Extras

Three innings victories and one Ashes win

On balance, you would have to say that this tour of Australia probably went a bit better than expected.

Which is better: winning or doing it in such a way that Australia look shit?

Don’t answer that. You don’t have to. You can have both.

When the England cricket team became ruthless

We’ve always asked that England become more ruthless. Now it seems to be happening and by the jackal head of Anubis it’s a good feeling.

England have been good before, but in continually passing 500 and repeatedly recording innings victories over the course of the 2010-11 Ashes, they’ve added something new – a delightful lack of empathy for the opposition. They’re like sociopathic surgeons – skilled and utterly devoid of guilt, compassion or remorse.

Maybe it stems from the fact that they themselves have plans for when things go wrong these days.

If you’ve made the effort to work out ways to take wickets after the shine’s gone off the new ball, why should you feel sorry for a team that doesn’t seem to bother to do that?

If you can change half your first-choice bowling attack and still have a guy like Chris Tremlett narrowly missing a hat trick despite a near-perfect third delivery, why should you give a toss when the opposition loses a captain or an opening batsman to injury?

No international cricket team deliberately goes easy on the opposition, but they don’t always play as well when they’re 400 ahead as when the scores are level and the adrenaline’s pumping.

Ian Bell, James Anderson and doing a bit better when things aren’t in your favour

It’s always tempting to judge players on their best days, but with anything long-term – a cricket career, a relationship, an overnight stint watching the Ashes on TV – a better form of evaluation is to look at what happens when things aren’t in your favour.

You learn a lot about a person when everything’s gone to shit. Score 220 not out or take 6-40 and you’ve done something that will probably win a Test match, but those days are few and far between. That’s not what life’s like.

Life’s not chocolate and rainbows. Life’s a long, hard, unremitting slog where everyone’s out to get you and nothing goes right. Life’s mostly about turning bowled for a duck into caught at slip for 62. It’s about turning 0-120 into 2-60.

Sure, making the most of the high points is part of it, but in the grand scheme of things, every moment counts. Waiting at the airport is part of the holiday. That’s your lot. Make the most of it.

Ian Bell

The hundred today isn’t the best example, because when he came out to bat, he joined a batsman who was already into treble figures, but generally, over the last year or so, Ian Bell’s improvement has been about being better on his bad days.

Last winter in South Africa, Bell started doing the job. It wasn’t beautiful shots and a flawless hundred that won people over, it was a five-hour 78 to help save a Test.

James Anderson

James Anderson’s swing bowling will still claim its fair share of headlines, but that’s not the measure of the man. The reason why he’s now one of the best bowlers in the world isn’t because of that, it’s because he’s flattened out the troughs.

Where once it was a few overs of swing and then ball retrieval from the wrong side of the ropes, now reverse swing and containment are the fallbacks.

With both these players, the focus remains the same, but the picture as a whole has changed.

Cake having and eating

Most of us find that part of the joy of cricket is that there’s always something to talk about. When a match is in the balance, you can pick it apart for hours trying to work out which team’s more likely to win.

In the past, we’ve also found it easier to write about England losses. Again, there’s always something to say. England wins are what we want to see, but tight games and losses make life easier for us.

That was until we hit upon the ‘what are Australia doing wrong?‘ approach. Suddenly we could revel in England wins AND have something to say. What’s more, if England bowl the opposition out for 100 and then make 600-0, it’s better still.

All of which is our way is saying that even though England will be happier with the score in the fifth Test, we’d prefer it if they were already 200 ahead and yet to lose a wicket. Which is pretty obvious. Yes, we want to have our cake and eat it. What else are you supposed to do with cake?

We generally mention our hatred of cake at this point, openly inviting ridicule in the hope that the comments will save what is after all a fairly workmanlike update.

Geoff Boycott fourth Test Ashes prediction failure

Sam writes:

First morning of the fourth Test on Test Match Special.

Geoff Boycott: “I can’t see any way England are going to win this.”
Jonathan Agnew: “We’ve only had 12 minutes!”
Geoff Boycott: “Well, I’m supposed to know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m the expert and you’re the commentator.”

Boycott’s argument was based on the supposed flatness of the pitch, but it smacked of a five-year-old child waking up on Christmas morning, rushing downstairs, ripping open his present to find a Playstation 3, jamming the scart socket into the back of the TV, finding that nothing appears on the screen and then stamping his feet and screaming.

Three days later he has completed Gran Turismo 5, eaten too many mince pies and learned absolutely nothing.

Scoring at four an over in Tests

Once upon a time, Australian batsmen averaging in the forties would be in danger of being given the boot if they couldn’t score at four an over.

Just saying.

In truth, Australia were wise not to let their bats stray too far from the stumps for most of yesterday’s play, but it has given rise to an odd situation. It seemed like England were failing to make the most of decent bowling conditions and yet Australia’s wicketkeeper’s already in to bat and his team’s only scored 134.

Flaying at wide balls when the ball’s moving is just stupid, but killing time until you edge one defensively ain’t much better. Are these Aussie batsmen doing what they think is best or are they just keen to be seen to be doing what other people might think is right?

Australian batsmen used to make sure they had a say in what fields were set to them. These guys simply accept their lot and try and make the best of it.

If you took their bats away from them and handed them mushy peas instead, they’d probably have a little meeting about it, concluding that at least with mushy peas the edges probably won’t carry.

