Root’s flops are facing 11 and hell Down Under
FAMILIAR STORY IN OZ
ENGLAND are staring down the barrel of an 11th defeat out of 12 matches in Australia as their brief hopes of a second Test fightback collapsed in a heap.
With alarming familiarity, England’s batting once again proved itself to be both technically and temperamentally unsuited for Test cricket Down Under.
And they are no nearer a solution than they were four years ago en route to a 4-0 hammering.
The parallels with the 2017/18 tour are already quite something with this pink-ball Test almost a carbon copy, which truly makes a mockery of Joe Root’s relentless assertion that England are going to be doing things differently this time. Not so much.
In a catalogue of horrible days here over the past three tours, it really takes something to keep putting up contenders for the worst of the lot.
Collapse
But it appears to be the only thing that England are getting better at.
The main thing that they are yet to improve on is their ability to prevent a collapse when a wicket falls, and even more so when that wicket is Root’s.
It tells a story that Root moved past both Sachin Tendulkar and Michael Clarke to lay claim to the fourth most productive run-scoring year in the history of Test cricket and yet his side, with 48 in the hunt for 54, remain on course to register the most ducks ever by an England team in a year.
Root and Dawid Malan actually batted well during the sunshine of the first session on day three to add 123 without loss to provide fans with hope of a first good day in the series.
But once Root was dislodged by the improving
Cameron Green for 62, the wickets just kept coming and coming as England lost 8-86 to slump to 236 all out.
“It was disappointing and frustrating that we got ourselves back into the fight and then lost too many wickets in clusters there,” said Malan. “It is a bit of a trend and it is something we did on the last tour as well. We get a bit of momentum and a bit of a partnership going, and then the Aussies take one wicket and suddenly we lose two or three and we’re chasing our tail again.
Pressure
“We can talk about the guys who failed but ultimately one of Rooty or myself should have gone on and got a big hundred and taken the pressure off those guys.
“I didn’t play a great shot. I needed to execute better, but you also have to identify certain periods of the game where the Aussies are going to attack you and stand firm against it.”
Malan can take some confidence from registering a second successive score in the 80s, but ultimately he could have done with doubling it.
In the case of Ollie Pope and Jos Buttler, they could do with illustrating that Test cricket is not simply beyond them. Pope was skittish, while Buttler couldn’t have been further away from the man who took down Mitchell Starc in the T20 World Cup in October.