Not just the weather

that was frustrating at Lord’s.

The way the rain came in with England needing just one more wicket to go one up in the three match series was ever so slightly annoying. Don’t see why the umps didn’t just wait until the scheduled tea break.

The main annoyance though was listening to Test Match Special (TMS) over the last five days. It used to be OK as there was only one 20 minute broadcasting spot you had to do your best to avoid. when that cretinous fool Henry Blofeld starts blustering his way through describing buses and seagulls. How apt that this moron started out as a merchant banker, it’s my first thought when I hear him.

I had thought with a new producer of the show, after Peter Baxter retired at the end of the West Indies series, that it would be the best chance to get rid of the buffoon but no the new guy decided to increase the idiot quota – must be an equal opportunities scheme for the BBC – with the addition of Arlo White.

It’s hard to tell if he’s worse than Blofeld, they both don’t know when to shut the fuck up, especially after asking the co-commentator a question. Question asked then just as the ex-professional player who knew enough to play at the top level, unlike these two muppets, is about to answer it they witter over the top of them giving their opinion on how you should go about doing something.

Blofeld does know more about the game, which isn’t hard as White seems to know bugger all but his smarm bag accent and lack of telling us what is going on on the pitch and getting confused is just so damn annoying.

Martin-Jenkins is better now that fat lump Ian Salisbury hasn’t a chance of getting an England call up, god he loved that useless sod. Saggers and Mann are slightly better than White but not much and were thankfully missing from this game. Agnew is by far the best of the commentators.

Also when will Vic Marks be back?

As for the actual test match, I wasn’t expecting much with the inexperienced bowling lineup we had against the four batsmen India have. What 30 odd caps versus over 30,000 test runs. Though I didn’t think their bowlers would be up to much either.

Tremlett and Anderson are the two I had least confidence in, Sidebottom knows his role, knows what he’s doing and hasn’t been coached out of his natural action and method of bowling by the previous management regime and like many outside of that regime I have no worries when Monty bowls.

But those other two I wouldn’t have picked ahead of Broad, I think he was unlucky to be left out of the starting XI after being named in the squad before Tremlett. Anderson, well there is the prime example of that previous regime. Brought in with an excellent natural action and ability to then have it coached out of him to protect him from injury. Funny how in years gone by when most bowlers had side on action and just bowled the most comfortable way for them there was never so many foot or shin injuries or stress fractures, especially of the back.

All that coaching and restructuring of his action by Cooley and Fletcher left him a shadow of the kid that burst onto the scene, that is when he wasn’t out inured. The other thing that did for Anderson was sitting round on his arse as as twelfth man on tours and hardly ever playing the game. It wasn’t just because of injury but because Fletcher hated anyone in the county game having any control over a possible England player.

So finally injury free and with a decent amount of overs under his belt for Lancashire we finally see a decent performance from Anderson in a test match in this country. I still think he can do better if he didn’t get full of himself and try and bowl too fast and too short. The former has it going down leg the latter at his pace has the ball sitting up and begging to be put away, being a three good ball over bowler is no good. Do what you do best pitch it up and swing it, add in the odd bouncer to keep ’em guessing but don’t over do it.

Still not sure about Tremlett, wanted him to come into the One Day side when he did but I’m not quite as impressed as some, has a look of Simon Jones with his lumbering short run up but that’s it. Though he wasn’t as wayward as Harmison so that’s a certain plus for him.

It’s all good for Alan Donald the new bowling coach as long as he carries on doing what he seems to be doing, which is coach them in the mental side of things and not trying to change their way of bowling that got them this far.

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