Friday, June 21, 2019

Unpopular opinion: Moeen’s approach was right and rest of the English batsmen got it wrong.

England has been successful in last two years due to their aggressive style, and their batsmen thrive on playing aggressively despite losing wickets. That’s what kept them in the game against Pakistan, chasing 348, that’s why they knocked off 212 vs Windies easily, and that’s why they have been winning heavily.

Today it looked like they wanted to play the old fashioned way, where you keep wickets in hand, wear out the bowling and with low required run rate, you will cruise to the target. But that’s not their natural style. I know you need to adapt to conditions, but you can still be aggressive in mindset while scoring at 5-5.5 per over.

If bowlers know the batsman is trying to just survive or knock them around, they get their tails up, they bowl better, more aggressive lengths. But if batsmen are in attacking frame of mind and hit a couple of shots, the bowlers will react, and often in counter productive way.

What if they were chasing 310 against SL today? Would they have played in this fashion? I would argue they would have actually won the match by just going after the bowling from the get go.

I think Ben stokes played a sensible innings after losing Woakes.. he had to do that. But other English batsmen were kind of timid, and they should not blame this loss on Moeen.

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