DOWN, DOWN, DOWN... Awful England fall like dominoes
This is the way it ends for England. in a rush, like stacks of dominoes. it takes a metaphorical flick of a fingernail, a rotten shot, a poor judgment call, and off they go, down, down, down, hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion.
Australia were magnificent, it is fair to say, but England were woeful, even allowing for the injury that left Jimmy Anderson able to bowl just four overs in the match. This was about more than misfortune centred on one individual.
Australia won at the ground considered England’s fortress without their main strike bowler, Mitchell starc, and with the best opening batsman from either side, David Warner, scoring 10 across two innings. The law of averages and previous history suggests that will not last for ever and the tourists have an excellent record at Lord’s.
The theory is starc has been saved for stretches using the famous slope and Australia’s last visit ended in a 405-run victory. At one stage they were 362 for one. England replied with a very strong 30 for four. Anything near a repeat of that and by the time this tour reaches headingley for the third Test, England might need to win just to keep the series live.
Of course, being without Anderson from the start is preferable to losing him early and bowling a man down, but that prospect is hardly a positive, even with Jofra Archer likely to be fit for his Ashes debut.
Elsewhere, problems are mounting. The differences between steve smith and Joe Root have been ruthlessly exposed in this game, likewise Nathan Lyon and Moeen Ali. As it stands, Lyon is not only a better spinner but a more trustworthy bat, too.
Jonny Bairstow’s Test form at the crease is beginning to bleed into his form behind the stumps and there were individual errors yesterday that reminded us that the mental disintegration which Australia famously sought to inflict was never solely caused by sledging.
Few minds scramble as fast as those of England batsmen under Antipodean pressure on day five. Any number of vignettes could represent how swiftly hopes of survival faded: Rory Burns losing his wicket with the score on 19; Joe Denly’s ludicrous review when the entire ground could have told him he’d hit it. Yet Jason Roy summed it up. Roy by doing exactly what his detractors suspected he would; Roy by conforming to stereotype; Roy by refusing to bend to the demands of the match.
Roy epitomised the reason there was so little hope for England, once it became obvious the weather wasn’t going to come to a flaky batting side’s rescue. he went, clean bowled by Lyon for 28,
just at a point in the game when even those who had suspected his temperament as an opening Test batsman were beginning to remark on his discipline. And Lyon did the bulk of the damage, as expected. he was good for six wickets in the second innings, nine in the match.
Yet Roy’s dismissal was desperate. he was not so much outwitted as undone, dancing down the wicket, needlessly looking to knock the spinner into the confectionary stand, and bowled through a gap of the type more usually reserved for delivery drivers.
it summed up an English malaise in these conditions, the confusion of purpose and intent. Roy has been encouraged to play his normal, white-ball game. And that involves taking risks.
Yet those risks are calculated, shaped to the situation. Roy has to move the scoreboard along, yes. But that doesn’t mean he swings at the first ball of the day; or the next one; or the one after. he plays the game, as necessary, and yesterday’s game demanded patience.
so to try what he did against Lyon was more than foolish. That he almost hesitated before breaching the dressing-room door after it had happened suggests he knew this, too. The argument is that Roy might one day win England a match playing in this manner, but that isn’t true. No batsman wins a game going completely against the demands of the situation. Even those who advocate aggression from the openers — and Trevor Bayliss, England’s coach, certainly does — appreciate the need to balance that with the state of play. Roy didn’t.
he treated the task as if England were chasing victory, which they were not — at no time was there an attempt to post the 398 required — or that the mission was the same as on day one.
had Roy got out this way in England’s first innings, it would have been frustrating and his critics would have been furious, but those who supported his selection would have understood. That’s what you get when you pick an attacking opener: attack.
The least that can be hoped, however, is that the same opener recognises when the best, the only, form of attack is defence.
it wasn’t just that Roy played a lousy shot for Test cricket. it would have been a shocker in any form of the game: 50- over, Twenty20, it might not even past muster in The hundred, unless runs are awarded for the breadth of swing plane when missing the ball. And don’t put it past them until they’ve focus-grouped it.
Yet it precipitated one of those middle-order collapses that are as English as cream tea, motorway roadworks or the proroguing of parliament. England lasted two and a quarter hours during that horrid spell and were 86 for nine.
it wasn’t far off the 85 all out against ireland.
Denly compounded the loss of his wicket with a wasteful review. Root — England’s smith minus
the relentless run-getting — collapsed under the weight of it all and from there it was a brief jog along the treadmill to oblivion.
To add insult to injury, Chris Woakes came in and within 24 balls was England’s top scorer. When he became the last wicket to fall — and trust Smith to have the final word with the catch — England still trailed by 251 runs.
It was the first time Australia had won at Edgbaston since 2001, the first England defeat here since 2008 and the first opening Ashes Test to go down as an away win since 2005. For a team who were 122 for eight on day one, it was some comeback, too.
From the euphoria of the World Cup win, England are now looking for clues. There were concerns about the top order, but the middle order was England’s strength, remember? In this test, Jos Buttler, Bairstow and Ali scored 24 runs across six innings, so that statement may require revision.
There is the issue of mental fatigue after such an intense summer and while Burns’s first innings here will have cemented his place, there has been little from Denly to inspire confidence. Anderson is a loss and Ali a ghost of the player he was, the beard that is pitied more than feared, poor soul.
Now on to Lord’s, where Starc has the propensity to bend it around corners, and where, on their last Test visit, Smith made a double century and Warner hit 83 off 116 balls. ‘We saw you crying on the telly,’ some bores chanted as Smith collected his man- of-thematch award. Indeed they did; but who’s crying now?