England vs Sri Lanka 1st test Cardiff 2011

It frustrates me at times when I hear the news that I’ve been anticipating for some time
Anderson injury causes England concern

Why is it frustrating? Because the ECB coaching system doesn’t seem to want to embrace technologies such as biomechanics to prevent this sort of thing.
Ever since I saw James Anderson bowl first in 2002 when making his ODI debut in Australia I have just thought stress fracture.
What happened in May 2006? Anderson hit by stress fracture

And his rehab began after a year out of the game. It was treated by remodelling his action. The bowling coach at the time was the rather inept Kevin Shine who tried to turn his mixed action into a side on action. While this would’ve maximised the swing he could generate I believe that his natural action is a chest on approach and it is only his delivery stride in the landing of his back foot that is causing him problems.

It took me quite some time to track a photo that demonstrates this but here’s one from 2009 after he had ignored the rehab following the recovery:

jimmy anderson

The key thing to note with this is that if you are bowling side on the front arm (left in this case) should be inside the line of the head. Jimmy clearly has his outside. The next thing to look at is the head position – this is falling to his left hand side. This is because his back foot is landing parallel to the return crease. He then pulls his left arm outside the left hand side of his head which causes his head to fall away to the left. This has the effect of pulling his left side down, twisting the back which will over time cause a stress fracture as the force after bowling as many overs as an international cricketer does wears away at the back.

Kevin Shine, the england bowling coach at the time, attempted to get his left arm inside the line of the head to straighten it up – the problem with that is that you have to turn yourself into a side on bowler. The solution in my mind and one that many bowlers who use technology come to is change the position of the back leg to be perpendicular to the return crease.

A good example would be Shaun Pollock who did exactly this to avoid injury:
shaun pollock

Compare this to Anderson’s landing:
Anderson

Having said all this the ECB really needs to consider papers like this one from the australian universities when advising bowlers early in their careers. It is far easier to change a bowling action when you’re 18-21 than when you’re over 30 as became increasingly obvious with Andrew Flintoff – his problems were different, attempts were made but in the end his career was brought to an early end because of a flawed bowling action

England vs India 1st test 2008 & the 1st test in 1986

What links my last post to this post is that they are both about what is happening now and what happened 22 years ago.
This year Venice has had the worst floods since 1986
Tomorrow is the final day of a test match that reminds me of one of the most famous tests in 1986

So, the 1st test between India and England is at the MA Chidambaram Stadium
Chepauk, Chennai, India
and sees the match finely balanced with India being set 387 to win and approx 120 overs to do it in. With 90 overs remaining they have 256 more runs to score and 9 wickets in hand. If they achieve it, it will be the highest total on this ground scored to win a test match – the current highest for a side batting last and winning is 155 in 2001.
An interesting match in itself, however the match I want to look at happened in 1986, though again we have a similarity, because like the 2001 match it was Australia vs India.
Back then, the city of Chennai was known as Madras, and in September was to become the stage of one of the greatest games of cricket.
Part of the reason for it’s greatness is it is the 2nd of only two international tied tests. Note this is not a drawn match, as tied refers to both sides scoring identical scores and losing all 20 wickets over the course of 5 days.
Both sides were full of greats:
David Boon, Dean Jones, Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Armanath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev, Craig McDermott, the list goes on.

The scorecard is available here – on it’s own does not tell the full story, but is essential to follow.

The Wisden Almanack article on the match details some of the finer points which I will attempt to summarise (though you need to create an account to read it).

Winning the toss, Australia batted first and scored 574 for 7 declared in the first innings over 3 days thanks to 122 by David Boon, 210 by Dean Jones (playing in only his 3rd test match) and 106 by captain Allan Border. Jones had to have treatment for exhaustion, nausea and cramps after his 8 hour innings which was the highest by an Australian in india. The humid weather conditions made the innings even more impressive – reports state that it was 40 degC in the middle and 80% humidity. This was Australia’s highest total in india, setting a good platform. The pitch favoured the spinners, with Yadav, Maninder Singh and Shastri bowling over 135 overs between them (of the 170 overs delivered). Yadav and Shastri took 5 of the 7 wickets to fall.

In reply, India lost wickets and were struggling at 65-3, 142-4, and 206-5.
The follow on target was 375 and looked a long way off, but thanks to a century from captail Kapil Dev they surpassed it and got to 397 before being dismissed. Australian off spinner Greg Matthews took his first 5 wicket haul in a test match. Their other spinner Ray Bright took 2 wickets also.

Australia had a lead of 177 with less than 2 days to go there was not much time to force a result. Ending day 4 on 170/5 again the spinners had taken the wickets, this time Shastri and Maninder Singh shared the 5 between them.

Border decided to gamble the following morning setting India 348 to win in 87 overs

The scoring rate had been high throughout the game
Aus 1st inns: 3.36
Ind 1st inns: 4.42
Aus 2nd inns 3.46

348 in 87 required 4 runs per over exactly and had been done by India before when they scored 406 to beat the West Indies in 1977. In that match they did have 147 overs to do it. In addition, Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Armanath were part of that winning team. So, coupled with playing at home, hopes would’ve been high especially since the popularity of one day cricket batsmen had learnt how to score at over 4 runs per over on a regular basis.

There were no hundreds this time, but Gavaskar lead the way with a anchoring innings of 90
Armanath hit a similarly paced 51 as was Azharuddin’s 42
Going to tea at 190 for 2,
CS Pandit upped the scoring with a run a ball 39
Shastri hit 48 off 40 balls but lost Cheetan Sharma for 23 with 18 needed off the last 5 overs

The damage was again done by the spinners Matthews and Bright

India got to 344 for 9 with 8 balls remaining.
Shastri was in with the last man Maninder Singh
Going into the final over with Shastri on strike…
He hit a 2 and a single leaving the scores tied with Maninder on strike and 4 balls remaining

At 5.18 pm after defending the first ball was defended Matthews had Maninder Singh adjudged lbw to collect his 2nd 5 wicket haul and 10 wickets in the match. The match was tied and the 30,000 supporters there would talk about it for the rest of their lives.

Dean Jones (210) and Kapil Dev (119) were awarded the man of the match awards though Matthew’s profile suggests he shared much of the plaudits for the “match-winning” figures:
68.1 overs, 10 maidens 10 for 249

Matthews never performed bowled anywhere near as well in a test again with those two 5 wicket hauls remaining the only ones in his 33 test match career. He finished averaging 48 with the ball and 41 with the bat. His profile also says that while every other player sweated profusely during the match, he wore a wooly jumper throughout