FROM BAD TO PERTH
THERE is only one thing worse than being 2-0 down in an Ashes series on hostile soil.
It is moving to a place where the soil is even more hostile . . . Perth.
England fans grieving over the 2-0 scoreline might be advised to switch off their televisions and head for the beach when Australia plays England in the third Test in Perth from next Thursday.
The past seven Ashes Tests in bouncy Perth have been brutally one-way affairs, with Australia’s narrowest winning margins being seven wickets and 150 runs.
England captain Joe Root said everything a beaten captain has to say after losing the second Test.
England, Root claimed, showed it could compete with Australia but needed to do it for longer, that spinner Moeen Ali was a fine player whose form would improve with hard work and the senior players had to step up.
England, he claimed, was still “massively in this series’’.
But numbers, not words, tell the true story.
England has no batsman averaging more than 36 while Australia has no bowler averaging more than 30 per wicket.
In its past seven Ashes Tests in Australia, England’s only century maker is bad boy Ben Stokes and he is not here.
Root has a modest record in Australia that must improve and the mixed form of Mark Stoneman, James Vince and Dawid Malan simply proves that it is desperately hard to defy gravity in cricket — players with average first class records rarely morph into anything better at Test level.
Ali’s wounds at the bowling crease have been salted by the fact that rival Nathan Lyon has snared him all four times when he has batted.
While Australia’s fourcylinder attack is humming along with Mitchell Starc (13), Nathan Lyon (11) Josh Hazlewood (7) and Pat Cummins (7) all in the wickets, England’s leading wicket-taker, Jimmy Anderson, has only eight.
England, yet again, has been struck down by the curse of the Kookaburra ball.
It has no player in red hot form.
The match was another triumph for day-night Test cricket. It is the fourth daynight Test match in Australia and all have been excellent games.
Cricket has been a game influenced by the elements and the nuances of night cricket tug fortunes one way and then another.
Any half-decent pace attack feels a chance of giving rival batsmen a shake up under lights.