Alec Stewart's Diary

December 6, 2000

Well played England so far! I think before we left for Pakistan a lot of people expected us to lose 3-0, that we'd be spun out and didn't have the spinners to bowl on turning wickets. But we've played very good cricket - it hasn't been the most exciting cricket because of the wickets we've played on - generally slow and low.

To go into the Final Test all square is a great effort, but we've just got to make sure that at the end of this Test, at worst it's 0-0 and if things go our way 1-0 to England. We've had a good six months' cricket at home, and were set back a little when we were spun out in the last two One-Day Internationals. Since then we've improved and the confidence is good. If we can reproduce the type of cricket we've managed so far, there's no reason why we shouldn't go back with smiling faces next Tuesday.

Losing the toss in the Second Test at Faisalabad was always going to make it hard work - fortunately we did well again in our first innings with Thorpe batting well, and the last wicket partnership between White and Gough was just what we needed. If we'd lost those last two wickets quickly it would have given Pakistan that little bit longer to bowl at us in the fourth innings, which might have been crucial. We did very well to come away with a draw, and they'll be disappointed not to have won.

In the first innings the leg-spinner did me a little bit - I picked the wrong ball for the shot. Second innings it was important to stay there, and I was able to do that - but obviously disappointed to get out with only 40 minutes left. Nasser got two rough decisions - replays showed he didn't hit the ball in the second innings and he hit it when he was given lbw in the first. Umpires have a difficult job to do and even the best sometimes make mistakes - so do we when we play bad shots or bowl bad balls. It's frustrating when you get given out, and even more so if you get two bad decisions in the same game. What makes it even worse is if it happens when you're not scoring the runs you'd like. But credit to Nasser for the way he controlled his feelings out in the middle.

Technology has its plusses and minuses - I'm not convinced you should use it for lbw decisions, purely because when there are three of you all looking at the one decision, one may say out, another not out and the third may not be sure. Bat-pad catches or caught behinds - again the camera generally doesn't lie, but it's not totally foolproof. But if there's technology that can definitely get it right there's no reason why you shouldn't advance it - in tennis, for example, you can use it for line decisions. Duncan Fletcher's come up with the theory where you can have three appeals against decisions in each innings, which may be a way forward, but in the end it's how the umpire in the middle feels. Umpiring is probably the hardest job in cricket - you have to make split second decisions and you're going to make mistakes.

I was very sad to learn of the death of Lord Cowdrey - he was a great cricketer for England and Kent and an ambassador for the game as well. I was only recently talking to Chris Cowdrey who's been out here, and he was telling me his father was on the mend - it's a sad loss not only to the Cowdrey family but to the game of cricket as a whole.

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Players/Umpires

Alec Stewart

Series/Tournaments

England tour of Pakistan

Teams

England

Pakistan