England Need To Win to De-rail Ashes Revisionism

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

England Need to do Better

 

August 31^st

 
 

[09:00 CEST] England know that they are in a brawl. The first T20 did not go as planned, although Australia’s effort was very much of a one-man show however, that is the nature of T20: it is often decided by the efforts of just one or two players. England do not want to lose this series and a strong comeback to win the second T20 would  be the best response. It was a major surprise that Tredwell and Carberry missed out on Thursday and it is likely that both will play today, along with Boyd Rankin, although Jade Dernbach was one of the few successes of Thursday.

A major question for England is the status of Eoin Morgan. Another brief innings on Thursday – a 3^rd ball duck – when England needed someone to stand firm, added to an ambivalent attitude at best to the English season are beginning to threaten his place. His Test place is long gone and he has now gone 23 innings without an international 50. England are trying to encourage him with the Lions captaincy, with the T20 captaincy when Stuart Broad is unavailable and the ODI captaincy when Alistair Cook is rested, but his appearances and returns are reducing steadily: 96 runs for Middlesex in the Championship; 124 in the YB40 and 38 in the T20. Injury has not helped, but it seems that Eoin Morgan’s interests are more directed towards his IPL career although, in 2012 he did not play a single game for his franchise and, if his international runs dry up, his value to the IPL will disappear rapidly too. He urgently needs a big performance in this series of matches.

For Australia a win today and a 2-0 sweep in the series would put down a major marker for the ODIs and the return series in Australia. Continued success in the propaganda war requires them to point to T20 and ODI victories as proof that the side is a lot better than the Test result suggested. It would be asking a lot of Aaron Finch to repeat Thursday’s bombardment: can someone else repeat his feats? It may be necessary to make the series a 2-0 victory and to score the major propaganda success that Australia need to continue the revisionist war of the Ashes history.