England’s series hinges on the battle at twilight
Off-field distractions risk making matters worse on the pitch as the day-night Test looms
Adelaide is Pink Ball Central. The second Ashes Test will be the third day/night Test staged here, while the rest of the world has hosted four. When the England party flew in yesterday, several faces were also pink.
As if England had not already appeared vulnerable – having lost four pace bowlers in Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Toby Roland-jones and Steve Finn, and the opening Test by 10 wickets – the England and Wales Cricket Board gave the impression that it did not have its players under control.
The Jonny Bairstow butting incident in Perth was another 10-wicket victory for Australia, because the only credible version of events was Cameron Bancroft’s. If Bairstow could not come up with a cogent version for public consumption, it would have been wiser if a considered statement had been released on his behalf.
As for Stokes, it was surely right of the ECB to allow him to pursue his profession by granting him a no-objection certificate and letting him play in New Zealand. What was not right was that he should set off from Heathrow without the ECB making this clear. There is all the difference between his playing domestic cricket and representing England – or giving the impression that he soon will – while under the cloud of possible charges by the police.
Here was a second failure of PR and man-management at a time when England’s players have to be completely united in the face of the physical threat that is Australia’s superiority in fast bowling. For, if England lose the second Test, another 5-0 whitewash awaits.
England began to make a reputation for resilience by losing the first Test of a series then winning the second: they did it in India in 2012-3 and at home to Pakistan last year. But they have never bounced back from an initial defeat when their star all-rounder has jumped on a plane in their direction and created the impression – however erroneous – that he will seize the place of one of the existing players.
Jake Ball and Chris Woakes can only have been disturbed by the speculation that Stokes will turn up and play later in this series – as if they did not have enough to
Ball and Woakes can only have been disturbed by the Stokes development
concern them after taking only one wicket each in Brisbane. One of them would have to be dropped if Stokes were to appear in defiance of all rational expectation.
Australia’s head coach, Darren Lehmann, did not make capital out of England’s confusion. He did not have to. Lehmann launched the propaganda campaign against Stuart Broad that resulted in 20,000 spectators roaring abuse in the first Test of the 2013-4 series, following Broad’s refusal to “walk” in the previous Ashes series. On this occasion he was content to let the Bairstow and Stokes affairs speak for themselves. But it is possible that England will have a slice of good fortune, which they deserve after their first three days of fortitude in Brisbane, though not for their disarray since.
Adelaide has been grilling in the mid-30s Celsius but the forecast for the Saturday start is cold and rain. A day/night Test can hinge on which team has the handicap of batting in twilight, and it could happen that the tourists will bowl at twilight in conditions more English than England.
In their practice game at the Adelaide Oval, England’s seamers ran through the Cricket Australia XI at twilight, taking their first seven wickets for 25, and even allowing for the modest techniques of a rookie XI, James Anderson and Woakes were formidable because of their accuracy and seam movement. England’s batsmen needed no such excuse to collapse, losing six wickets for 31 runs in the afternoon before the floodlights.
Since then, an International Rules match between Australia and Ireland has been staged at the Oval, for which all four drop-in pitches on the square were taken up, before being relaid for cricket. A lowscoring Sheffield Shield game between South Australia and Tasmania was staged last weekend, further reducing the time the curator Damian Hough has had to compact the surface with his heavy roller, and thereby to generate the pace and bounce which Australia want. Mitchell Starc has taken nine Test wickets at 20 runs each in Adelaide’s two previous day/ nighters. He took eight wickets for 73, and 10 in the match, for New South Wales at the Adelaide Oval a month ago. Starc has as strong a claim as anyone to be called the pink-ball wizard.