"Anderson absence not an excuse"

England's bowling coach David Saker says the pacers may have been thrown off balance by the absence of James Anderson, but that is just an excuse.
The Australian bowling coach accepts the Lord's slope might have accentuated the unexpected technical deficiencies he suspects were behind the alarming inconsistency of line purveyed by Steven Finn, Chris Tremlett and Stuart Broad against Sri Lanka.
The upshot was a career-best 193 for opposing captain Tillakaratne Dilshan out of a stumps total of 372 for three, in reply to 486, on a rainy third day of the second npower Test.
Saker, who used the word "lackadaisical" Sunday night but stopped short of directly accusing the bowlers in those terms, also noted the impact of losing James Anderson to injury for this match.
"Losing your leader with the ball is always going to be hard," he said.
He continued: "But we think we've got a really good crop of fast bowlers, not just here but back-up ready to slot in. Jimmy in particular has been outstanding. We expect him to bowl his first 16 overs for 30 runs, and that sets the scene for us to really attack with the other bowlers."
"I'm not using that as an excuse. We knew going into this without Jimmy someone had to put their hand up and bowl well," he said.
"We're hoping to get him back for the final Test at the Rose Bowl, but I don't think we should be hiding behind Jimmy's absence," said a firm Saker.
He added: "We should be better than that. We set higher standards, and just to lose one player and bowl the way we did, I don't think that's excusable."
Saker echoed wicketkeeper Matt Prior's honest appraisal of Saturday evening - that England's bowlers were well short of their best.
He also claimed England remained "confident" of taking a first-innings lead.
But if bowling to Dilshan in this series is a rehearsal for trying to tame India's arch aggressor Virender Sehwag later this summer, many will contend England fluffed their lines.
"We knew Dilshan was going to bat that way," said Saker.
Continuing, he said, "We've seen enough of him to know that he can be a difficult man to get out and can take the game away from you really quickly."
"He's hurt some really good attacks in his day. But we know, moving forward, the Indians will come at us hard - and we'll put things in place to make sure we're ready for that," concluded Saker.
Of England's 6ft 6in-plus pace trio, Finn - in his first Test of the year, on his home ground - arguably struggled the most on Sunday morning, and then bowled best in a truncated afternoon.
"He came back and was looking really good, so we had no hesitation putting him in the team. We thought he would do a really good job, and I think he was pretty anxious to do that after the Ashes Tests," Saker signed off.

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