Cook rues lack of spin test – Cricket News Update
England skipper, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750.
Having suffered plenty at the hands of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Abdur-Rehman-c41691 in the early parts of the year, Poms came to the sub-continent well ahead of the opening Test in order to acclimatize themselves with the conditions, and more importantly gain some sound preparation against quality spinners on turning Indian tracks.
As it stood, their three-warm up games hardly did them any favours after the Indian selectors opted to exclude a slow bowling option. The first practice match saw India A fielding a pace-heavy attack, supported by the spin of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Yuvraj-Singh-c98364.
In the final warm-up game, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 skipper labelling India’s strategy as pathetic.
Nonetheless, both spinners did the major damage in their respective games where Yuvraj claimed a five-wicket haul while Mishra returned with a four-for.
Despite that, Cook was content with his team’s overall performances after watching the likes of Jonny Bairstow, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Samit-Patel-c2426, who chipped in with both, bat and ball.
"Clearly we can't control the standard of the opposition," Cook said. "We would have liked to have faced more spin in the matches but that hasn't happened. If anyone has been watching our training sessions while these games have been going on, we've had some good spinners bowling to us in the nets. We'd rather them in the middle but they've been turning out there and all the lads have been putting in some really good practice.
“Obviously we've had http://www.senore.com/Cricket/A-Mishra-c871 missing here. I don't know if he was injured or not but he didn't bowl that many overs, so clearly there's been a message of some kind."
Tags: