Go Fawad Young Man!

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

Time for Fawad Ahmed?

 

July 22^nd

 

 

[23:00 CEST] If you are Australian, this scheduled 5^th day of the Test is not a good day. It has been the sixth consecutive Australian Test defeat. The fourth consecutive Ashes defeat. In three of the four Tests the margin has been enormous: two by an innings and one by 347 runs. The Test did not make it into the fifth day. Just when you think that things cannot get worse, your leading fast bowler is ruled out of the rest of the tour and you wunderkind gets injured too. Up to now things have been explained away, but this is getting systematic and England are even claiming the luxury of playing quite poorly and know that they can play very much better than this.

It is hard to know what Australia can do to improve things much. They brought in their only batting reserve, Usman Khawaja and he was relatively successful. Unless Matthew Wade is played as a batsman, there is no one else. David Warner is struggling on tour with Australia A and making no case at all to play. The bowling has been insipid: the new ball attack has taken wickets but, as soon as the shine is off the ball, the threat has ended. Peter Siddle and Ryan Harris have done well, but after the new ball thrust, the support bowling is not seeing things through.

James Pattinson, expected to be the leader of a hostile pace attack, has disappointed and today he has been diagnosed with a stress fracture of the back and will play no further part in the tour. Australia still have three very good fast bowlers available on tour, but Ashton Agar is injured, Nathan Lyon is desperately short of bowling and Steve Smith is not really a front-line spinner, for all his unexpected success. The obvious option is to call up Fawad Ahmed who, after his disappointing A tour of England and Ireland, is playing well in Zimbabwe, albeit against modest opposition. The logical thing is to try to change direction and bring in Fawad Ahmed and at least attempt to match the English spin threat.