The Wisden of Geoffrey Boycott 08.02.2012

The Wisden of Geoffrey Boycott.




You can only get better by first admitting that you were not as good as you thought you were.



It's all very well for Jimmy Anderson to complain that the ball wasn't turnin' but if you can't make runs on flat bitches then you haven't a hope in hell of winning Test matches.

On the evidence here, England look a one-dimensional team who only bowl well on flat bitches or against zeam-bowlers when their batsmen can go'ard att the ball.



England have had a helluvalot of batsmen that were better than this lot. I should know. I was one of them, averaging 59 in any Test Match on the subcontinent.



In Sri Lanka next month, they may well get turning bitches but they may also be lucky and face flat batting tracks.

You see you cannot win Test matches unless you make runs. I've said it before. We didn't have a cat in hell's chance of winning.



I am convinced that Bell cannot pick Saeed Ajmal. Pieterson shows glimpses of lettin' the ball come to him, playing straighter, but just when you think he is getting better, he reverts to his old faults of lunging in front of 'is pad and playin' across the line.



The only way Morgan's gonna get any runs at Test level is to play his shots but I am still not con-vinced that he is the man for a crisis moment. You see, Cook and Strauss defended their stumps, let the ball come to them, just knocked it for one so that they rotated the strike.



I've said it before, matches are won by an accumulation of runs, not by grand gestures..they always go wrong in the end.
I'm a great believer in puttin' runs on the board. Then before you know it, you've got forty or fifty before the middle order even comes in. (OK I made that piece of Boycott Wisden up but you wouldn't have noticed, would you??).