Patience is the key to surviving wild WACA

IALWAYS loved playing at Perth. The pitch was the fastest in the world game, the bounce was like a trampoline and it was cricket in the raw. But you needed a bit of ticker to succeed there — and you needed to use your brain.

The WACA surface may not be quite as lightning fast as it once was, but the chances are it will still be the fastest thing most of the England team have ever encountered. And for batsmen, bowlers and fielders alike, that presents some serious challenges.

As I mentioned the other day, batsmen have to give themselves longer to get in than on most normal surfaces.

If that means giving the first 40 minutes to the bowler, so be it. It’s vital you gauge the conditions before playing too many big shots.

Straight- bat shots work well, because the pace of the pitch is such that even a gentle push back past the bowler can disappear through mid-off or mid-on for four.

And the cross-bat strokes are usually good value too: if the bowler drops short, you have a great chance to get going with a cut or pull or even an uppercut.

The problem comes when you start playing with an angled bat, which is an old trap for English players. Back home, the ball may hit the middle of a bat angled at 45 degrees. At Perth, the extra couple of inches’ bounce means the same stroke risks providing a catch to the slips. James Vince, in particular, will need to be careful after the way he got out in Adelaide.

For the bowlers, the trick is not to get sucked in to dropping too short. It’s easy to get giddy with the bounce and try to push the batsman on to the back foot. But a good length is still the best length, even at the WACA. Not many English bowlers I can remember nailed that perfect Perth length, although Alex Tudor grasped it well on his Test debut in 1998-99, when he removed both Waugh twins. On another occasion, in a warm-up game there, Angus Fraser aimed back of a length, which was his natural length, and got easily cut and pulled by Ryan Campbell. To thrive at the WACA, you have to think on your feet.

Then there’s the slip fielding. We used to stand back a couple of yards because of the extra bounce and then get into a muddle about whether we should take catches with our fingers pointing down, which is the English way, or up, which is the Australian way.

Someone like Ricky Ponting used to make it look easy, bending his knees and taking catches at chest height with his fingers pointing up. But for English fielders this is not so easy.

The ‘Fremantle Doctor’, the breeze which blows in across the ground from fine leg after lunch, also adds to the unique nature of the place.

It’s something England might be able to use to get the lateral movement which makes their attack so much more dangerous.

I’d be tempted to give Jimmy Anderson first crack into the ‘Doctor’, because it could assist his swing. But Joe Root (below) may also decide to get a guy like Craig Overton to do some of the donkey work into the breeze.

Above all, England have to relish the challenge in front of them. They have not beaten Australia there since the 1978-79 tour, which tells you what an alien place it is for the average county cricketer.

But if their bowlers don’t get carried away with the bounce, and their batsmen cut out those angled-bat shots, they can give Australia a run for their money. Now is the time to put all the off-field nonsense of the past week or two behind them and show the world they mean business.