Short shrift for England
ROOT’S BOYS TOLD TO EXPECT BARRAGE OF BOUNCERS
AUSTRALIA pace fiend Pat Cummins lit the fuse for an Ashes bumper war by warning England to prepare for a barrage of short-pitched bowling.
Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are expected to lead the attack against Joe Root and Co.
“Hope you practise your bouncers, because we’ll be bowling a lot of them,” sneered Cummins in a message to England’s batsmen. “No one likes it if you’ve real pace and real accuracy,”
“They play on slower wickets, not so much bounce, so the conditions over here is one of our biggest strengths.
“I think we’re really lucky there’s a few of us who are all pretty tall, like to bowl with a bit of pace and get a bit of bounce. There’s nothing like getting your adrenalin up and then running in, trying to bowl short.”
Cummins wants to fill the role left by Mitchell Johnson, whose 37 wickets at just 13.97 each fired the Aussies to a 5-0 win in 2013-14.
He added: “Johnno kept the morale of the side and the whole of Australia up against the Poms almost singlehandedly. It shows the importance a really quick bowler can have, and hopefully one of us can do a similar job.”
For all Cummins’ bravado, Australia’s biggest challenge may be getting three or four of their injury-plagued pace attack onto the park.
Cummins made his Test debut six years ago but has since won just four more caps because of back trouble.
England will leave for Australia on October 28 without Ben Stokes, who is waiting to hear if he will face criminal charges over a street brawl. His agent Neil Fairbrother said Stokes will “make public his full explanation when the time is right”.