The curious case Of Moeen Ali
Now now, enough talk of New Zealand and their aggressive brand of cricket already. They were fantastic and splendid. But people, don’t get carried away, it was the same brand of cricket that was played in the first Test as well, but it backfired. We also have to consider the fact that they got lucky as well.
On another day, Ian Bell and Joe Root would have had better luck on their side, and the Test match would have ended in a draw. End of the day it was a fantastic Test match and the better team won the match, and the series ended a 1-1 stalemate, which was fair as well. Okay, now I would like to talk about one person in particular here and yes you guessed it correctly, it’s the Aligat...oops I mean Moeen Ali.
Before we proceed, let’s have a look at his statistics in the recently concluded series. He had 2 very contrasting Test matches. While he was absolutely fantastic in the 1st Test match, he was equally miserable in the 2nd Test. In the first, he had scores of 58 and 43 and bowling figures of 3/94 from 26 overs and 1/35 from 8 overs. And in the 2nd Test match, he had scores of 1 and 2 and bowling figures of 0/48 from 11 overs and 1/73 from 16 overs.
It has been established without a doubt that Moeen Ali is in the team as a spinner who can bat and not an allrounder from the fact that he is batting at the No. 8 position. So from a bowling point of view in the 1st Test, whenever the ball was given to Ali, he did something or the other and was successful in troubling a lot of batsmen. There was a bit of turn for him and sometimes even bounce from the track.
Moeen Ali is not the typical wrist spinner or a mystery spinner or not someone who turns the ball a mile. He is more of a traditional old-fashioned off spinner who bowls the ball in the good length zone and waits for the pitch to do something or the batsman to make a mistake. He does vary his speeds from time to time. This worked wonders in the first Test match. Now coming to his batting in the first Test, it was really good as he contributed some handy runs when the team really needed them.
It wasn’t like he took the New Zealand bowling apart or shredded them, but it was the innings that got England some valuable runs. These runs were very vital to increase the target that England eventually set, which made the victory possible. The difference for me in the second Test match for England’s miserable failure was the performance of Moeen Ali. He was quite poor with the bat in hand, showing his weakness outside the off-stump in the first innings by nicking one to the slips and then was bowled while attempting to leave a delivery in the second innings. As for his bowling, he was grossly inconsistent with his line and length on a pitch that offered a fair amount of help for the spinners, as Mark Craig and Kane Williamson showed on the final day.
Now we do agree that his batting was poor, but his bowling being patchy wasn’t entirely his fault. He was given 11 overs and 16 overs to bowl in the 2nd Test in which he took the lone wicket of Tim Southee who was looking to score some quick runs. Was that his fault? I would say a big NO. It was Alastair Cook’s fault and no one else’s. He is not an attacking captain, his mindset as a captain is very similar to his batting style, which is defensive. You have a lone specialist spinner in the form of Moeen Ali and you use him mostly as a defensive ploy rather than an attacking ploy, that surely has a terrible loss written all over it.
Cook should have used Moeen Ali more with a very aggressive field setting. And not only that, he should have used Joe Root only as a part-time spinner from the other end. Have the spinners bowl in tandem and attack the opposition with some very quick overs and aggressive field set up, that is when Moeen Ali would have been much more effective.
Now the series is done and over. But I surely would like to see something close to 50 overs being bowled by the lone spinner in the team who bats at no.8 in the future. If you ask me, England should bring in another fast bowler for the ashes in place of one of the failing top order batsmen. They need to give the No 6 batting position to Moeen Ali. He should be batting between the ever improving and highly impressive Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler. Ali should be given the role of a batting allrounder in the team rather than a bowling allrounder. He is primarily a batsman and only when he is batting well, he bowls well. I know many people don’t agree with the above statement, but it was pretty evident in the two Test matches that he was fantastic with the bowl when he was batting well and miserable with the ball when he got out cheaply in the recently concluded test matches.
Ben Stokes might be drawing comparisons with the likes of the English great all-rounders like Andrew Flintoff or Sir Ian Botham. But I would say England have a great opportunity to develop another all-rounder with tremendous potential and that is Moeen Ali.