Bell must trust his instincts
David Gower, writing in the Sunday Times , says Ian Bell has to score well in Durban to get pressure off his back amid questions over his place in the side
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
David Gower, writing in the Sunday Times, says Ian Bell has to score well in Durban to get pressure off his back amid questions over his place in the side. He compares Bell's situation to his own in 1990, when, under Graham Gooch, he battled a similar phase and emerged successful.
Being dismissed leg-before by Atul Wassan for eight in the first innings was not going to do it for me. Luckily, we were asked to follow on and when Gooch and Mike Atherton had bedded in via their own respective styles, I found myself flat on my back with my eyes closed, listening to the game from inside the dressing room in the final session of the fourth day.
When Gooch got out I was up and walking out to the wicket to find it was still a lovely summer evening and that with a mind uncluttered by anything in particular, just letting all my natural instincts get to work was all that was needed. I rather enjoyed the time at the crease that evening and remember feeling miffed that the moment for stumps to be drawn had arrived all too quickly.
In the same newspaper, Simon Wilde says England must display more faith in Graham Onions whose reliability and consistency has reaped rewards.
The qualities of Onions can be easily overlooked. He is not demonstrative and he doesn’t bowl balls that fly high into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. But he gives 100%, has a dependable action and a dependable personality, as everybody saw when he blocked out the nail-biting final over from Makhaya Ntini to save the Centurion Test.
When Onions dismissed Shane Watson and Mike Hussey with the first two balls of the second day of the Edgbaston Test, it showed he can put the ball on the spot from the very start. Unlike some bowlers, he doesn’t need to feel his way into things, as we saw yesterday when his first seven overs yielded four runs. He may be a close friend and teammate of Harmison’s, but they don’t drink from the same water.
In the Sunday Telegraph, Barry Richards lauds Jacques Kallis for his determined 75 and terms him as the best player in Test cricket over the past decade.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo