Tongue twists, slow reverse ramps and a tsunami of soiled nappies
Notes from England Ireland day 2 at Lord's.
Root's odd behaviour
England's innings really didn't matter much today. They could have declared at lunch and been fine in this match. We heard some fun facts, like Ben Duckett doesn't leave the ball (only eight times) since coming back into the game.
But mostly, it was Joe Root's innings that interested me. Not from a game position, because obviously that was gone, but he did two really weird things.
Like when he was 2 from 14 balls, he was trying to reverse scoop Graham Hume. There is no doubt Hume got the ball to hoop around a little, and he was probably a lot faster when he was younger and taking an arseload of wickets in the second division of SA first-class. In fact, he is still listed on cricinfo as fast-medium. There is no way watching his Test he's fast medium, he's maybe medium-fast, but he's going at 76MPH. It might be medium now.
So that means he is even harder to ramp due to his huge lack of pace. And Root is good enough to score quickly, at least run a ball, against a bowler of this speed without the need to pull out such a bizarre shot. He played and missed at a couple, and had an LBW shout as well. He survived all that.
But that wasn't the weirdest thing. Coming into this match Root was averaging 74 against off spin. We all know he can play spin, but really is the ball turning in that he handles the best. He averages 55 against Lyon, and 71 against Ashwin.
And they are the only offies who have him more than twice. He really does well against this form of bowling.
Then he comes up against the pinch blocker Andy McBride and suddenly he is bamboozled by the great man.
That may be slightly stretching it, as it looked like Root might have hit his own pad, or just played a really oddly angled blade. But the point is, he never goes out to off spin, but nothing can stop Andy McBrine.
Andy's double flop
Yesterday I had a video on Ireland's batting. If you need it, pop over here and take a look.
But in it I talked about the fact that Balbirnie had a gap you could drive an ice cream van through.
It was a really bad shot. Well if that was bad, today's failure was a tsunami of disposable soiled nappies washing up on your beach holiday.
Early in your innings, playing a late cut with half a heart and managing to top edge a ball that probably skipped through a little low.
Balbirnie really struggled to make a career at Middlesex. It could be that this entire ground hates him.
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