There was one moment in another riveting day which must have left every cricketer of Test/county/ club/village/Observer XI standard in a state of some bewilderment. In the afternoon Sabbir Rahman, who bowls occasional leg-breaks, was summoned up as a potential partnership breaker and he proceeded to bowl a couple of deliveries that would have had the captain of the Observer XI casting around for some respectable alternative.
First, Sabbir bowled a chest-high full toss to Adil Rashid, which was swatted gently to deep midwicket for a single. The umpires did not show much interest in this delivery. Soon after, with Chris Woakes on strike on 38, Sabbir delivered another full toss, a little lower than its predecessor. The startled batsman smote the ball hard but straight into the hands of midwicket, who celebrated Bangladesh’s good fortune.
Woakes set off for the pavilion in disgust. “I immediately thought it was out,” he said. “I was just annoyed at getting out.”
Off he marched but he was swiftly intercepted by Sundaram Ravi, who had been standing at square leg and who was conscious of regulation 42.6b, which demands that any delivery passing the batsman above hip height should be deemed a no-ball. The third umpire, Chris Gaffney, was consulted and he decreed that Sabbir’s delivery was indeed a no-ball. Back came Woakes, briefly as surprised and elated as Lazarus.
Every cricketing bone in my body felt that Woakes was out. That regulation had been introduced primarily because of the number of high deliveries bowled by pacemen, usually at the tailend of a limited-overs game. But in this day and age regulations are regulations. However, Gaffney did not ask to use the ball-tracker. If he had he might have concluded that the ball, dipping sharply towards the end of its ugly flight path, was just about legal.
This looked like a major turning point but there seems to have been so many in the past seven days of Test cricket in Bangladesh that we cannot be sure. Woakes merely reported: “It felt very quiet out there [he had already put on 78 with Rashid] and they thought they had burgled a wicket. And they did not say much afterwards.”
Woakes is the most cheerful of men and he was beaming when giving his assessment of the state of play at the close. He said the game was “evenly balanced. I would like to think that we could get 240-250 in the final innings.” Needless to say he is an optimist as well.
Woakes also highlighted the difficulty of opening the batting – for England at least – especially when Mehedi Hasan has the ball. “It is always spin bowling. They bowl stump to stump and one skids, then one skips.”
This prompts the question whether England should have be so hidebound about the need for regular opening batsmen in Bangladesh. There are no pacemen to face, no swinging deliveries and no bouncers, so suddenly different qualities are required by the openers. These might include right-handedness and an appetite for spin bowling rather than the more traditional virtues. In my very limited experience with the Observer XI they are far more flexible – but with them it mostly depends upon who turns up on time.
