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*Official* First Test at Trent Bridge

grecian

grecian

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
You'd have thought might have tried Smith, just for the variety, I know he's filth, but still.
 
MrPrez

MrPrez

International Debutant
Cabinet96 said:
Strange that noted bowling all-round Steve Smith is yet to bowl.
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If the score gets to 320 I actually wonder if Smith won't get a bowl.

Not because Clarke rates him as an all-rounder; just because it's the sort of thing I could see a captain who tries too hard to be creative and dynamic, doing.
 
MrPrez

MrPrez

International Debutant
Watson making things increasingly difficult for Clarke by bowling well, too. Every over he bowls makes it more tempting to give him more overs, but every over he bowls makes him breaking down more and more of a worry in the mind of the skipper.
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Cabinet96 said:
Funny people talk about Bell and hard runs. I actually don't think his problems in the last year or so have been hard runs at all, in fact, his best innings have been backs to the wall rearguards. Think Nagpur or Auckland. Heck even the Oval against South Africa last year was one of his better knocks.

His issue since the start of 2012 has more been a lack of fluency and an inability to cash in when set. I can't really remember the last time I really looked at Bell and thought I was watching a guy in really good form. Maybe a couple of innings against the Windies last summer, but other than that, you have to go back to the India series in 2011. His scoring rate in that time has in particular been really poor, and he just seems to get bogged down regularly against any sort of consistent or accurate bowling. It's probably the reason he keeps getting out in stupid and frustrating ways when set. Lots of attempts to manufacture things because the runs are rarely flowing easily.

What's weird about all of what I just said is that he's been good in one day cricket in the same time, having been really poor in the format before that. Maybe he's become to fixated on forced attacking shots or has overcompensated to a more defensive game in tests. As Spark said, the amount of blocking back of half volleys has been abnormally high, even in this innigns.
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Spot on. The stereotype will never die though. Even when people point out, at the start of a Bell innings, that it's an important situation and a chance to shake his reputation and he goes on to make some runs, the best he gets is an acknowledgement of it being "uncharacteristic" before everyone goes back to saying the same stuff the next time he goes out to bat. Maybe if he did it in the Ashes it'd change perceptions a bit but I still doubt it; after all he's played a gritty, important knock in an Ashes decider before - at #3 no less - and no-one ever brings that up.

His main problems of late have been a couple of extended runs of poor form/low confidence and a tendency for soft dismissals. Soft dismissals meaning the actual mode of dismissal not the amount of pressure or lack thereof in the situation. Even the soft dismissals have begun to get a bit exaggerated though; it seems that no matter how Bell actually gets out these days the reaction here is always "hahahahahaha typical Bell!", even if it's a standard caught behind defending an outswinger or something equally as routine for a top order bat. Any number of things - soft dismissals, getting out between 20 and 40, getting out to a spinner, making runs after someone else already has, not making runs when no-one else has, getting out just before the close of play, scoring a run on the off side, getting out to a bowler with two legs etc etc - have been attributed to "typical Bell" but it's easy to make a stereotype fit when it apparently encompasses about 80% of all dismissals of any player.
 
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