Cricket: a dismal start to the Ashes

“Well, it was good while it lasted,” said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. For almost three whole days of the first Ashes Test, in Brisbane, “it really did look like England might compete and, whisper it, even win”. But on the fourth day “normal service was quickly resumed” and, by the end, Australia had raced to a “thumping” tenwicket victory. England’s old failings “resurfaced at the worst possible times”: whenever the visitors looked set to apply pressure, “they either sold their wickets cheaply or found the old enemy had the greater strength and character”. We feared there would be a gulf in class between these two sides – we just didn’t expect it to be quite so big.

Joe Root’s problems keep stacking up, said Paul Hayward in The Daily Telegraph. The captain’s predecessor, Alastair Cook, has “lost his form”. And there was the embarrassing revelation that Jonny Bairstow, the England wicketkeeper, had run into Australia’s Cameron Bancroft on a night out at the start of the tour and greeted him with a “headbutt”; the team have been given a curfew as a result. All these concerns are huge distractions for Root at a time when he ought to be focusing on his batting. His conversion rate (the frequency with which he converts fifties into hundreds) is “heading the way of the pound against the major currencies” – of the world’s top ten Test batsmen, Root’s rate is the lowest. In the second innings he was dismissed for 51, the fourth time in his last six matches that he has been removed between 50 and 59. There’s “no escaping the comparison with his opposite number”, Australia’s captain Steve Smith, who scored an unbeaten 141 in his sole innings, the 21st Test century of his career. Little may separate Smith and Root in the world rankings – they are first and third – but it’s the Australian who has “set the standard for everyone in this contest”.

How Root must wish he could call on Ben Stokes, said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. The allrounder is stuck at home, waiting to find out if he will be charged over a “brawl” in September. Without Stokes, England aren’t just deprived of an outstanding batsman – their whole batting order is warped out of shape. Moeen Ali has been “shunted up two places” to No. 6, “depriving him of the freedom that made him such a danger during the 2015 Ashes”. Stokes’s absence has created bowling problems, too: his effective replacement, Jake Ball, floundered in Brisbane, taking only one wicket and conceding more than four runs an over. One Test down, the challenge facing England has become tougher “by a factor of about ten”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. The hosts will smell blood. “To win in Australia is hard enough. To win having lost the opener is nigh-on impossible.”