Neuigkeiten und Ankündigungen » add in the defeats handed to Scotl

There is a moment - a brief moment - at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when the naive might be seduced into thinking it is a gentle road-trip movie.You know things are going to go wrong, though. The word massacre is a pretty unsubtle clue as to where the plot is heading. You know youre in for a tough ride.It was a bit like that on the first day in Visakhapatnam. England started well enough but, the second they lost the toss on this surface, you feared there was trouble ahead. From the moment Virat Kohli got off the mark with a cover-driven boundary off James Anderson, he looked daunting. And, on a pitch that is already showing signs of uneven bounce and spin, you know already that England face a monumental struggle to stay in this game.The toss in Rajkot was crucial, too. It gave England a chance to apply some scoreboard pressure and the time to ease their way into the series. But the anticipated deterioration in that surface came too late to influence the outcome.It looks as if Visakhapatnam is going to be different. Even before lunch on the first day, one delivery from Stuart Broad jagged away from the bat sharply off the pitch and a few deliveries seemed to take a piece of the surface when they bounced. Batting last is likely to prove much tougher.In such circumstances, it is vital the bowling side take any half-chance that comes along in the first innings. Think of the Ashes Test in Adelaide in 2010. Australia won the toss and batted first on a typically excellent batting pitch, but a brilliant bit of fielding by Jonathan Trott in the first over resulted in the run-out of Simon Katich and England took advantage.Something similar might have happened here. Had Adil Rashid been able to cling on to a tough chance offered by Kohli when he had scored 56, England would have had a key breakthrough. But the chance went to ground and Kohli went on - and on - to make a high-class century. He may well have made the defining contribution to this Test already. The next time Rashid sees Chris Scott (the Durham keeper who dropped Brian Lara in the early stages of his 501 in 1994) they will surely exchanging knowing looks.While it might be tempting to dismiss the chance as one of those things there was an element of self-inflicted injury about it. With the bowlers unable to find any swing and both batsmen having a couple of questions to answer against the short ball - Cheteshwar Pujara has been hit four times in this series and Kohli is an almost compulsive hooker and puller - England had clearly decided upon a plan of attack. Ben Stokes was to pitch short in the hope that one of the batsmen might hit the ball to one of the men back for the hook.The flaw in the plan was the choice of fielder at long leg. Rashid is not, by domestic standards, a bad fielder and has pretty safe hands. He is a little slow by the standards of this team so it would, under normal circumstances, make sense to hide him at long leg.But in these circumstances, with the slips all but out of business and the mishit hook offering Englands best chance of a catch, it would have made more sense to place a better fielder in the position.Rashid was a little slow to react and, though he just about made it to the ball, he was not in a good position to cling on to the catch. It was not straightforward, but it was the sort of chance that several of this England team would have taken far more often than not. To compound the error, Rashid let the ball slip under his body to the boundary later in the same over. Stokes looked as if he could drink hot blood.Alastair Cook recognised the error. Within a few minutes, he had replaced Rashid with the quicker and more athletic Anderson at long leg. But the moment had gone. Kohli had learned his lesson. He wasnt going to make the same mistake.If it seems harsh to focus on such a fleeting moment, it is because Test cricket in such circumstances is harsh and unforgiving. Attention to detail over such issues can make all the difference and, by leaving Rashid at long leg, England failed to make the most of their perfectly reasonable plan.Later, Cook also failed to take advantage of the second new ball. Just two balls after Anderson had Ajinkya Rahane edging a classic outswinger, Ravi Ashwin might have been caught at gully edging a similar delivery. Instead, England had a third man and a deep square leg.The decision to introduce Zafar Ansari into the attack for the 11th over might also attract some criticism, too. The score was 36 for 2 at the time and Ansari, though he bowled nicely enough in that first spell (six overs for 19 runs), was unable to sustain the pressure.There was some logic in the decision to turn to him, though. As a left-arm spinner, he was trying to take the ball away from the two right-handed batsmen and Stuart Broad was off the pitch (at that stage he was struggling with a cut sustained in Rajkot and opened by a committed piece of fielding; later he struggled with a sore right foot that may well see him rested for the third Test). It wasnt that the decision was wrong, it was just it didnt work out.That England remain with any sort of foothold in the game is largely due to the performance of Anderson. Unable to gain much movement with the first ball of