Sidebottom returns to cast spell of brilliance

25-Feb-2013

Man-of-the-Series Ryan Sidebottom leads England off the field, New Zealand v England, 3rd Test, Napier, March 23, 2008

"In 61 balls of brand-enhancing frugality, Sidebottom single-handedly turned New Zealand's overnight score of 208 for 6 into 277 all out," writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian. "He hit the stumps three times and allowed a team-mate in on his one-man show only when Andrew Strauss held a straightforward slip catch off Jacob Oram. It was the stuff of bowlers' dreams, but for Sidebottom they are becoming part of Test-match reality."

Sidebottom joked that his colleagues had ribbed him for "burgling a few wickets" at the end of the New Zealand innings, but the best seamers earn these salad spells by doing the chips-and-gravy graft in less favourable conditions over a long period of time: in Sri Lanka during the winter Sidebottom bowled far better than his figures suggested. You do not need to see the world rankings - Sidebottom is currently 10th in the Test table - to tell you that "best seamers" is a category in which he now very much belongs. These are early days, but his 57 Test wickets have cost just 25.70 each. To dip under the 25-mark would be to enter the realms of Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and Alec Bedser in the pantheon of English seamers.

Simon Barnes writes in the Times that when you’re playing the team ranked seventh in the world you don’t just want to beat them, you want to hammer them, which England have failed to do in the first two days at Lord’s.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes reflects on a day of play that featured insipid cricket, "not helped by the umpires reaching for their light meters like nicotine addicts fingering their cigarette packets."

England

George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo