Nightmare of the nightwatchman
NOTHING divides opinion in cricket quite like the issue of whether to deploy a nightwatchman when wickets fall within touching distance of the end of a day’s play.
The arguments are valid both ways, with a proper batsman better skilled to withstand a difficult moment but a tailender a cheaper offering as a sacrifice should things go wrong.
What is not in any remaining doubt on this Sod’s Law Ashes tour was that when Jonny Bairstow told Mason Crane he was going in with 15 deliveries left in the day, not one person in the England dressing room will have feared anything but the worst.
Seven balls later, the inevitability was crushing when Bairstow edged Josh Hazlewood to Tim Paine – a moment when England’s pain stakingly constructed advantage flew into Aussie hands too.
Joe Root had created the dilemma, again downed in the no-man’s land between halfcentury and full, falling to Mitchell Starc for 83 with the third delivery of the new ball with 2.3 overs lef0t. As such, he was not part of the decision that saw Bairstow striding purposefully to the wicket past him.
What he would have wanted is irrelevant given it is the batsman’s call, but by the time Bairstow was walking, it would have been pretty clear.
In those eight deliveries with the second new ball, England had gone from 228-3, with Root and Dawid Malan going strongly 133 runs into a fourth-wicket partnership, to 233-5.
It was a predictable if dispiriting finish to a day that for large parts had gone England’s way, right down to two missed run-outs against Malan (on 29 and 40) and a drop by Steve Smith at slip off the left-hander’s edge (on 34) which hinted England’s luck might finally be changing.
But the day’s end altered the dynamic and left the overriding impression that England are becoming inherently incapable of driving home moments of advantage.
“It sort of sums up where we’ve been on this tour. We’ve been on top for so long in games, and we make one or two mistakes and suddenly let the Aussies back in,” said Malan, right.
“I was a little bit surprised to see Bairstow come in but the decision is not the coaches’ to make – that’s down to the batsman in next to make. Jonny made that decision and good on him. It takes a lot of guts to go against what people normally do.
“He probably felt he was better suited for that new ball. Some people like it; some don’t. I’ll have a nightwatchman every time if there’s an opportunity given to me, but each to their own.
“You can’t really look back and say he shouldn’t have. At the end of the day, he did it, he backed himself and he got out.”
When Root was out, clipping Starc to square leg where Mitch Marsh took a sharp chance, it brought to a close an innings that looked destined to break the captain’s hoodoo with unconverted half-centuries. Aside from an inside edge on the preceding ball that flew half an inch past his leg stump to the boundary, it had been an assured innings. Yet Root’s failure to convert must be taking seed in his head with just five of his last 28 half-centuries going on to become hundreds. “If it was two or three yards to the left or right, it would have been four and everyone would have said, ‘Great shot’,” said Malan in defence of his captain. “But yes, whoever you are, you want to be scoring hundreds, so in his own mind he’ll be disappointed he doesn’t convert more.” After winning the toss, Root will also have been disappointed to see Mark Stoneman, James Vince and Alastair Cook all get starts and get out to leave England 95-3.
But in company with Malan, the England skipper rebuilt to the point where it was Australia who looked vulnerable. Starc, who had been down on speeds after missing Melbourne with a bruised heel, was struggling with cramp.
Judging by the pace with which he and Hazlewood steamed in at the death, the vulnerability had been nothing more than a rope-a-dope trick. And as they have done with unerring accuracy all tour, England walked on to the punch.
Jonny made the decision and it took a lot of guts