the match, he nevertheless took three of the four wickets to fall - bouncing out M Vijay with a sharp short ball and persuading Rahane to nick an outswinger - and managed to gain dangerous swing with the second new ball.We thought the way the new ball played in the morning it was the easiest time to bat and didnt swing that much, Anderson said afterwards. Every time I pitched it up Vijay hit me for four, so I went short. I watched the first Test so I knew there was a chance with the short ball.The pitch is quite abrasive and not chewing the ball up as we would like. The outfield is lush so there are not many areas to get the ball to reverse. We got a little bit from 40 to 55 overs but it was tiny.I thought we bowled pretty well. There were a couple of periods we let it get away: half an hour before tea we let ourselves down a bit with the ball and in the field. But on that pitch we are reasonably happy with that.The wicket was tough to bowl on. The outfield was heavy - there will be some sore legs tomorrow - and the pitch played well. The two guys who got hundreds they set about their business and showed they are world-class. They made it very difficult to bowl at them.Anderson also warned that conditions could deteriorate sharply, so it was essential for England to strike early on day two and for their batsmen to score heavily in the first innings.Im not sure the pitch will stay together as well as Rajkot, he said. There are signs of it keeping low. There will be more variable bounce and we have seen a few spin. So we are in tough position and we need to have a good day with the ball and an extremely good go with the bat.Cheap MLB Jerseys From China . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. MLB Jerseys From China . 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The match between Scotland and South Africa which took place 110 years ago this week, on 17 November 1906, should have an honoured place alongside Wales defeat of the All Blacks a year earlier and Englands triumph in Obolenskys match nearly three decades later.It was historic, whatever the outcome had been, as the first international played by the Springboks on British soil. That it was against Scotland -- beginning a sequence during the inaugural Boks tour in which all four home nations were played on consecutive weekends -- was no fluke since the invitation to visit had followed the Lions tour, led by the great Scottish forward Mark Morrison, to South Africa three years earlier.Maybe it is something to do with the comparatively limited literature on the Scottish game -- it merits only a couple of lines in RJ Phillipss 1925 history, paling rather into insignificance alongside the epic chapter which Welsh writers Dai Smith and Gareth Williams devote to the 1905 match in their Fields of Praise. And for some reason the Boks have never weighed quite as heavy as the All Blacks in the collective memory of the British game.But by the time they pitched up at Hampden Park -- a venue permitting a Scottish record attendance of 32,500 -- in mid-November, the Boks were looking every bit as formidable as the All Blacks had done a year earlier. They had carved through a succession of English opponents and only been checked to any extent when they entered Wales and were flummoxed by the local methods -- under the then rules of the scrum -- for securing both loose head and put-in.Even then it did not take them long to grasp what was happening -- and to respond in kind. Both Glamorgan and Newport gave the tourists tough games and held them to single figures, a distinction shared with only Middlesex among their first 15 opponents. But they could not beat the Boks, who retained a 100 per cent record from those 15 matches, with a points difference of 354 against 21 and only three tries conceded, when they arrived at Hampden.They had the mutual understanding built up by touring teams -- and it doubtless did no harm that their centres, Japie Krige and Boy de Villiers were also cousins. But they were inevitably lacking in international experience, since it was South Africas first Test since the Lions had departed three years earlier, and fielded 10 debutants. Tour captain Paul Roos, a formidable figure on and off the field, was out with a knee injury, so they were led by his deputy Paddy Carolin.The Scots, recuperating from a disappointing 1906 championship campaign during which they beat only Ireland, contented themselves with four newcomers, all in a pack which also included three medical men. Their threequarter line included two 18-year-olds, the wing Lewis MacLeod and Yokohama-born centre Maurice Walter, who a year earlier had turned down selection for England to opt for the Scots.But their real weapon was the weather. It had rained for two days before the match. The ground was in a terrible condition, Carolin was to recall. And we scarcely enjoyed our first experience of trying to play football in mud up to our ankles with a ball as heavy as lead and as slippery as an eel.Scotland, by contrast, enjoyed themselves hugely in conditions perfect for the rampaging feet, Scotland, feet style of forward play. As Carolin admitted, We were beaten to a frazzle by a wonderful set of forwards. Driven on by David Bedell-Sivright, arguably the hardest of Scotlands many notable hard men, they