Australia’s fast bowlers in the 2010 Ashes

You can ask any England fan what qualities a bowling attack needs to bowl the opposition out in Australia. We all know. You need as many as possible of the following:

• Extreme pace
• Freakishly tall bowlers
• Mystery spin
• Reverse swing

How many of those can you find in the current Australia team? Pretty much none of them.

Their tallest bowler bowls round-arm. They don’t pick spinners at all. Reverse swing is occasional and functional. The bowlers are quick without being exceptional. All in all, the attack is pretty samey.

What should they do?

Identify someone – anyone – with at least one of those qualities. England didn’t have pace, but Broad, Tremlett and Finn are taller than all of Australia’s bowlers while Anderson and Bresnan bowled reverse swing better. Josh Hazlewood’s about two metres tall. That’s not a bad start. Work with him.

The problem might lie in the ’sporting’ pitches that are currently being prepared for Sheffield Shield matches. One of Australia’s great advantages until recently was that their first-class pitches were generally fairly flat, like Test pitches. Bowlers who excelled in those conditions were therefore well-suited to Test cricket.

The bowlers excelling in Australian first-class cricket at the moment are different beasts altogether. They’ve become better suited to their habitat. That’s what happens.

“Adaptation is the heart and soul of evolution.” – Niles Eldredge

How significant is this?

This is the heart of the problem. Australian Test batting averages were swollen for years thanks to McGrath, Warne, Gillespie, MacGill, Lee et al. These guys created situations where the batsmen could play at their absolute best, with no fear of failure. That’s not the case any more. The bowling has a major knock-on effect on the batting.

It shouldn’t take an Englishman to point out what’s wrong with this Australia team.

Australia’s batsmen in the 2010 Ashes

Let us say that we don’t actually think that Australia’s batsmen are all that bad. They are good players playing badly, which is slightly different.

Batsmen under pressure are exposed more than bowlers because they don’t get second chances. You do something stupid that gets you out and that’s your day over. Bowlers at least get to go back to their mark and have another stab.

Australia’s batsmen have played pretty stupidly at times during the 2010 Ashes series, but it’s the bowlers putting them under pressure.

Really?

Katich, Hussey and Haddin are all fine. If he could stop running his partners out, Watson would be doing a job, particularly when you consider that he’s an all-rounder. Ponting down the order with intact fingers on his hands and without the weight of the world on his shoulders would be fine too. He really would.

Michael Clarke’s gone mental, but it’s more obvious when no-one’s making up for his failures – he’s basically fine. Phil Hughes may or may not be fine, we still haven’t decided. Steven Smith is not fine.

How Steven Smith ended up at number six is beyond us. He’s got a good first-class record, but he’s as easy on the eye as foreskin trapped in a zip. Rule one of all-rounders is that they have to be worth their place as either a batsman or a bowler. Smith isn’t, as far as we can tell. Having him bat at six is tantamount to sabotage.

So what went wrong?

With Smith at six, Ryan Harris notching up king pairs at eight and a bowling attack conceding a volume of runs measured in thousands, Australia’s batsmen had to do more than their fair share of work.

And they knew it.

There are worse things wrong with this Australia team than the batting.

Australia’s captain and spinners

The more we think about it, the more these two things go hand-in-hand.

The situation was this. Nathan Hauritz got the boot because he got wellied in India like just about every other spinner who ever goes over there. Demented selections ensued.

Maybe Hauritz offended Ricky Ponting by suggesting that he stop setting fields that were complete dog toss – we may never know. What we do know is that Ponting is pretty damn certain he doesn’t want Hauritz in his team ever again, even if he has to pick a shit spinner or no spinner at all instead.

Xavier Doherty was the shit spinner. Michael Beer was no spinner at all. It couldn’t have gone worse.

So what went wrong, specifically?

Partly it was a ‘grass is greener’ mentality. Shane Warne isn’t playing any more, although some people (desperate idiots) think he should be. Australia don’t have a spin bowler who’s even half as good as Stuart MacGill, so they should stop looking for one.

If you’ve got a bowler that good, you know about him. He isn’t out there disguised as a Beer or a Doherty.

If you’ve got Nathan Hauritz, use him properly. Don’t undermine him. Don’t discard him. If you’ve got a Steve O’Keefe, encourage him; build him up.

You certainly don’t just pick any old spinner and then drop him almost immediately. You tell all your spinners they’re not good enough when you do that, not just the one who’s come and gone.

And the captain?

Ricky Ponting has to take a lot of the blame. 152 Test matches and he doesn’t know how to handle spinners either on or off the field. That’s just embarrassing.

But again, is the grass greener? Ponting might not seem like a great option as captain right now, but he has learnt something in those 152 Tests and if someone can persuade him to drop down the order, he’s almost certainly still worth his place in the Test team, unlike many of the alternatives.

Things aren’t perfect, but hunting for perfection when it doesn’t exist is counterproductive. This isn’t to say we don’t think Ponting should be asked to step down. It’s to say think about it. There were plenty of other things wrong with Australia’s Ashes teams.

Australia’s Ashes team – an English perspective on what went wrong

As an Englishman in his thirties, there’s nothing we don’t know about pointing out a team’s flaws after it’s failed to win the Ashes.

Might as well put our skills to more joyous use this year.

Today, captaincy and spin bowling. Tomorrow, batting and pace bowling.