Beaten Aussies vow to look forward

THE Australian squad has vowed it won’t be spooked by ghosts of Ashes past when it gets to the fourth Test at Manchester as the current series draws more and more similarities to the 1981 version that went England’s way.

An amazing England comeback at Headingley, headlined by a brash all-rounder swatting an all-star Australian bowling attack to all parts was just one element of the current series mirroring the famous one 38 years earlier. Going into that Leeds Test, the Aussies were up 1-0, and the England captain, Ian Botham, was coming off a pair of ducks in the second Test, a draw at Lord’s.

Current England captain Joe Root made back-to-back zeroes too, including one at Lord’s as Australia batted last to hold the team out, just like 1981.

Both men hit back big-time in Leeds, Botham with his epic 149 not out, Root with a second innings 77 which laid the platform for Ben Stokes’ afternoon heroics.

Plenty of those players from 1981 concede they never recovered from that Headingley defeat, including captain Kim Hughes, and losses in the next two Tests were proof of that.

“I don’t know whether you ever get over a game like that. We went on to the next match at Edgbaston, lost a couple of early wickets and thought, ‘Here we go again’,” Hughes said recently.

But this Australian outfit has a “don’t look backwards” approach and unlike in 1981, they get their best batsman back for the fourth Test.

Steve Smith, who has 392 runs in the series already, just shy of Botham’s 399 in six Tests in 1981, said there was no sense of concern among a group who knew they were one wicket away from retaining the Ashes, an opportunity that remains in their control.

“We had our chance to retain the Ashes but now we’re going to have to work even harder and it just makes the series all that more exciting,” Smith said.

“We don’t want to look behind, we want to keep looking forward and focus on what we can control now and that’s Manchester.”

Australian No.3 Usman Khawaja said his team had played too much good cricket in the series so far to get bogged down on one bad afternoon. He said the lessons learned in a pointed post-game review would also serve as fire to ensure the same mistakes weren’t made again.

“It hurts more because you know you should have won that game. It definitely sticks with you, it’s tough to sleep at night because you are thinking about what you could have done,” he said.

“But then you have one good night’s sleep, you wake up, the sun does come up, and you get back at it again. It’s all about being a professional.”