Abject England blow dream start
Tourists let Aussies off hook as Wood & Woakes are wayward while Ollie goes down injured
You can change the venue. You can change half the team. But the narrative of England’s embarrassing Ashes is proving stubbornly consistent.
A day which began with ECB chief executive Tom Harrison calling for a ‘reset’ of the English game — several years after most observers reached the same conclusion — turned into a familiar tale of missed chances, sagging shoulders and questions about fitness.
And if Australia’s 241 for six did not necessarily sound like a total to dictate terms, then it already felt useful against an England batting line-up that would regard it as unalloyed riches.
Demoralisingly for Joe Root’s team, it also represented a recovery from the depths of 12 for three, with Travis Head scoring a high-class century — his second of the series, which is one more than England have managed in total.
Despite missing the Sydney Test because of Covid, he is once more the Ashes’ leading run-scorer, with 349. Remarkably, he has raced along at 87 per 100 balls, a strike rate that would not be out of place in a one-day international.
By the time faint drizzle brought a farcically premature end to Hobart’s first day of Ashes cricket midway through the 60th over, Australia had careered along at a run rate of four, with 130 alone coming in the middle session.
England have endured so many low points these last few weeks that the only humane response has been to stop totting them up. This, though, was a couple of hours to rank with any.
Australia had emerged after the first interval precariously placed on 85 for four, after losing Marnus Labuschagne to the series’ oddest dismissal shortly before the break. Moving across his stumps against Stuart Broad, he seemed unsure whether to play one of his comedy leave-alones, designed to irritate opponents, or use his bat.
He ended up doing neither. As the ball passed behind his legs, cannoning into middle stump, Labuschagne’s feet got in a tangle and he collapsed to the turf — a demise even more ridiculous than Rory Burns’s first-baller at the Gabba.
Labuschagne, though, had helped Australia recover from their dreadful start, having been dropped on nought by Zak Crawley at second slip off ollie Robinson. Now, Head and Cameron Green continued the good work against an attack barely fit for purpose.
England’s problems began when Robinson, superb while removing David Warner and Steve Smith for ducks with the new ball, left the field after an over in which the speedgun dipped below 70mph. The diagnosis was lower back stiffness. He returned to the middle a few overs later but did not bowl again.
His incapacity did not merely deprive Root of a vital wickettaking option, it backed up the captain’s pre-match concerns about Robinson’s general fitness, comments echoed after play by bowling coach Jon Lewis.
Privately, England are despairing about his approach to staying in shape; two rounds of golf three days before the Test may have done little to help his back.
England might normally have been able to gloss over Robinson’s injury. But Ben Stokes’s side strain means he cannot bowl in this game and too many others were leaking runs.
By the second break, Mark Wood’s eight overs had gone for 62 and Chris Woakes’s 12 had cost 50. With Jack Leach dropped — one of five changes England made from the team that clung on at Sydney — it left Root as the sole spinner. He sent down 10 harmless overs of off-breaks when, with the floodlights on, the seamers ought to have been queuing up to make the pink ball sing and dance.
The warning signs had been there in the first session, after Root won a good toss under grey skies. While Broad and Robinson produced combined figures of 16-7-30-4, Wood and Woakes managed a pressure-relieving 8-0-54-0.
Wood has been luckless all series but the recall of Woakes, whose three wickets at Brisbane and Adelaide cost 77 each, was a wasted opportunity. Since Jimmy Anderson was nursing his hamstring and lower back, England could have tried Craig overton. Instead, they went with the devil they knew.
As Head tucked into the bowling with a series of flashing off-side strokes that brought him a half-century in 53 balls and a century in 112, England’s body language grew mute — except when Alex Carey pinched a second off Broad to deep backward square. The fielder was Robinson.
Head and Green, the all-rounder whose batting has grown in stature as the series has progressed, had taken their fifthwicket stand to 121 when Head — the ball after bringing up his fourth Test hundred — chipped Woakes to Robinson at mid-on.
Then, in a final session lasting just 45 deliveries, Green fell into Wood’s leg-side trap, pulling a short ball straight to Crawley to depart for 74 and make it 236 for six. Still, had Australia
been offered that after a traumatic first 10 overs, they would have taken it without a moment’s hesitation.
in the fifth over, robinson removed Warner, caught by Crawley at second slip, for a 22-ball duck.
in the seventh, Crawley dived across root at first slip and put down the scoreless Labuschagne, confirming his status as the australian batsman England’s fielders most like to drop.
The drama continued. in the next over, Broad had Usman Khawaja caught by root for six — a comedown from his dreamy twin hundreds at the sCG. and it was then 12 for three when robinson squared up smith, who edged to Crawley.
This was England’s best start of the series, by some distance. and yet Labuschagne’s reprieve gradually gave way to a grim inevitability. The tourists were not out of it by stumps. But it could, and should, have been a whole lot better.
...BUT AT LEAST MAD MARNUS FELL FLAT ON HIS FACE TOO!