Stuart's Beef As England Look At Changes

This is the understatement of the year, but England desperately need a performance in the second Test in Mumbai.

Defeat would end England’s chances of winning the series with just two tests played. It would also result in England’s worst run of Test results in a calendar year, a defeat in Mumbai would be their eighth of 2012.

England’s insipid bowling display in Ahmedabad leaves them with a dichotomy to solve ahead of day one of the second Test: Do they go with five specialist bowlers, or do they maintain the four man attack that so badly faltered last time out?

Whichever option England decide to go for, there will surely be changes to the personnel involved. Tim Bresnan - whose pace has undoubtedly dropped since surgery on an injured elbow last year – now sadly lacks the zip required to trouble batsmen at this level, and his disappointing return of 19 overs, no wickets for 73 runs in India’s first innings at Ahmedabad will surely result in him missing out here.

Bresnan will almost certainly be replaced by Monty Panesar, with the wicket expected to turn and an acknowledgement from Coach Andy Flower this week that he should have played in Ahmedabad, Monty will provide the support to Graeme Swann that Samit Patel’s part time spin could never do and in truth, was never supposed to.

Vice-captain Stuart Broad missed nets on Thursday. This was said to be a precautionary measure, but it’s possible that his absence could result in Stuart Meaker making a surprise Test debut on Friday.

Meaker, who was drafted into the touring party as cover for the injured Steven Finn, presents England with an interesting conundrum because Broad, like Bresnan, struggled to make an impression with the ball in Ahmedabad, and with Meaker’s pace and skiddy action presenting different challenges to the Indian batsmen, it might be a move that even a fit and well Broad may have succumbed to.

That said it would be huge decision to draft in a young bowler on test debut for a game England cannot afford to lose. My hunch is Broad will play, although had Steven Finn been fit again he would surely have lined up alongside Anderson, Swann and Monty in England’s bowling quartet, with Patel providing back-up should it be required (it will be required).

England need their batting line up to fire as well though, and they would do well to take a leaf out of Australian captain Michael Clarke’s book, who scored his fourth double hundred of 2012 against South Africa in Adelaide on Thursday.

Pup’s average this year is breath-taking 141 and whilst Alastair Cook will hope his appointment as captain will yield similar returns as it has done for his Australian counterpart, he also knows and has stated this week that the rest of England’s batting line up need to deliver now too.

One man who won’t be scoring runs in Mumbai is new dad Ian Bell, who has returned to England following the birth of his son. Jonny Bairstow looks most likely to replace Bell at five following scores of 95 and 54 against South Africa in his last test, not to mention a century against Mumbai A in England’s final warm-up match before this series started.

If Patel remains at six, England could potentially have three changes to the side that lost by nine wickets last week. It’s hardly the start of a new era, but if Bairstow and Meaker come in and score runs and take wickets, it is hard to see how either Bell or Broad would get back into the side, on this tour at least.

England are in desperate need of finding a winning formula in India. Broad won’t want to be dropped, and as part of the ECB establishment I am sure his employers won’t want to drop him either, but England have to pose more of a threat with the ball in Mumbai than they did last week, so Broad might well have to miss out.

Monty Got A Raw Deal

It's amazing how a players stock can rise when they're not even involved in a game of cricket. It's like the value of gold rising when equity markets are in crisis.

The trouble with using Monty Panesar as the golden boy in our investment analogy here is that he's far from being the perfectly safe investment England should revert to when their normal game plan defaults.

With England toiling as India reached 521 for 8 on Friday, long before their catastrophic capitulation with the bat to 41/3 at stumps on day two, the age old debate of England sub-continent tours of old has already re-surfaced: where is Monty?

A run a ball 117 from Virendra Sehwag as well as a spritely 74 from Yuvraj, returning to test cricket after his battle with cancer, helped India into a position of power during their first innings. But it was the stand out performance of India’s new number three, Che Pujara, whose 206 was full of classical shots his predecessor Rahul Dravid would have been proud of, that really drove home India’s advantage.

A lot of the talk in England before this series focussed on the retirements of Dravid and the sublime VVS Laxman, not to mention the fading force of Sachin Tendulkar. But with Pujara delivering in Ahmedabad and the emergence of Virat Kohli as a genuine test cricketer over the past 12 months, India are re-generating their batting line-up. And mighty impressive it looks too.

England’s decision to maintain a three man seam attack resulted in Monty missing out in the first Test, with Samit Patel’s ability to bat well against spin giving him the nod over Jonny Bairstow.

What England must now be realising however is that Patel’s left arm spin is defensive at best, and cannot be considered frontline or threatening, particularly against this accomplished Indian batting line up.

Graeme Swann bowled more than an entire ODI innings, 51 overs in the first innings alone. He took five wickets and in the process surpassed Jim Laker as England’s most successful off-spinner. He bowled a good line and genuinely challenged the Indian batsmen throughout, something of a surprise given the difficult time he had against Amla and co last summer.

The fact that Kevin Pietersen had a couple of spells as well, taking the wicket of Ravi Ashwin late on day two, suggests England desperately need additional spin options, but I still wouldn’t count on Monty playing the next match

Monty has a fine slow left arm, with a good record for England, taking 142 wickets in 42 matches to date. But whilst his forward defensive can be obdurate at times (Cardiff; Ashes; you know the rest), his work in the field is still slightly reminiscent of a newly born foal, barely able to control the movement of its own legs as they stumble their way around a field

Further, England have enjoyed a huge amount of success in Test cricket over the past few years with this formula of three seamers and a spinner. To change that would be a bold statement, and if such a change were to fail, criticism would duly follow.

But do England need three seamers in India, where the pitches are bereft of life, bounce and therefore offer little, if any, assistance to fast bowlers? Bresnan, who replaced the injured Steven Finn here, would have been selected because of his ability to reverse swing the ball as he did in last week’s final warm up match at Ahmedabad’s B stadium, but he has not been able to replicate that in the first two days of this Test.

Finn’s sheer pace and height would surely have presented more problems than the conservative Bresnan has managed so far, and he would get in most people’s first XI ahead of Monty, and if he is fit for the second test he will surely play, so again – where would Monty fit in? Should England drop Patel and replace him with a more effective left arm spinner?

The other option available to the selectors, which has been mentioned by a few fellows on Twitter in recent months, is dropping Stuart Broad. His bowling has been relatively ineffective in recent times and was England’s most expensive bowler in the first innings here, going at over four an over

But then, it would be a pretty brave decision to drop the newly appointed vice captain before he's even demanded the third umpire review a turned-down lbw decision or two, (there’s no DRS in this series either remember!)

Monty fans will say he got a raw deal by not getting a game in the first Test. Many people will say that England’s fans in general have been given a raw deal as not playing him has potentially reduced England’s chances of winning the first Test.

But getting him into the side is going to require England to abandon their favoured six batsmen four bowlers ratio, or drop one of their three tried and tested seamers.

It’s a big call for Cook, in only his second Test as captain, but after just two days of this tour, England’s stock is already starting to slide.