Poor decision-making cost England again in first Test, says Nasser Hussain
Written by News on 30/12/2019
Nasser Hussain says England’s decision-making cost them the first Test against South Africa despite a decent effort on day four and assesses their options for the next game in Cape Town…
South Africa absolutely deserved to win with the way they bowled in that second innings and the way they batted the conditions in the first innings.
This game wasn’t lost today by England. In fact, 268 on that pitch, against that attack, batting second time around was a pretty good effort. This game was lost for England in their first innings when they were 180 all out, it’s not a 180-all-out pitch, and the way they bowled yesterday morning was just ridiculous.
They’ve just been given a lesson by South Africa here on discipline, England’s bowling on Saturday morning was ill-disciplined. All credit to South Africa and England can look across at them and think ‘that’s where we’ve got to be, we’ve got to be more disciplined in the way we bowl and the way we bat first time around.’
The cricket in this game had nothing to do with the Kookaburra ball, playing away from home on a flat pitch. If England can’t win when it’s not doing anything and they can’t win when it’s doing something then you’re left with nowhere to go.
This was the sort of pitch and conditions that I would want to play in away from home. This is not Melbourne on a drop-in pitch that is doing nothing, this is not a Kookaburra ball in Australia that is doing nothing. This is a pitch suited for England.
England’s strength is their seam attack, it’s what they build their foundations around and they are still found wanting. England didn’t lose this game because of the balance of their side, they lost this game because of their thinking.
What makes a bowling attack with 1,000-plus Test wickets between them think that the best way to go on this surface is to be bang-it-in Billies? Ball after ball after ball, banging it halfway down when they’ve seen the opposition have success pitching it up.
This game has a funny way of biting you on the backside and I saw Joe Root, having won that toss, and he’s out there on day four, Kagiso Rabada is steaming in with that new nut, the South African clan around him going ‘not a bad toss to win this, Joe’.
It bites you in the backside if you don’t make the right decisions and some of England’s decision-making has not been good enough. Again.
Alternatively, every move Faf du Plessis made was spot on today. He kept that control. He gambled a bit after lunch with Keshav Maharaj, he was willing to give Ben Stokes 20-odd runs – Stokes went after him with a couple of sweeps, a hit over extra cover – in the hope it might get him a wicket before that new ball. It did and that was a vital moment.
Then he brought Vernon Philander back, got him into the attack and quickly took him out and brought Anrich Nortje back out of nowhere really. Nortje came back straight away and got a wicket.
I’ve got to say the backup bowling for South Africa was excellent, there wasn’t as much of a drop off when Philander and Rabada came off as maybe there was earlier in the Test match. Nortje in that last spell on an up-and-down pitch – you wouldn’t fancy facing that!
When you look back now at how the pitch has played, the history of the pitch and what all the locals were saying, you err towards batting first at the toss. We’ve all done it, first Test of the series and they’re trying to reinvent the wheel a little bit – ‘if we play five seamers, we’ve almost got to bowl first, we’ve left our spinner out and our batting has looked vulnerable’ – so he almost took the slightly easier option.
Also, if you leave one of your seamers out, how do you get your spinner in? Whether it be Jack Leach, Matt Parkinson or Dom Bess, who are you going to leave out? Every decision they had to make they took the easier option as opposed to the slightly more difficult option of seeing a little bit of grass on this pitch but thinking ‘we’ll back ourselves to bat first and then it will get more difficult as the game progresses.’
Ahead of the next Test, there is not just a decision of how do you get your spinner in, it’ll be which spinner. I hope they don’t keep hiding behind ‘Leach is unfit, he’s unwell.’ If he is fit then who will they play?
If Bess suddenly jumps above Parkinson and Leach, I think that would be a disgrace.
That would mean there is no communication between the selection panel here and the selection panel who picked the first side. It would be a little bit of a cop-out depending on which spinner they play.
They’ve already made that sort of decision, they have Zak Crawley here who played in the last game, Jonny Bairstow didn’t, Bairstow jumped ahead of Crawley and doesn’t look like he’s sorted any of his problems with red-ball cricket out. If Ollie Pope is fit, he’s definitely got to play.
Watch day one of the second Test between South Africa and England from 7.30am, January 3 on Sky Sports Cricket.
(c) Sky Sports 2019: Poor decision-making cost England again in first Test, says Nasser Hussain
