Like a Trojan horse, tourists have infiltrated county game

Australians’ experience of local conditions could nullify the advantage of hosts, writes Scyld Berry

It’s a nice horse, guv, a very nice horse. Only one previous owner, and it’s a lucky horse too – it will bring you luck in your war against those Greeks. See if it doesn’t make your city impregnable! Such was the sales talk which persuaded the Trojans to take a wooden horse inside their gates – and in much the same way Australians have been able to play a lot of county cricket in England. So many of them, indeed, have played domestic cricket in England that it could make all the difference to the destiny of the Ashes.

Eight of the Australians have played in the championship while two more: David Warner and Steve Smith, have represented counties at white-ball cricket – Warner at Durham and Middlesex, Smith at Worcestershire – and only an injury prevented Mitchell Marsh taking up his contract with Surrey. So 10 of these Australians have benefited from playing domestic cricket in England, which adds up to a lot of one-per centers.

Some of this time spent within the walls of Troy does not matter, it was too long ago to be relevant – like Mitchell Starc’s couple of championship games for Yorkshire, or those T20s for Warner and Smith. But it is highly relevant that five of the Australian squad have been playing championship cricket this season, with all the time entailed in adjusting to a red ball in English conditions – time which none of the World Cup winners in England’s side have enjoyed.

Of the 12 leading wicket-takers in the first division this season, who is the most economical pace bowler, conceding only 2.59 per over? Peter Siddle, who happens to be pencilled in for the role of third seamer at Edgbaston, to nibble away on a fuller length than Australian quicks learn how to bowl in their own country.

Siddle has built up a wealth of experience representing Essex this season, and Lancashire and Nottinghamshire in the past, taking 126 wickets in the championship. And who will take the new ball for Australia tomorrow? James

Pattinson, who has taken 40 championship wickets for Nottinghamshire at only 15 runs, will not be spraying it short and wide either.

The only batsman to have reached 1,000 runs in the second division this season is Marnus Labuschagne, born in South Africa, living in Queensland, playing for Glamorgan and called into Australia’s squad on the strength of those runs, which include five hundreds. Labuschagne is also their reserve spinner, having been given plenty of airtime for his leg-breaks at Glamorgan.

Most important of all, arguably, is the part Durham have played in the rehabilitation of Cameron Bancroft, slated to open with Warner. Bancroft had played for Gloucestershire before “Sandpapergate”. This season, he has kicked on as Durham’s captain to become a serious batsman with a compact technique, made for English conditions, and excellent powers of concentration – not something Jason Roy or Jos Buttler have been working on recently.

Usman Khawaja, at No 3, will not find his time at Glamorgan last season – when he scored three championship centuries – to have been ill-spent; nor his previous assignments with Derbyshire and Lancashire.

Travis Head has had only one championship game for Yorkshire but six for Worcestershire: time to curb his tendency to play with his hands away from his body.

It is not, of course, a conspiracy. It is the way it has always been since 1968, when the first-class counties opened the door to immediate qualification by overseas players – and Australians such as Allan Border and Mark Waugh, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden and Shane Warne, did as much to revivify county cricket as Sir Garfield Sobers and Mike Procter and hosts of other overseas players. But this opening has been exploited this summer by Australia’s planners, notably head coach Langer.

And it is not a level playing field. The only current English cricketer to have played first-class domestic cricket in Australia is Mason Crane, who had one match for New South Wales, and one Test for England. If you bet on horses, the ones running in the 11am at Edgbaston tomorrow are liable to make a big – potentially decisive – impact on the Ashes.