They’re playing the 2nd test in England and choose two spinners. In the first Innings Broad and Anderson combine for six wickets as they use the conditions perfectly. Then England lose early wickets and by the fall of the fifth wicket the visiting team hopes to limit the lead. The sixth wicket puts on nearly 200 as the spinners bowl without much effect and England declare with a lead over 250. The Visiting team loses all 10 wickets to seam in the 3rd Innings to lose by an Innings. The fourth Innings the spinners were picked for never materialises. India in 2018 messed up and were punished severely.
Does Old Trafford support spin? Well from 2018-21 spinners averaged 31.28 there, not fantastic but good enough to be ranked 5/18 for grounds with 10+ FC matches in England during that period.
More importantly in the 3rd and 4th Innings spinners average 25.84 there which is only beaten by Chelmsford. So Old Trafford does break down quite a bit compared to most England wickets. So no surprise that recently visiting teams have often chosen that ground to play multiple spinners.
However pace bowlers still outperform spinners averaging 22.72 in the 3rd and 4th. So dropping your 4th pacer for another spinner is a decent strategy, but maybe less when you drop a 6ft 9 left armer with nearly 100 FC wickets at 21.60.
Harmer has 354 wickets at 20.65 for Essex, a superb record. However away from Chelmsford he averages 25.69, still decent but less the insane stats we’re used to. England also only have two left handers in their top 7, Lees and Stokes. You rarely choose a spinner for an opener so it seems like Harmer was mainly chosen for Stokes.
Stokes averages 30.8 vs right off spin, with a decent sample size only left arm pace bowlers trouble him more. However he has faced Ashwin a lot, who eats left handers for breakfast and who averages just 19.50 against him. In England that average increases to 39 against all right armed off spinners.
So while South Africa had arguments for dropping Jansen for Harmer, none of them seem so good it’s worth forcing your strategy into having to bat first.
Because that’s the big thing with all this, South Africa forced themselves into having to bat first. Coming into this match that was a 2-8 record from the start of 2021 in England, it is now a 2-9 record. The only team who won was India. Both wins were built on superb batting, poor bowling by England and Bumrah brilliance. Not an easy model to copy.
Especially since in the last two years the 1st Innings has seen the lowest batting averages. Even last year the 4th Innings batters saw more success than 1st Inning batters. South Africa saw the evidence for this in their first match where they ripped through England.
The only idea I have is they feared being put in to bat with just 1 spinner to bowl in the fourth Innings. But was that risk worth so much to voluntarily set up this situation. 1-0 up with four superb pacers I just don’t think so.
In the end it went as expected, England used the conditions to bowl them out for just 151. Scared of bowling Maharaj to Stokes they used Harmer a lot more than they should have. They fed Foakes plenty of spin and England used the best batting conditions to build a massive lead and then South Africa were stuck between batting time and scoring runs, they failed to do either and England had their biggest victory since Lords 2018. Another time when a team batted first, played two spinners and never saw the 4th Innings.
Interesting post. SA batted awfully in the first innings (only a late 36* from Rabada even got them past150), and never recovered from that. Picking the extra spinner to cash in on turn late in the game relies on the batters batting well enough that the game goes late, which this one didn't. For England Anderson and Robinson both bowled beautifully, Stokes was at his awesome best in all departments, and Foakes in his understated way had a superb match as well. SA certainly missed Jansen, and it mauy well have been better if they wanted two spinners to drop Ngidi who does nothing that Rabada/ Nortje cannot do at least as well.