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All for a better show

England seamer James Anderson said picking two spinners for the second Test against Pakistan proved fruitful

  • By Jai Prasad V Rai, Sports Reporter, XPRESS
  • Published: 00:00 February 2, 2012
  • XPRESS

DUBAI: England seamer James Anderson said picking two spinners for the second Test against Pakistan proved fruitful and the team will be keen to pursue a similar option going into the third Test starting February 3.

"The beauty of the last game was that we discovered that we can play with two seamers and two spinners," Anderson said. "We'd never done it before and I guess we were unsure how it was going to turn out and I thought we did pretty well with it.

"We enjoyed it as seamers. We thought there was more emphasis on each spell we had because they were rarer but longer. It's a nice position to be in, in that we know that two spinners-two seamers can work and we also know that our tried and tested three and one has also worked for us in the past, so the selectors are in a nice position."

And he was optimistic of a better show in the final Test. "The morale seems to be pretty good, considering it's been a tough couple of weeks. With the way we've performed over the last couple of years, we're not used to losing a series and Test matches, so it's been difficult to deal with. But, hopefully, we can put it behind us and perform much better."

Anderson also gave credit to Pakistan. "They're quality bowlers. Ajmal is number two in the world now. A lot of teams struggle with a spinner that's got a bit of mystery about him and we have struggled with him this trip for one reason or another. The batsmen are working really hard to put that right and, hopefully, in the next Test, they can perform a lot better."

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