took no prisoners -- three Boks spent time off the field injured. Forward Dietlof Mare, later the author of the first rugby book in Afrikaans, ended his only international match with two broken fingers.Yet there was no score in the first half, and it took a moment of opportunistic brilliance to break the deadlock soon after the restart. Half-back Pat Munro kicked across the field to the right wing where the prodigious MacLeod took a superb catch and strode past a series of tacklers to the line. Centre Tennant Sloan was to say many years later that, I saw it all right, and ran for it, but couldnt get near it. It was only MacLeods tremendous pace that allowed him to get under the ball and he caught it safely at full pace.Even then the outcome remained in doubt until wing Alexander Purves, one of three London Scottish players in the line-up, touched down after a foot rush by the Scottish pack, although Krige claimed ever after to have got theere first.ddddddddddddFor the Scots, the 6-0 victory was the prelude to one of their best ever seasons, with 1907 delivering a Triple Crown and championship. Purves followed his try against the Boks with another in each of the championship matches, part of a run of six consecutive scoring appearances.Yet neither of their teenage prodigies enjoyed the long international careers that had seemed in store for them. Walter died of meningitis at 22. MacLeod, a truly extraordinary all-round ballplayer who might have played for Scotland at 15 if his head teacher at Fettes had allowed it and also played cricket for Lancashire and football for Manchester City, quit at 20 following the death of his elder brother George, a team-mate on his debut against the All Blacks a year earlier.But at least three of the other backs were to attain off-field distinction. Munro joined the Sudan Civil Service, returned after a distinguished career to become a Conservative MP and died on a Home Guard exercise in 1942. Sloan too joined the imperial civil service and was knighted for his achievements in India.None, though, managed anything as colourful as their captain Louis Greig, a naval doctor who earned the undying regard of the royal family by diagnosing and treating the duodenal ulcer afflicting Prince Albert. That regard transmuted into a lifetime as father-figure, adviser and confidant to the prince, destined to become George VI. When Greig died in 1953, the range and influence of his acquaintances was reflected at a funeral which his grandson and biographer Geordie -- editor of the Mail on Sunday -- has recorded was attended by the five senior members of the royal family, Winston Churchill, J Arthur Rank, representatives of Catford dog track, the All-England tennis club and the Scotland rugby team, along with six waiters from the Dorchester Hotel who took the morning off to be there.The Boks rebounded from their initial set-back, seeing off Ireland 15-12 in a seesawing struggle in Belfast highlighted by a superb long-range try by mercurial Irish centre Basil MacLear, Wales -- who would go down to the Boks again in 1912, but not lose at home to any other opponent between 1899 and 1913 -- 11-0 at Swansea and drawing 3-3 with England at Crystal Palace.The Welsh writer WJ Townsend Collins, comparing the two great pioneering touring teams, would conclude that: The All Blacks were professors convinced of the correctness of their theories, satisfied with themselves, confident of their mission and their ability to teach. The Springboks were students anxious to learn, and at the end they were a very great team. The Springboks conception of combination was better than the All Blacks, their passing was better.And their successors remembered those lessons. The next four Springbok teams -- in 1912, 1931, 1951 and 1960 -- recorded clean sweeps of the home nations. It was not until 1965, on a short tour of Ireland and Scotland riven by the politics endemic to the South African game under apartheid, that they lost again to any of the home nations, going down first 9-6 to a late penalty by Irish full-back Tom Kiernan and then, a week later, 8-5 to an even later drop-goal by Scotlands outside-half Davie Chisholm.Here perhaps is the real clue to the way the 1906 match has faded from history. It was the falsest of false dawns, a defeat on their first outing that was not to be repeated for 59 years and 19 matches (22 if you add in the defeats handed to Scotland, Ireland and Wales when single-country tours of South Africa began in the 1960s). Nor were the Lions to win a series in South Africa until 1974, with six teams between 1910 and 1969 achieving only four victories in 22 tests. The nilling inflicted on the Boks in their first Test on British and Irish soil has yet to be repeated in 83 matches (including 12 World Cup ties) spread over 110 years since.It is time, perhaps, that the memory should be revived. The victory in 1906 deserves to be remembered as one of the great days in Scottish rugby history and the achievements of that seasons team to rank alongside those of 1925, 1933, 1938, 1984, 1990 and 1999. Greater, perhaps, given that none of those teams also managed to beat a major touring team (although the 1984 team came desperately close, drawing 25-25 with the All Blacks), never mind one that would then go unscathed for another 59 years. ' ' '