How England’s Tail-End Tactics Cost Them Control At The Oval

“Inept” was Michael Atherton’s assessment of England at the lunch interval of the second day of The Oval Test match.

During the morning session, England let New Zealand off the hook from 280-7 the night before to 391 all out. A combination of sloppiness in the field and the confounding short-ball tactic that’s become the default for them to switch to as soon as the seventh wicket of the innings falls took them from a strong position to behind the game.

The loyalty of England to a tactic which has consistently been proved as the long way round to finishing the innings rather than a short-cut, is confounding. According to CricViz data, under Brendon McCullum’s reign, 28 per cent of the deliveries bowled by England’s seamers to those batting at No.8 or below have been short. Only Sri Lanka during the same time period have used that tactic to the tail more often. However, those bouncers cost England 17 runs per wicket, the fifth-worst average when bowling short balls to the lower-order of any team.

Part of the problem is accuracy. Sonny Baker bowled the first ball of the day today, spraying four byes well out of reach of Glenn Phillips to get the ball rolling. His next ball was top-edged by Phillips, and flew down to the boundary. Baker’s next over also started with two fours, by Kyle Jamieson this time, before a costly drop by Ben Duckett, which would have made those 16 runs worth it.

In going to the short-ball tactic, teams accept that they’re going to concede runs more quickly, but in theory have a higher chance of running through the tail quickly. In many cases, teams see that as an acceptable quid pro quo, but it doesn’t necessarily stack up against the data. In the last four years, bouncers to tailenders have generally come with a strike-rate of 29 across all teams. Good length balls have a strike rate of 27, and average 11 runs per wicket, compared to roughly 16 for most teams when bowling short balls. In a nutshell, bowling good length balls to tailenders gets them out more quickly and costs fewer runs compared to when the short-ball ploy is used.

It is, however, an acceptable line of thought beyond the data, that tailenders trying to hit out and add some quick runs, are liable to hit one up in the air sooner or later. Conditions can also skew the sample. The bouncer ploy becomes more attractive when the ball isn’t swinging or moving off the pitch, when good-length balls are likely to average more than their usual figure. It only works, however, when you take all your chances, which England didn’t, and when delivered effectively, where they also came up short.

At Lord’s last week, when England had blasted through New Zealand’s batters on a pitch offering more than plenty – in the eyes of the ICC, too much – Jamieson came out at 76-7 to face a tail-up Ollie Robinson, on his way to his first Test five-for for almost four years. Then, inexplicably, Robinson pulled back the length which had seen him rip out poles the night before, and bowled six foot eight Jamieson a succession of medium-pace chest-height bumpers. Jamieson duly hoiked them into the crowd and finished unbeaten on 38 off 29. It was a frustrating passage of play that showed England blindly enforcing pre-planned tactics rather than reacting to the conditions around them, and was matched by England’s almost identical tactics today.

Last night, Jofra Archer flattened Phillips multiple times in a half-hour period of the evening session, as he directed one well-aimed bouncer after another at his head. Those types of bouncers which appear to follow batters as they duck and weave their way around them, are Archer’s speciality. When England took the new ball this morning, Archer didn’t appear for 15 overs – 10 overs after Jacob Bethell was given a go with the shiny new cherry. Instead, it was left to Josh Tongue and Baker, both out-and-out quicks but slower, less accurate and experienced than Archer, to hammer that short length. The result was 100 runs in just under 20 overs, and a ruined keeping slate for James Rew on Test debut.

To be clear, rather than England’s inexperienced attack taking the blame, responsibility has to fall at the team leadership. While Joe Root is calling the shots at The Oval, his job is to hold the reins of the team and maintain the principles that Ben Stokes and McCullum have established. This team and its tactics aren’t his.

The most frustrating part of it was that New Zealand had given England an in yesterday on a track where it’s tough to get one. Tom Latham and Daryl Mitchell were both guilty of squandering starts to ill-advised shots. Bethell’s two wickets yesterday, Tom Blundell caught going for a big wallop into the leg side and Nathan Smith off a rank full toss, show the extent to which England were kept in the game by error over skill.

The Oval has produced one result in the County Championship all year, and only once has a team batting first failed to get over 400. When he called correctly at the toss, Root continued the 29-match long stint of captains choosing to bat first at The Oval. There’s a clear modus operandi: bat once and bat big. In that context, conceding 391 runs in New Zealand’s first innings isn’t a disaster for England, but it could prove decisive in what looks like a match evolving into a close finish. They had the chance to take complete control of the game, and they squandered it.

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