Cook& Co find that Australia is still no country for old men ..
Derek Pringle looks at where England’s issues lie, suggesting their only hope comes from any Australian complacency
You hear much about Australia targeting the opposition captain, but they don’t stop there. While most sides opt for the pragmatic ploy of preying upon the callow and inexperienced amidst their opponents, the Aussies take relish in exposing the veterans, especially in Oz.
As the film says, and a factor many have noted on previous Ashes tours there, it is no country for old men.
So far, England’s most experienced quartet, Joe Root, Alastair Cook, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, have not really delivered this series and the side finds itself two-nil down with three to play. Sure, Anderson produced a fivefor, his first ever in Australia, to give England a sniff in Adelaide, and Root made 67 there, but so far their performances have been well below the standards they set for themselves. And that is mostly down to the pressure Australia bring to bear on those who visit their shores for sport, especially England cricketers.
Let’s start with the Test just gone, in Adelaide. Root knew that conditions there meant it was going to present England with their best chance of winning one of the first three Tests, deep history showing both the Gabba and WACA to be virtually impregnable.
Having won the toss, and with heavy cloud overhead, he decided his best chance to win the match lay with him giving his experienced opening bowlers the best conditions to dismiss Australia cheaply. At least I’m assuming that is how he felt. If he bowled first because he did not want Australia’s bowlers to be unleashed on England’s batsmen, then he deserves all the opprobrium that can be heaped upon him.
Assuming it was for the first reason, he was let down badly by Anderson and Broad, who, as they did at the Gabba, bowled far too short. Anderson even admitted as much though he did not admit to lacking intent on that first day, a criticism levelled at them by Michael Vaughan, a renowned interpreter of body language. Whatever the reasons, England’s finest pairing of opening bowlers did not deliver and Root will have felt let down as a result.
I wonder how much the expectation of having to deliver Steve Smith’s team on a silver platter by the end of day one affected them? You like to think that a pair with over 200 Test caps and 900 wickets between them would be impervious to any added responsibility. Yet, I doubt they would have bowled as uneventfully as they did had Australia won the toss and batted first, and they found themselves with pink Kookaburra in hand and not having to force the issue.
This is where the psychology of Test matches breaks your spirit. Having squandered a big chance to get on top early, the team feels humiliated when Australia then declare on 442-8. Unsurprisingly, England then bat poorly as a result and are bowled out 215 runs behind.
Cook made 37 in that innings and began to look something like the
batsman who is England’s leading run-scorer in Tests. But for someone who has made well over 11,000 Test runs, he seems worryingly at sea against Nathan Lyon, who dismissed him twice in the match.
Lyon is a fine bowler but he has no doosra or even an arm-ball. He does bowl with loop, dip and turn, a combination which has turned Cook to stone. He has now dismissed him seven times in the 15 Tests the pair have played against one another.
Great players like Cook have usually earned such an epithet because they are able to find solutions to problems posed by bowlers.Yet, Cook is struggling at present not only with Lyon but with Australia’s pacemen as well, who have largely denied him his favourite cut and pull shot. If England are to have any chance of avoiding complete humiliation this tour he needs to get some big runs, and soon.
Root’s travails stem largely from making your best player captain on a tour as tough as Australia, where the problems and pressures tend to mount until you have a head full of steam.
One of Root’s finest qualities throughout his career is that he has been a problem-solver. Trouble is, making his team competitive for longer periods of time (England have won just one day out of the nine and half played so far) is one problem that looks beyond him at present, and that will hurt.
With all the fretting and thinking he has to do, mostly on behalf of his players, there is less time for his own game, which has begun to acquire glitches. Caught at third slip driving in the first innings at Adelaide, because his weight and head were back, he could have fallen exactly the same way, and the same reasons, in the second. Also, for the second time in the series he did not convert his half-century into a hundred, something England have a habit of failing to do in Australia, at least since the successful 2010/11 series.
Privately, Root will also be pining for a bowler who can get it consistently up around the 90mph mark so he can reduce the effectiveness of Australia’s lower order, as this is not a vintage Aussie side batting wise. So far, Australia’s pace trident, with Lyon providing a superb foil, have ruled the roost, and they have been able to take wickets almost at will whatever phase of the game.
It will be difficult for Root to make the running with a bowling attack lacking the sustained pace of Australia’s. What he and England can try to do, though, is make sure the batsmen give them a decent total to bowl at. Of course, that is easier said than done when you are two down and wondering where any relief is going to come from.
If there is any consolation to be had for Root and England it is that Smith made the biggest boo-boo of the Test by not enforcing the follow-on. Root might have got a bit too funky with his fields at the Gabba but Smith’s decision, assuming it was made without the intervention of marketing men keen to extend the relevance of the series beyond Perth, bordered on a carelessness borne of cockiness.
It is thin gruel, but Australian complacency seems England’s best hope of a break at the moment unless their senior players start standing tall with bat and ball. They need to start by putting 350-plus on the board in their first innings – something, shamefully, they have not done in Oz since the 2010/11 series. Until that happens, their prospects look bleak.
Root’s travails stem largely from making your best player captain on a tour as tough as Australia, where the problems and pressures tend to mount