Yes, Things Could Get Even Worse

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

And worse still

 

January 5^th 2014

 
 

Rarely in my memory, save perhaps some 1990s tours of India, have England been so utterly outplayed and uncompetitive. Part of the problem was the quality of the Australian attack. Never has it been so well demonstrated that one player can change a side. Last summer Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle laboured hard, but with little support and this stopped Australia from exploiting breakthroughs; in this series they were supported by an unrecognisable Mitch Johnson. The fact that he sustained his hostility for five Tests was the difference between the two sides.

However, other major differences were Brad Haddin and the captaincy. Michael Clarke never let things slip. England had, I believe, just one century partnership in the whole series because Michael Clarke never let things get out of hand. With Alistair Cook, you got the feeling that he would try Plan A; if that didn’t work, he would try Plan A; and if *that* didn’t work, revert to headless chicken mode.

A lot of people wondered about the defensive fields and bowling two spells of Joe Root at Melbourne before giving Monty Panesar, however out of sorts, a try. Yesterday though, with the match already long gone, he bowled Kevin Pietersen, who has spent the series isolated in the outfield, before trying Scott Borthwick. At that stage, with the seamers going for plenty of runs and showing no threat at all, you wondered why he did not try bowling Pietersen and Borthwick together for a few overs, just to try something different. When Borthwick finally came on, he bowled some absolute jaffas as well as some utter dross, but almost immediately got rid of both Haddin and Rogers.

The late wicket of Harris allowed Scott Borthwick to top the England Test bowling averages. He will bowl better and get figures a lot worse than 3-33, but the Australian pledge to end his career after one Test was spectacularly unfulfilled: so much so that Michael Vaughan was suggesting that Root and Borthwick share the spin duties in the summer, with Root helping to protect Borthwick during his apprenticeship. Mind you, Michael Vaughan also suggested that Middlesex’s Ollie Rayner might well be worth considering in the summer, which suggests that a spot of sunstroke might have been coming on.

Alistair Cook seems to struggle to conjure something up in the way that Nasser Hussein, or Michael Vaughan or Andrew Strauss could when things are going wrong and has difficulty to think out of the box and try something different.

When Andrew Strauss got the captaincy, it was by default because there was no one else. However, if he had received it in 2006, England would never has been whitewashed in the 2007/07 Ashes: they would have lost, yes, but with more dignity and Strauss would never have lost that Adelaide Test. Right now, were Alistair Cook to resign, the only conceivable replacements are Ian Bell and Stuart Broad. Broad has had the T20 captaincy and is one of the few definites for the summer. Some people would protest that he is too stroppy, but the young Nasser Hussein was every bit as much a bad boy (probably even more so), but the captaincy matured him in a way that few could have imagined. My worry would be that the load of bowling all-rounder and captain would be too much for Stuart Broad. Whether Ian Bell has any captaincy experience or the nous to make a success of it, I have no idea. Whatever way you look at it, Cook’s batting form has gone and, unlike Mike Brearley, his captaincy is not good enough for him to be picked for that alone.

For what it is worth, Alistair Cook finished sixth in the England batting averages, with 24.6, not very far ahead of Stuart Broad.