Australian bowler Nathan Lyon celebrates the dismissal of Sri Lanka's batsman Kumar Sangakkara, during the second day of the first test cricket match between Australia and Sri Lanka in Galle Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
Having bagged the selectors for years, we should congratulate them on giving Trent Copeland and Nathan Lyon a chance (Lyon particularly as he had taken only 14 first class wickets at quite a cost before the Test), and also making Michael Clarke captain.
Clarke’s captaincy was a throwback I thought to Ian Chappell in that it was invariably attacking and confrontational to the batsmen. Clarke set fields that put the batsmen under pressure.
He changed his bowlers around intelligently, and generally was determined to force the issue rather than let the game drift as Ricky Ponting generally did.
One comment in Kersi’s article referred to Michael Beer’s absence. My argument for some time has been that for an Australian side the spinner should be (preferably, too) a right-arm leg-spinner or a tallish off-spinner (think Ashley Mallett) who gets bounce more than turn.
My aversion to the left-arm finger spinner (and God help us in the dim, distant past I was one of these creatures myself) is that they are not prolific wicket-takers (except the Derek Underwood-type who was more a length bowler than spinner) in Tests.
Allan Border and Michael Clarke have, as part-time left arm finger spinners, won Tests for Australia, but no front line left-arm finger spinner has.
Lyon was impressive in that he had flight, dip, bounce and sometimes some sharp spin. My old coach used to tell me that “if they think you are spinning then you are spinning.”
Lyon gives the impression that he is spinning, unlike, say, Nathan Hauritz who is a roller rather than a spinner.
As for Copeland, I think Peter Roebuck, as usual (the best cricket writer going around) summed it well by saying that he was pre-eminently a ‘length’ bowler.
Roebuck quoted the great S.F. Barnes as saying that the three imperatives of good bowling are “length, length and length.”
I always think there is room in every attack for a length bowler, someone who can bowl for a long time and not give away many runs and nag away at the batsman’s concentration and allow the other end to be the attacking end.
This is rather like the tackling machine Ray Price-type player in a rugby league team. It’s a sort of attacking defensive play.
The fielding of the Australian side was markedly sharper than in the past few years. I heard Tony Greig mention that the fielding coach Steve Rixon would be happy with this.
If Rixon is on the coaching bench it may explain the better tactical decisions the Australians made throughout the day, too.
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