ENGLAND CAN’T KEEP ARRIVING AT A GUNFIGHT WITH AIR RIFLES
It ended, as it so often does, in an airless room in the depths of the Lillee-Marsh Stand here at the WACA.
Exactly the same space in which former captain Alastair Cook discussed England’s Ashes surrender in 2013. Now it was Joe Root’s turn.
As modern Antipodean tours tend to follow the same sequence of locations — and Australia tend to triumph in cricket’s equivalent of straight sets — Perth is the place where the contest often ends.
It will be different next time though, because Perth will have a new arena. A different room at the Optus Stadium across the river in Burswood will host the inquest into England’s latest 3-0 defeat — if they do not learn the lessons of this one.
England cannot continue flying south with the forlorn wish conditions have somehow changed, arriving in Australia with the same fast-medium purveyors of lateral movement and hoping a curator has taken pity and produced a friendly, seaming wicket.
Either English cricket admits the truth, that the Ashes are cricket’s equivalent of a football World Cup and the management must plan accordingly, or the England captain pretends what we’ve just spent a month witnessing was elite competition. It wasn’t. It was a mismatch.
‘ they drove home those key moments,’ said Root. ‘We haven’t been blown away, we haven’t been completely outplayed.’
that’s not true. He was coming off the back of a match that ended because England could not bat until the next bad weather pattern and force a draw. A test that was in the balance on the final day in Adelaide also didn’t make it to lunch.
Yesterday started with much discussion around damp patches on the wicket but the Australians knew if they could get one decent session firing at England’s remaining batsmen, the series was done. And that cannot be right. this was a complete Australian victory, better batsmen, better bowlers, more professionally focused, sharper in the field, but it shouldn’t have been this easy.
the difference was firepower: 80mph versus 90mph, slow bowling versus proper spin bowling. England cannot continue arriving at a gunfight with an air rifle and expect a different outcome and the ECB cannot continue to be complacent about heavy defeats.
England went through a period of wearing whitewash tours in Australia but, back then, they were facing the best test cricketers on the planet. the current Australian team cannot make that claim, or anything like it.
they have the world’s best batsman in Steve Smith, some good quicks, a fine spinner in Nathan Lyon and plenty of Aussie ticker, but England had good reason to think, man for man, they could be competitive. the margins of victory tell the tale: 10 wickets, 120 runs, an innings and 41 runs. that, in any language, is blown away. And if it keeps happening there will come a time when interest is lost, when we revert to the darkest days for the game in England. When nobody really cared, because it seemed England didn’t either.
HOW
can England lose eight tests straight in Australia, and the ECB have no battle plan? Asked how England might start producing quicker bowlers, more suited to Australia’s baked wickets, coach trevor Bayliss said he hadn’t really thought about it. Why? Surely, there should have been alarm bells by now, an internal memo, a committee somewhere whose job it is to ensure England arrive in Australia next time with a feasible strategy.
‘We’ve got to get better, whether it is with bat or ball in foreign conditions,’ said Bayliss. ‘Away from home where it doesn’t suit us, that’s where we’ve got to improve. I might encourage Cricket Australia to let some of our boys come out here and play.
‘the most difficult thing is the conditions don’t suit. the wickets are not as responsive out here. there are some good young fast bowlers in England, but how do we encourage them to keep bowling fast and get better without the wickets being conducive to fast bowling? I’m not really sure. Do they play too much? Can we keep them fresher? these are all questions we’ve got to ask. Can wickets be produced that are a little harder or do we keep going down the road of playing in conditions that suit what we do?
‘Young players do come out here, Lions tours come here and we’ve got to do more of that in countries that we don’t do as well in, but I’m not exactly sure, really, all this is off the top of my head. Look, the extra pace helps but you’ve also got to be skilful with it, put the ball in the right areas and get the ball to move. Australia have certainly done that.’
Yet it is also easy to make the task seem impossible. Fast bowlers from Steven Finn to Simon Hughes have offered their perspective in recent weeks and all conclude that they would have loved to bowl fast but were advised to slow down, to achieve greater accuracy and movement in English conditions.
Without doubt, that is part of the problem. Conservative counties, conservative wickets, conservative fast-medium bowling that plays the percentages.
Equally, however, fast bowling hurts. It takes a drastic toll on the body as all of Australia’s quicks have discovered. Each one has suffered through injury, Pat Cummins especially. Each one has gone through extremes of recovery to be fit for this series. Easier to slow down, settle for the quieter life.
CERtAINLY,
if the ECB is happy to let English bowling drift this way — and heaven help them when James Anderson retires because the greatest swing bowler of this or any generation is not simply replaced — then where is the incentive?
If the ECB is not already targeting young players who could specifically be of use on an Ashes tour, then where is the motivation to accept the physical burden that goes with bowling fast?
‘Here in Australia, pace makes a difference on the flatter tracks where there isn’t much sideways movement,’ said captain Smith. ‘ that extra air speed is always going to be big and we’ve worked really hard to ensure we had these three quicks on the park. the force that goes through their bodies, bowling (90mph), it takes it out of you. I have such respect for the work they do off the park, the fitness, weights, rehab to get themselves right and bowl at that pace consistently in test cricket. It’s a tremendous effort.’
Indeed it is. And England’s bowlers tried very hard, too. As Root explained: ‘We did absolutely everything — every plan, different fields, bowling straight, hanging them out wide, a bit of bumper warfare. We couldn’t get the ball to move laterally. We haven’t been able to get the ball to move as much as we liked.’
Yet that’s how it is in Australia. England won here in 2010-11 against ordinary hosts, but that tour is very much the exception. the rest have been largely interchangeable, the same huge margins of defeat, the same humiliations, the same dismal conclusion in a chamber of breeze blocks in Perth. England, next time, have stark choices: go fast or go home. Planning should start now.