Something in the Air

Here's a query for Statsguru at Cricinfo.com: how many times has a team given up six hundred runs in a match's second innings and drawn the match? The answer is eight.

The interesting point is that three of those draws have occurred this year, and two of those matches involved England.

During the first day, I commented to my erstwhile associate Mr Austin, that it seemed as if England had finally figured out something I learned almost as soon as I started using sabermetric methods to look at cricket: to build a winning team, first build a platform to avoid defeat. Or, in other words, make sure your tail is not full of cheap wickets, even if your attack suffers.

I just wonder if this reflects the Strauss-Flower combination. It's not the sort of attitude the Hussain-Fletcher era would have endorsed. They played to win, on Australia's terms; and never did against Australia. Let's see how things develop in this series.