England’s bowling blame game
THERE are clear signs of tension between the England bowling group and captain Joe Root over tactics as England looks for someone to blame for its lacklustre showing in the Ashes series.
The situation among players looks so serious that Ricky Ponting says Root should tell his bowlers to stick to his plans or be dragged out of the attack.
After losing the Adelaide Test and falling 2-0 behind in the five-Test series, the visiting captain said the bowlers had to share some of the blame.
“If we’re being brutally honest, we needed to bowl fuller,” said Root, who added the batting needed to be better, in the wake of the loss.
“As soon as we did in that second innings, we created chances.
“We need to do that more, we need to be a bit braver, get the ball up there a bit further because when we do, we’re going to create chances and make life difficult.
“That’s one of the frustrating things because it’s something we did four years ago and got it wrong and we didn’t learn from it.
“We made the same mistakes last week (in Brisbane) – we just have to be better and we’ve got to learn those lessons very quickly.”
Veteran quick Stuart Broad, who has made it known in the past he is not always happy with management calls, had defended the bowling in his newspaper column for the Mail on Sunday.
“I think we held the game well on an opening day which returned a bit of a strange scorecard: Australia were 221 for two at the end of play and you would expect it to be something closer to 321 when losing so few wickets,” Broad said.
“But they didn’t particularly time the ball well, the pitch didn’t allow them to.
“And although there was an argument that we could have bowled fuller, because the ball did so little, our economy rates would have gone through the roof.
“Without movement, fuller means you’re bowling genuine half-volleys, and that’s not a great place to be. As the TV coverage here (in Australia) has pointed out, this is the least a pitch has moved in Australia since 2014, so we held the game well, in my opinion.”
Ponting was incredulous when he heard Root blame the bowling. “I nearly fell off my seat when I heard that,” Ponting
told cricket.com.
“Whose job is it then to make them change? Why are you captain then? If you can’t influence your bowlers on what length to bowl, what are you doing on the field?
“Joe Root can come back and say whatever he likes. But if you’re captain, you’ve got to be able to sense when your bowlers aren’t bowling where you want them to. And if they’re not going to listen, you take them off, simple as that.”
Root said he expected the quicks to heed his call.
“We need to learn and we need to learn fast,” he said. “We can’t make the same mistakes that we have made so far. But we have to absolutely believe and have that same attitude that we had today. If we do that, I’m convinced we have what it takes to win Test matches over here. But we can’t keep missing opportunities. I expect (the players to respond to what I’m asking).”
Bowling coach Jon Lewis pointed the finger at selection mistakes in search for fault.
“We felt the ball would move around under the lights a little bit more than it has,” Lewis said. “In hindsight, you might say we should have picked a different side. But at the time, we felt like we picked a team that would win the game.”