New Delhi: Former England batter Mark Butcher believes the side has shown refinement and improvement in their 3-0 Test series win over the West Indies. England won the first Test at Lord’s by an innings and 114 runs, followed by winning second game at Trent Bridge by 241 runs.
They then wrapped up the series with a clean sweep by winning the third Test at Edgbaston by ten wickets. “England have shown refinement and improvement to what they’ve already done and what they were already capable of, and the difference then becomes England can produce that skill and quality over long periods of time.”
“The West Indies are only capable of doing it once a day for maybe an hour and a half, and were then founding wanting when England pushed back at them because they didn’t have the discipline and experience to keep prolonging it,” said Butcher on Sky Sports Cricket at the conclusion of the series.
Though England saw retirement of veteran pacer James Anderson, they unearthed fast-bowler Gus Atkinson and saw Mark Wood be at his lethal best. The move to bring out Jamie Smith as wicketkeeper-batter ahead of Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes also paid dividends.
Butcher also thinks England have more battle-hardened players in Tests after analysing their mistakes on the tour of India, where they lost matches from winning positions to lose series 4-1.
“Even though they had a couple of new players in the side and shuffled the pack a bit – obviously there was James Anderson’s retirement and the emotion around that in the first Test – England have got a lot of battle-hardened players in that team right now.”
“They were chastened a little bit over the course of the winter and perhaps looked at ways where they could not give away winning positions or allow teams to come back into Test matches.”
–IANS
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