Third Test: Day 3; Australian Resistance, But Too Little, Too Late

 

 

Ashes 2015

 

Third Test: Day 3; Australian Resistance, But Too Little, Too Late

 

August 1^st 2015

 

“Effectively 23-7, Australia need at least one hundred more from the tail in the morning. All logic says that England will win before Lunch but, then, logic hasn’t had a great match so far, has it?”

How else do you explain the Australian tail batting much better – arguably in both innings – than their top order and the match going right up to Tea?

There were even those Australians – and not a few English fans – who, seeing the Nevill-Starc stand pass 60 and the lead head towards 100, with no sign of the batsmen being seriously inconvenienced, who started to have horrible imaginings of Headingley & Edgbaston 1981 and of Edgbaston 2005. Australian fans started to suggest that if the lead passed 130 their attack would be more than sufficient to turn the tables thanks to the shift in momentum.

The Australian tail took the side from 111-6 and facing a humiliating innings defeat, to 265: the last 4 wickets put on 56% of the side’s runs. That was quite a performance and Mitch Starc looks as if he could bat higher up the order than 10 (Australia once batted Geoff Lawson, probably a lesser batsman than Starc, at 7 in 1985 and he responded with a 50). Fifty more runs and a few nerve-ending would have been churning, particularly as several of the England side are not in good batting form and Adam Lyth looks more of a walking wicket with every innings.

However, in the great turnarounds at Headingley and Edgbaston in 1981, England had two bowlers capable of magic: Ian Botham and Bob Willis, both with something to prove; Botham after being deprived of the captaincy and threatened with being dropped and Willis who was dropped, but managed to convince the selectors to reinstate him before the side was announced officially.

The Australian attack, trumpeted as exceptional and with phenomenal strength in depth, looks increasingly threadbare without Ryan Harris to give it some oomph and backbone. This was something that I predicted: Mitch Johnson without Harris is a much smaller threat; he might bowl a great ball, or a great over, or even a great spell, but he struggles to have a great Test.

Here, save for one over that came far too late for Australia, Mitch Johnson was simply absent. And when Moeen Ali and the supposedly terrified Stuart Broad came to the crease on the second day with Australia threatening to keep the lead down to around 80 and launched a tremendous counter-attack, where was Mitch Johnson? Stuart Broad did not hide from him: HE hid from Stuart Broad. When your premier fast bowler has to be protected from batsmen who attack, particularly tail-enders and is intimidated by the crowd, instead of being the one who intimidates, you have a problem.

Mitch Starc came into the series with a huge reputation from the World Cup. Wiser heads noted that the World Cup is played with a white ball and with different rules. At Edgbaston, with the attack leader not generating the same level of threat as expected, Mitch Starc had to step up, but responded with a box of liquorice allsorts, with a lot of balls sprayed down the leg side.

Josh Hazlewood has come into the series with a huge reputation. This was just his 8^th Test, but he averages 20 with the ball and at well under 3 runs and over, showing that he has control as well as threat. He has taken 14 wickets in the series so far at a good average but, in this Test, went at almost 5 an over in the first innings when Australia needed to keep things tight and strangle England’s search for a lead. Hazlewood is frightening no one except, sometimes, his own captain.

Even more than Mitch Johnson, you can ask where Mitch Marsh was. 8.1 overs only for 0-32 and dismissed for 0 & 6. At Lord’s (where he obtained 3 of his 4 Test wickets to date) and in the tour games, he has looked supreme: only once has he fallen for fewer than 30 and has 2x100 and 1x50 to his name but at Edgbaston, a middle order of Clarke, Voges, Marsh and Nevill has had the England seamers queuing up to bowl in the anticipation of cheap wickets.

The batting, as intimated, makes England’s quaking order look solid. Voges averages 40 or more in Tests, ODIs and T20 (an astonishing trio), but has managed 31, 1, 25, 16 & 0 in this series. Michael Clarke himself has 38, 4, 7, 32*, 10 & 3.

Australia are depending on Rogers, Warner & Smith to make runs at the top of the order and for inertia to carry the rest. It worked at Lord’s. At Cardiff and Edgbaston, it has not. Here, Warner failed in the first innings, Rogers in the second and Smith in both.  With four struggling batsmen to follow (Marsh for Watson and Nevill for Haddin has not changed this scenario one iota), the Australian batting has been horribly exposed.

When the series started as a story of England’s lack of bowling depth and frailties against high pace and skilled seam bowling, it is turning into a story of a one-dimensional Australian side who are shuffling their options but have a Plan A, a Plan A and when those fail, Plan A.

For the 4^th Test, Australia will re-shuffle the pack again. The talk is that Mitch Starc may be replaced by Peter Siddle, Adam Voges by Shaun Marsh, Mitch Marsh by Shane Watson. There are suggestions that the dressing room wants Brad Haddin back for Peter Nevill and Michael Clarke may possibly move from 4 to 5.

Siddle is a worthy bowler, but has had little form on tour (2 wickets) and simply does not hold the threat that he did a few years ago. However, Trent Bridge may just suit his style of bowling. Siddle may just pose far more of a threat with nagging line and length than Mitch Starc does at higher pace, but currently with paint-spray control. With so many things going wrong for Australia, having a steady bowler rather than a threatening, but erratic one, is the least of their worries.

Mitch-watch: 3, 16-2-66-2, 14 & 7-3-10-0.

Where has Mitch been? He turned up for one over on the second morning but, for the rest of the match, it seemed as if the crowd and the batsmen were getting to him so badly that he needed to be hidden.