Test of mettle England out to avert Ashes whitewash
Australia bat as Smith wins first toss of series Root hits back after Ponting ‘little boy’ jibe
If there was ever a toss to win, it was on this pitch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which – unlike the first three Test venues – offered nothing to pace bowlers at the outset because it was such a dry dropin. But on a hot morning under a cloudless sky, Joe Root lost the toss, for the first time in this series.
First signs were ominous – omens, that is, of a big Australian total and a possible 5-0 whitewash. England had taken 35 wickets in the first three Tests. Without extreme pace or extreme spin, and with the ball ceasing to swing, their chances of taking 40 wickets in the last two Tests appeared minimal.
David Warner had been kept
quiet by Root’s posting of a sweeper on the boundary to either side, his scoring rate no more than 53 per 100 balls in the first three Tests. On this occasion, with the Ashes in the bag, Warner was in no mood to be kept quiet and was quickly scoring at a run a ball.
Stuart Broad in his second over and James Anderson in his third were driven down the ground, over a fast outfield, by Warner for dismissive fours before England’s veteran pair asserted some control by bowling four maiden overs in succession.
The ground, meanwhile, must have filled up all the faster after the news that Australia were going to bat and, no doubt, bury the Poms under a mountain of runs: 93,000 was the world record to beat for a cricket match.
So Tom Curran did not have the most encouraging surface on which to make his Test debut, in the place of Craig Overton and ahead of Jake Ball. But he had the backing of Root’s praise. “I think he’s a real competitor,” Root said. “He’s a feisty character, he’s always wanting to get in the contest.”
Ball, by contrast, seems to be short of confidence – not surprisingly, given that he has had four Tests so far and none of them has been on a surface encouraging seam bowling: one at Lord’s, two in India, and the last in Brisbane. His Test career is struggling to get off the ground.
The pitch was so pale and dry that it looked like a day three pitch at the start, with plenty of scope for spin in the second half of the Test.
England were tempted to squeeze in their 20-year-old wrist spinner Mason Crane somehow, but his length was too uncertain in the three practice games.
In addition to losing the toss, Root had to cope with the allegation by the former Australian captain Ricky Ponting that he is captaining England like “a little boy”. Root repudiated that allegation, after saying politely that Ponting was entitled to his opinion, and refraining to point out that he had the unique distinction of losing three Ashes series in England.
“He’s entitled to his opinion, but he doesn’t spend any time in our dressing room,” Root said. “He doesn’t spend much time around the squad. I’m obviously going to disagree with that.
“If you ask any of the guys in the camp, any of the coaches and the support staff, they’d back me up as well.” Which is true: nobody begins to doubt that Root should be the captain.
“I don’t think I go about things as a little boy, that’s for sure,” Root said. “I have my own way of doing things. It’s important that you don’t try to be something that you are not.
“I know there are occasions when you have to be strong in front of the whole group. I might not appear to do that out on the field but there are times when I do that and times I have done that.”
Root had the advantage of one decent Christmas present. Australia did not have their ace left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc, the leading wicket-taker in the series with 19 wickets, but Jackson Bird, a steady fast-medium. The two teams were thus brought closer to a level play- ing field without Australia having a left-arm bowler. England went into the Melbourne Test without one of their key players, who had been arrested after a brawl: no, the Ben Stokes incident was not something completely unprecedented. Much the same happened before the Melbourne Test of 1877, the first of all Test matches. Ted Pooley, of Surrey, had been arrested in New Zealand after a brawl in Christchurch – by coincidence the birthplace of Stokes. When England sailed from there to Melbourne for the inaugural Test,
Pooley was detained on bail and the match went ahead without him. The blessing in disguise for Root was that Pooley was the team’s only wicketkeeper: you can manage, just about, without a world-class all-rounder but not without a wicketkeeper.
Australia’s margin of victory was 45 runs, and a specialist keeper might have made all the difference.
Meanwhile, Darren Lehmann will step down as Australia coach after the 2019 Ashes series in England. The 47-year-old, who took the job in 2013, will lead Australia’s World Cup defence in England before they attempt to win an away Ashes series for the first time since 2001. “That will be it,” Lehmann said. “It will be a case of too much time, too much travel.”