom has been reached.

In the runs: Ashraful (left) plundered 190 in Galle

Reintroducing Danish Kaneria

The legal rights and wrongs of Danish Kaneria’s lifetime ban for alleged involvement in the Mervyn Westfield spot-fixing case are not for this column to consider. But, as Kaneria’s team prepare to appeal the ban in April, it was instructive to hear Farogh Naseem’s assessment of his client.

‘He is a young man with a promising career ahead of him and he could be utilised by Pakistan and other teams around the world,’ said Mr Naseem. ‘As a leg-spinner, he is the master of a dying art and it is in the interest of the game of cricket that he should play.’

Maybe. Kaneria is 32. At the time of his last Test, at Trent Bridge in 2010, he had 261 wickets, which is very good, at an average of nearly 35, which isn’t bad. Simply being a leg-spinner does not make him a master of a dying art. It could be an interesting hearing.

  More... The Top Spin: 'Home comforts' offer England chance to embark on unprecedented winning run Flower calls for soul searching ahead of second test if England are to halt run of first innings flops Finn curbs his instincts to deliver one of the great nightwatchman innings in Dunedin Nasser Hussain: The Australian cricket team are shambolic from top to bottom








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