A Bad Way To Win

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

Rain wins the Ashes

 

August 6^th

 

[09:00 CEST] Rain was the only winner after England made yet another dreadful start, leaving Australia in poll position to win the match although, with 95 minutes of play possible and slightly over 20 overs bowled, we will never know what might have happened. Given previous form, Australia might well have felt at 27-3 that the match was theirs, only to watch England rack up 260-6 before time ran out. In this series England have made quite dreadful starts in every innings only to end up with a serviceable total because the Australian bowling lacked the penetration to finish the job that it had started. It is one of the delights of Test cricket that we will never know what might have happened if the match had been played to a finish.

One thing that was clear was that when play started late and wickets tumbled, an England win rapidly became out of the question. Unfortunately, playing to survive is not an England strength, at least until the last pair are together. Australia maintained the pressure and Ryan Harris showed just what might have been if his constitution had been a little less frail. As it is, he is, at 34 in mid-October close to the end of his career. Australia now face a difficult decision whether or not to play him at Chester-le-Street on Thursday, having had a heavy load in this Test and bowled more balls than he had ever before sent down in a Test at Lords.

For England, the good news was that the Ashes are now retained. The bad news is that the way in which they were maintained has made the sceptics scoff and Australian fans are now pointing out that England are extremely lucky to be 2-0 against the run of play in the series. Certainly, to obtain a draw thanks to rain and not thanks to a solid batting performance on the fifth day was unsatisfactory in the extreme.

Neither side can feel particularly happy with its performances so far. Although three of the top four runscorers in the series remain English, the starts that Cook and Root are giving England are a cause for real concern: in six attempts they have not managed a partnership of 50, which compares very unfavourably with the Cook/Compton combination. Trott, at the vital position of 3, has just 122 runs in the series, almost half of them in a single innings. When your opening pair are not making starts, it is not reassuring that your #3 is in scratchy form too. Once again, Nick Compton has quietly made runs for struggling Somerset, in a pressure situation with defeat staring them in the face and you wonder if splitting Compton and Cook was the right move; maybe boring Nick Compton making boring 30s and 40s to wear down the bowlers would have been a more profitable situation, even if he did not amass the runs that Joe Root has amassed in the series (although almost all of them came in a single, match-winning innings). In truth, this has not been a series for the batsmen. Only Bell (76.2), Clarke (63.8), Root (48.4), Broad (38.5) and Pattinson (36.0) average over 35. Tail-end hitting has proved effective with tired attacks, but the top order has needed grit, not flash.

You feel though that Australia still do not know their best batting order and this continues to be an England advantage. For the second innings at Old Trafford it changed yet again and, although Steve Smith made a score in the first innings, having looked too high previously at #6, he was pushed up to #5. Cricket is a story of ifs and buts but, had Smith fallen cheaply in that first innings, as he should have done, Australia would, most likely, have struggled to make 300.

The series now moves to Chester-le-Street, where seamers tend to thrive. There, England will be sorely tempted to rest an exhausted Jimmy Anderson and to play the local boy Graeme Onions in his place. What Australia will do is anybody’s guess. Not to many have accurately predicted their sides in the three Tests so far.