ENGLAND RIPPED APART
Lyon the destroyer in first Test thrashing
IT WaS the wicket that epitomised what, in the space of the last two desperate days, became an abject surrender by england at the ground they call their fortress.
When Jason Roy charged down the track in an attempt to hit nathan Lyon out of Birmingham and instead missed with a wild slog, it became clear england were going 1-0 down in the series floundering rather than fighting.
yes, Roy had been chosen for this ashes Test on the back of his big-match temperament and an attacking game that has made him one of the most destructive batsmen in one-day cricket.
and, yes, if england are going to put their faith in him in the ultimate form of the game, they will have to put up with some overly positive shots and brain-fades made in the name of imposing himself on the Test arena.
But not this. not such a reckless and headless slog that it offered Lyon the first of his six wickets in england’s woeful last
day collapse, not only on a plate but gift-wrapped and labelled: ‘To Nathan, with love from Jason.’
At that stage of this fifth day, England had lost only Rory Burns and could still entertain realistic hopes of at least making Australia work hard for their victory on a ground where the tourists had not won since the halcyon days of 2001.
Yet once Roy had departed, running off the pitch and away from the scene of his crime almost in embarrassment, an England team who appear to be struggling to recover from the mental and physical exertions of winning the World Cup crashed spectacularly.
This really was a dismal way to go 1-0 down in an Ashes series that represents the second of England’s twin peaks in this most momentous of all cricketing summers.
It had all started so well when England had Australia 122 for eight on the first day and even when they batted with rare application to claim a first-innings lead of 90 once Steve Smith had made the first of his two Testdefining hundreds.
But everything started to go badly wrong on a fourth day when Smith was supreme again and an England attack lacking its injured spearhead Jimmy Anderson ran out of ideas and energy and allowed Australia to dominate.
And, even though England really should have been capable of batting out the last day with few alarms to head to Lord’s all square, their familiar lack of fortitude struck again once Roy had offered Lyon all the encouragement he needed on a worn last-day pitch.
Nothing summed up the difference between these old enemies more than the six-wicket success of Lyon compared to the total failure to make an impression of his opposite off-spinning number, the completely out- of- sorts Moeen Ali.
Lyon, nicknamed Garry after the Aussie rules footballer Garry Lyon, always looked like being the key last- day figure and so it proved as he breezed through England to became only the fourth Australia bowler to reach 350 Test wickets.
And nothing was more predictable than the fact Moeen was one of them as he fell to Lyon for the ninth time in their last 10 meetings and walked off to an uncertain Test future so soon after becoming surplus to England’s World Cup- winning requirements.
England need to be decisive now. It may seem harsh for Moeen to be left out after one bad game with the ball, but the complete lack of confidence he has long shown in his batting has spread to his bowling in this Test. He needs to be taken out of the firing line.
So does Joe Denly, whose unlikely return to international cricket in the autumn of his county career looks destined to end in predictable underachievement after twin failures here, despite being protected from the new ball by his move down to No 4.
England are understandably and rightly loath to return to the bad old days of chopping and changing too quickly, with Trevor Bayliss in particular preferring to give players one game too many than one too few, but they should bite the bullet now with Denly. It is barely conceivable to see him scoring big runs at this level.
To compound his misery, Denly chose to review his dismissal yesterday, admittedly after consulting his captain, when he must have had more than a decent idea he had touched the ball from Lyon through to Cameron Bancroft at short leg.
With the umpires having such a miserable match themselves — and Joel Wilson twice gave Joe Root out erroneously yesterday to take his blunder count up to eight for the match — the last thing England needed was to waste a review.
Not that it mattered as England, four wickets down at lunch, plummeted in the afternoon session, with Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow, two such key figures, looking worryingly out of form and energy themselves as they fell to the impressive Pat Cummins.
Only Chris Woakes, currently one of England’s best batsmen, could hold Australia up for long as he top-scored with 37 before becoming the last man to fall, offering a soft slip catch off Cummins to who else but Smith.
This, then, was undoubtedly Smith’s and Australia’s Test and they now head to the ground where they feel most at home themselves, Lord’s, having breached this Edgbaston fortress impressively and perhaps already decisively.
Suddenly England are under extreme pressure, just as they were in the World Cup after they had lost to Australia at Lord’s in the group stage.
Then they came back famously to win the Cup. Now they will need all their powers of recovery to complete their much sought-after white-ball and red-ball double.