Fifth Test, Day 1 – Australia Restore The Art Of Batsmanship

 

 

Ashes 2015

 

Fifth Test, Day 1 – Australia Get it Right, but too late.

 

August 20^th 2015

 

In 2013, England shuffled their pack for a dead rubber at The Oval and were roundly condemned. Although Chris Woakes has come back from that humiliation, the story of the Test was of a young spinner who had being causing havoc around the country in county cricket and who, sadly, has never been the same again after the experience: Just look at Simon Kerrigan’s returns: 58 wickets at 22.0 in 2013, 44 wickets at 35.4 in 2014 and 30 wickets at 29.4 in 2015.

For The Oval 2015, England have resisted the temptation to blood a young spinner. Had Adil Rashid played – and the evidence on the first day’s play is that he would have been more valuable than a fourth seamer – any success would have been dismissed with the words “it’s only a dead rubber”. Similarly, with a more relaxed Australia likely to turn up, England knew that there was a danger of doing enormous damage to the confidence of a bowler who they know that they will need in the UAE.

Of course, nothing changes the fact that, like Adam Lyth, he should have played at least the 3^rd Test in the Caribbean early in the year.

First signs in this Test are not promising. It is already beginning to look uncomfortably familiar to The Oval 2013 and to Lord’s 2015. Australia building up a huge 1^st innings score against an England side that has visibly turned the intensity down a notch or two. It would not be an enormous surprise if, by the 3^rd Day, we are talking about a potential follow-on.

Alistair Cook’s decision to bowl was presumably based on the idea that in overcast conditions the Australians would bat like lemmings again. What no one could imagine was that Rogers and Warner would take care and self-denial to such extremes that Stuart Broad’s first six overs would go for just eight runs. It was if the Fred Boycott of Twitter (widely rumoured to be a former opening bat for a county the other side of the Pennine’s to Boycott’s own) had spent the intervening week and a half after the 4^th Test teaching the Australian openers two new shots: the block and the leave.

Given the way that the Australian batting line-up played against Northants, Alistair Cook could be forgiven for asking “why me?” It does seem a bit unfair that they suddenly start to apply proper, Test-match batting just to make his bowl-first decision look stupid when, at Trent Bridge, even Stuart Broad thought that the right decision was to bat.

Australian surprises were not limited to batting properly When it was taken as read that, despite a very lack-lustre display at Wantage Road, Pat Cummins was going to replace Josh Hazlewood, almost definitely bringing down the curtain on Peter Siddle’s career, it was Siddle who was picked. The fact that this was another grassy pitch and Clarke wanted to bowl first may have had a lot to do with this decision. For Cummins it is yet another set-back. A career already four years long has featured just seven FC matches, including one Test. Will he ever become a Test regular? Or will his career be restricted to ODIs and T20s when his body allows him to do even that?

The fact that the Marsh hokey-cokey continued, with the two brothers swapping again in the side was no surprise to anyone. The sequence has been “Mitch, Shaun, Mitch” – no prizes for guessing which of the two will play the 1^st Test v Bangladesh in a few months, but expect Mitch to be back for the 2^nd Test!

The one player who has not benefitted from the end of term feeling and the lack of intensity in England’s play has been Michael Clarke. Having arrived at the crease to a great ovation from players and crowd, there was a lot of talk about whether or not he would score the 172 needed to get his Test average over 50: realists would have noted that that would have required more than doubling his series aggregate in just a single innings. Another innings of a man horribly out of form was ended by Ben Stokes. Having edged behind, Clarke reviewed. Although there was only a feather, not picked up by HotSpot, the guilty look behind and the sound of a snick convinced most even before RealTime Snicko confirmed the noise.

At 186-3 there was a real chance that England could shake off their laxity and dismiss Australia for under 300. Steve Smith though is looking like a #1 batsman in the world again and Voges like a batsman. With the new ball due 2 balls into Day 2, England will need to split these two quickly or they could be facing a huge follow-on target.