Woakes makes light work of ‘Cadets Anonymous’
Bowler takes six wickets against modest CA XI Bairstow’s injury scare proves to be false alarm
Cricket Australia ought to be embarrassed, even ashamed, about the quality of the team it has put up to play England in their last practice game before the Ashes. Hospitality has always been one of the finest Australian traits. To offer such opposition – a bunch of lads with the sum total of one first-class century – violates that tradition.
The CA XI made just about tolerable opposition for England in their second warm-up game, when they had to grapple with Adelaide’s pink balls and floodlights, but not for their third.
And these opponents were made even weaker when the captain and only mature player in their second game, Tim Paine, withdrew to represent Tasmania.
A Paine-less team were painfully inadequate, try though they did, and some of their batsmen were not good enough to take on England’s bouncers safely, even on a turgidly slow pitch. Yes, England did start this trend of putting up feeble opposition for touring teams almost a generation ago, when counties rested their first-team seamers – but at least the first-team batsmen played. And now, for their final game before a Test series, touring teams are normally treated to a match against the Lions, ons, with 11 counties putting up one promising player apiece.
It would have been no skin off Cricket Australia’s ralia’s nose, and it would not have devalued the Sheffield Shield, if the six states had each put up one established player for this team.
In Adelaide, in n the CA XI’S second innings, England’s three fit seamers took 10 wickets for 44. Here, their three seamers – Stuart Broad, replacing ng James Anderson, backed by Chris Woakes and Craig Overton – took nine for 119 on the flat track. If it is not an abuse of the tradition of hospitality, it is of the definition of first-class status.
Six wickets here are no indication of whether Woakes will succeed at the Gabba next Thursday. As in Adelaide, it was sufficient for him to bowl a good length outsi outside off stump to take four wick wickets for eight runs in 22 balls either side of lunch: the re rest was done by the poor foo footwork of the CA XI, or Cadets Anonymous, or Cricketi Cricketing Apprentices XI, who closed on 249 for nine. Overton, like Woakes, W bowled a steady length lengt and brought the odd ball back bac into right-handers, or away fro from lefthanders.
Such value as there was in this exercise for England lay in the acclimatisation. Th The temperature was in th the early 30Cs, at least unti until an afternoon breeze off the sea, which is not a luxury they will enjoy in Bris Brisbane’s airless st stadium. Woakes too took his wickets from the swimming-po swimming-pool end – a splendi splendid, free swimming pool beside besid the Ross Ros River Riv be- ing municipal Australia at its best, where a sign declared that the UV warning was not “very high” but “extreme”, and the “burn time” six minutes.
The home total would have been much lower still if England had caught the three chances they missed, two offered by the topscorer Matt Short, when he had 25 and 36. Root set the standard for the ground-fielding early on by chasing back from slip to turn three into two, but raising the standard of catching – England missed 16 chances in three Tests against West Indies – will take longer. One encouragement was James Vince, replacing Ben Stokes at gully, taking three sharp chances.
Root missed the easiest of the three chances at slip off Mason Crane. It may prove to be a task too many for Root to field at slip for England’s spinner, which Stokes used to do, as well as for the pace bowlers. It would not be if he were captaining his second tour of Australia with a settled side, but this is his first year in the role and he has too much else to ponder. Nobody else has fileded there to the slow bowlers, though, except James Anderson, who is too preoccupied with bowling.
In the first over after lunch Jonny Bairstow hurt the middle finger of his left hand, which allowed Ben Foakes to keep wicket in a game for the first time on this tour. It would have been the worst of eventualities if Bairstow had broken it, but he returned after an hour.
Jos Buttler could boss the later stages of a Test innings like Bairstow, but not Foakes as yet, though he may come in time to raise the bar of wicketkeeper/ batting even higher than Bairstow. To lose two of their world-class allrounders for the Gabba, propelling Moeen Ali up to No 6, would have been fatal to England’s Ashes chances.