Test Cricket produces exceptional, discernible battles sometimes. One doesn't have to watch the full day's play to observe these, because bat and ball are basically well balanced. No matter how flat the pitch, batsmen still have to address the ball well, since the cost of getting out is always prohibitively high. The tedious cliche about war - that wars should only be fought after they have been won - is wonderfully true about Test Cricket. If you see a batsman slog, it means either that the batting side has already won (or is already comfortably ahead in the game), or is hopelessly behind and has been reduced to taking suicidal chances. Far more common in Test Cricket is the kind of battle that England's fast bowlers waged against Mahela Jayawardene. The quality of cricket was not exceptional, the pitch wasn't doing much, but the battle was subtle.
England set Sri Lanka 390 to win on the final day. Sri Lanka started well and were two wickets down halfway into the day with their most experienced pair (with 267 Tests, 23000 Test runs and 69 Test hundreds between them) were at the wicket. There wasn't much help in the wicket. It is one of the better 5th day batting wickets in recent times. England had bowled competently and kept up a steady attack of the short stuff, forcing the Sri Lankan batsmen back.
Against Jayawardene, England's pacemen attacked from round the wicket early. They pushed him back, something he doesn't want to do. A good batsman's ambition is to play forward as often as possible as this is the best way to protect off stump. Jayawardene looked uncomfortable against the short stuff, and had to fend a few times. But this was unlikely to work. Specialist batsmen rarely get out fending in Test matches in the same way that they rarely get out to yorkers. Unless the bounce is uneven or the bowler is seriously quick (a la Mitchell Johnson, Shoaib Akthar) and the ball is carrying quickly off the pitch, top quality specialist batsmen rarely get out fending. So while Jayawardene looked ungainly facing the short stuff, he'd have been extremely unlucky to be dismissed by one of those deliveries. Indeed, if he were to be dismissed of a short ball, it would most likely have been off one which was misdirected on a line outside leg stump, which he might have gloved to the wicket keeper while trying to glance it for four.
What all the short pitched bowling did do, is that it made Jayawardene just slightly more tentative about coming forward. James Anderson and Stuart Broad replaced Jordan and Plunkett and resumed a more conventional line of attack, on a length outside off stump. Jayawardene played a couple of balls tentatively without getting fully forward. He survived because he played late. But the short pitched bowling had had its effect. Off the 2nd ball he faced from Anderson, Jayawardene was drawn into playing outside his off stump without moving properly forward, the ball was slightly wider than the previous one, and was caught at the wicket.
It takes far more than just technique and physical courage to bat in Test Cricket. Top players are alive to these tactical sequences. Jayawardene probably knew exactly what England were trying to do and he was probably aware that he wasn't moving forward as well as he should have. But there is no opportunity for a time out in the middle of a Test session. Had Jayawardene survived through to Tea time, he might have had a break to work out another method of playing. Had he survived those few overs, he might have brought Moeen Ali back into play.
As tactics go, this wasn't a particularly uncommon one. On a wicket where nothing much is happening off the pitch either in terms of pace or movement, the most common method of attack for bowlers is to try and disturb the batsman's footwork, and there by the batsman's balance. It is very hard to get the balance right. Bowlers often lack the control to attack in this way persistently. Many times, they lack control as a bowling team to pry open a batsman's technique over 15 or 20 overs. At other times, the field placing is not quite what it might be. On very rare occasions, the batsman is simply playing too well to be disturbed in this way. England bowled to Jayawardene with 3 men on the boundary. Had that edge been slightly thicker and gone through the vacant second slip area, we might have been talking about Alastair Cook's unwillingness to have enough catchers.
But this is the battle in Test Cricket. The batsmen are too good (and the wickets are usually too good) to be blasted out. They have to be pried out. They get worked over. The best players, in their best form are typically one step ahead of such tactics. The best players rarely make unforced errors. The Jayawardene of 2006 or 2009 might have survived this session with greater ease.
Sometimes, as in the case of Jayawardene, the tactics work. But at all times in Test Cricket, both batsman and bowler have to play at the very edge of their abilities.
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| Pitch Map for Mahela Jayawardene, 5th day, England v Sri Lanka at Lord's 2014. (From ESPNCricinfo) |