WE’LL HAVE LAST LAUGH
Root is seething at Aussie antics
ENGLAND are determined to have the last laugh as they try to get their Ashes bid back on track.
And they hope the joke is on Aussie skipper Steve Smith. Joe Root made it clear yesterday that he was far from impressed by Smith roaring with laughter virtually all the way through the press conference after his side’s first Test 10-wicket win.
The England captain and his senior players have been simmering all week about his behaviour and the way Australia used a fourweek-old head-butting story to their advantage
Root stressed he will be using that to fire up his side as they try to level the series in the second Test, which starts in Adelaide in the early hours of Saturday. “If that is not motivation to the players I don’t know what is – seriously,” said Root.
“I don’t think we respond in kind. That’s not how we roll, how we operate as a team. “But when you see that at the end of the game you are obviously very disappointed at a reaction like that in a press conference.
Antics
“If that can’t get you up for the next game then I don’t know what can.”
Root does not doubt the character in the England dressing room and admitted there have been talks this week about how much the Australians’ antics on and off the pitch in Brisbane wound them up.
“I think it’s something you expect when you come here now,” Root said.
“You look at ‘Faf-gate’ last year (when South Africa captain Faf du Plessis was hounded and eventually fined over a ball tampering charge) and there were comments last time we were here with Trotty.
“It’s part of touring Australia now. It’s a strategy they use.
“But it’s very important we continue to play this tour in the manner that we have gone about it so far, and that we don’t get involved in petty disputes and arguments that are nothing to do with cricket.”
At a meeting in Adelaide this week, the management told players ‘good two-and-a-halfhour periods’ needed to be turned into full days of cricket. England missed a golden chance to post 400-plus in the first innings and were not clinical with the ball when they had the Aussies seven down. England are sweating on Moeen Ali who is struggling with a cut spinning finger and chose not to bowl in the nets. Mason Crane is on standby but he would play as a bowler, with Moeen retained as a batsman and Jake Ball dropped.
But whatever attack they go with the day-night Test is thought to give England their best chance of moving the pink ball around under the lights and unsettling Aussie batsmen.
“You saw at Brisbane as soon as the ball did do anything sideways, we were massively in the game,” Root said.
“That is going to be our big focus moving forward, really being ruthless as a bowling unit at getting the ball moving laterally and finding different skills individually which are going to get stuff out of the wicket when it is slightly flatter.
full “If confidence we can do we that will I bowl have them out cheaply on a number of occasions on this tour.”
If England needed an omen that their luck might be changing it came at a squad golf day at Kooyonga on Wednesday.
Alastair Cook, who has struggled to find his form on tour so far, landed a hole in one.
But he was excused getting a round in because the players are staying off the booze until the end of the Test, when they hope they will have plenty to celebrate.