BRING ON THE ASHES
Aussies holding no fears for us as we get back on track in style
SOMEONE mentioned to me recently that by the time the Ashes starts in August, myself and Jimmy Anderson will be the second oldest pair of opening bowlers in Test history behind those West Indies greats Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.
They were 36 and 37 when they last played together in 2000 and I have been taking the mickey out of Jimmy, telling him he must be bloody old — because I’ll only just have turned 33!
In all seriousness, though, we still complement each other with our use of the new ball. We create pressure for each other, whichever one of us makes the breakthrough, and we do well to control the innings in the first 10 overs.
We are really adaptable too. Since discussing the reasons I have shortened my run-up in these pages last month, Mark Wood and Jimmy have both bowled with longer ones in the final Test in St Lucia.
There is really good logic to these moves within the bowling group and I think it shows we are not stuck in our ways. As a captain, Joe Root demands that people are always looking to improve their game and that’s what we have done by making little changes.
Things didn’t necessarily go my way in the amount of wickets I claimed in the series but this is the best I can remember bowling for years — beating the bat, creating chances. We know cricket works in roundabouts and you have to wait for your turn. I need to keep doing exactly what I have been.
Over this period, I have created pace without having to force it, the seam’s been in a good position and I have been beating both edges of the bat. That’s 98 dropped catches off my bowling in Test cricket now and I did jokingly say to Joe the other night over a beer that I was going to raise the ball in the air when I get to 100. The polite version of his reply was that it wouldn’t go down too well with him.
IT’S TIME TO SPEAK UP
IF you look at the whole winter as four wins out of six Test matches, you’d be pretty happy with that, but all of us will have some disappointment towards this tour because the first two games didn’t go to plan at all. We underperformed and got outplayed pretty strongly.
Although to all intents and purposes it was a dead rubber I feel like we made a lot of strides last week in St Lucia. We left there in a good place. As players we met before the Antigua Test and talked about how we could get better as a team. We’ve had too many batting collapses in the last few years, more than we would like that’s for sure, and we talked honestly about what was causing them and what we could do to change that.
The thing that came out of that was the need for player feedback quicker and for it to be more honest. There’s no point sitting down at the end of a Test match saying ‘we could have done this better’. You have to speak the moment it’s happening. In other sports that’s quite easy to do and you can get consistent feedback during a game. In rugby, for example, you will be talking as a group before a scrum whereas in cricket your performance is more individual.
It’s the same for the bowling group. It’s no good waiting until lunch and then saying ‘we could have pitched it up more’. ‘Speak now’ is a policy that’s going to stand us in good stead going forward.
I look back to when we got to No1 in 2011, we fed ideas back all the time and we were constantly moving the game forward. Why can’t we do that with this England team? St Lucia showed we’ve made some strides on that.
ONE FOR MY GRANDAD
IF I keep fit going into the start of the season with Nottinghamshire I will be in a really good place.
From a personal perspective, I start off by captaining the MCC in the champion county match against Surrey in Dubai. It’s a huge honour f or me because my paternal grandad Ken, who is about to turn 101, has been an MCC member for years and he will be very proud of me stepping out with that cap on.
JOE’S A NATURAL
THERE has been a lot of focus on the stump microphones this week following the verbal exchange between Shannon Gabriel and Joe Root. I don’t mind having the stump mics on because comments like that are so rare.
My view on this i s that you shouldn’t say something to someone on a cricket field that you wouldn’t say to them on the street. You wouldn’t walk around saying deeply offensive, personal things to people, would you? So why on the field of play?
When I sledge, so to speak, I go down the route of ‘don’t try anything this ball’ or ‘ you’re under pressure for your position’ — that kind of thing is part and parcel of international sport. I actually like that side of the game — telling a batsman not to drive when you have four slips, and then they look to drive.
A bit of reverse psychology. I just don’t go down the personal route.
If the stump mics had been turned up in 2017-18, the umpires would have been much busier than they have been this week, the way the Australians went about their business. But I don’t think it will be an overly verbal series this summer
because Australia will be under pressure to maintain their new culture of behaviour, and I am not sure their captain Tim Paine, given the kind of guy he is, would stand for too much nonsense.
As we have seen this week, Joe Root doesn’t either and we saw great leadership from him on the field. It wasn’t a set-up, he wasn’t told to say that. Those were his natural emotions coming out.
OUR ENGINE IS BACK
THE ICC Test team rankings seem to jump all over the place, don’t they? It depends on who you are playing, and where you are playing, with Australia now in fourth place, narrowly ahead of us.
We know the Ashes will be competitive for sure, that they have a strong team and it will arguably be stronger with Steve Smith and David Warner coming back.
But we know we’re a good team and we have to back our strengths this week, with the return of our engine room of Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali at six, seven, eight, and Joe Root coming into the runs at a good time for us.
I would imagine we will go in as favourites. Australia haven’t won an Ashes series in England since 2001 and it’s really tough to win away from home these days.
The first Test is in Birmingham and that means it’s going to be lively. It’s one of the best atmospheres and I don’t think those in the Eric Hollies Stand are going to allow Smith and Warner to return quietly.