Nice one, Nasser

Tim de Lisle

Yesterday and today, England did what they signally failed to do to save the game at Mohali: they batted for five sessions. For only the second time in nearly a decade of overseas Tests, the batsmen gave the bowlers 400 to play with. As Trevor Bailey used to say before the BBC put him out to pasture, it does help, you know.

Nasser Hussain made just one of England’s 407 precious runs, but his contribution was a huge one. More than half the total was gathered by players who might well have been dumped after the first Test by a less loyal captain.

Mark Butcher laboured at Mohali and wasn’t much more convincing here (see Wisden 20:20), but he did make fifty, stay there for almost three hours, and show that century opening partnerships are possible in the post-Atherton era. James Foster, shoved in at the deep end last week, was hopelessly out of his depth, but here he was composed, wristy and busy, a student who suddenly cared about impressing his tutors.

Craig White, the allrounder who is more of an all-or-nothing merchant, had made no runs to speak of since the opening day of the tour, but Mark Ramprakash (who deserves some of the credit too) galvanised him nicely last night and today he ran the show. England’s Mr Subcontinent was back in his element.

Before heading for India, he genially remarked that whereas most English seamers like a nice greentop, "I genuinely prefer to bowl on slow, low, shitheaps." Heaps don’t come much shittier than this surface at Ahmedabad, which had 65 tonnes of organic fertiliser dropped on it in the hope of holding it together.

Low’n’slow suits White’s batting even more than his bowling. His habit of propping forward becomes a virtue. Today White was upright, classical, selective, and even nerveless in the nineties. The joy of three figures, for a man who has been both a laughing-stock and a hospital regular in recent times, was there for even the fiercely partisan Gujaratis to share.

A generation or two of senior English batsmen have come and gone without making a Test hundred in the heat and hubbub of India: Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, and very possibly now Graham Thorpe. David Gower never did it, nor did Allan Lamb or Robin Smith. But Graeme Hick did, and Chris Lewis, and now Craig White has. So much for temperamental weaknesses.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden.com.

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