MARTIN SAMUEL: ENGLAND ARE STUCK IN THE SLOW LANE
England don’t have pace to bully Aussies Enforcer Starc gets to 90mph in one ball
There is a scene in the film The Blues Brothers when the band — a tight r & b outfit performing covers of classics by Muddy Waters and Solomon Burke — turn up at a honky tonk in the middle of nowhere.
Mistaken for the headline act, The Good Ole Boys, they ask their hostess what type of music her establishment usually showcases. ‘Oh we got both kinds,’ she replies cheerfully. ‘We got country and western.’
england’s bowling is a bit like that. They got both kinds. Fast-medium and medium-fast. In fact, england have got so many bowlers of the same style it is as if the eCB grew them on farms; which in a way, it has.
During a train journey from Manchester to London many years ago, Clive Lloyd explained how the West Indies at their peak came to produce so many lightning-quick bowlers. he said the key was not making them slaves to line and length as young men. Just let them bowl and work on accuracy later. ‘You can teach a boy to bowl straight,’ he told me, ‘you can’t teach him to bowl fast.’
english conditions make english coaches adhere to bowling in an english style. And that works in england. Out here it is different. Out here a team need pace. And england do not have pace. They have many bowlers who are variations on one theme, and nothing yesterday that made Australia fear the dark.
This Test is all about what happens when night falls. Those sessions after the second interval — dinner, as it is called in day-night matches —when the lights are on, the stars are out and the pink ball does weird and wonderful things.
except england had a pop at Australia in those conditions on Saturday, and nothing happened. Now it was the tourists’ turn. Australia declared on 442-8 simply because they knew the thought of facing Mitchell Starc, Josh hazlewood and Pat Cummins would put the willies up Joe root’s side. And maybe it would if rain had not intervened. As it was, when the weather interrupted what promised to be a tense duel, england were 29-1, Mark Stoneman already gone. It was a breakthrough, but by no means the return Australia had hoped. The plan was clearly to have england three or four down by the close. So this was a decent break, in the circumstances.
Yet the danger is plain and remains clear and present. The first ball bowled by Starc was clocked at 90mph, making it the fastest of the Test so far. By the end of his opening over, he had edged the meter up to 93.5mph. That is the difference between the teams — well, one of them, at least. england really have nothing like Starc; or like Cummins, who is having a ferocious series.
There is guile but no pace in this england bowling line-up, no way of bringing the pain, or the panic that Australia can induce. And while the novelty of the night session holds a certain mystique, Australia were perfectly capable of skittling england for not very many in Brisbane in broad daylight, so this is no time to relax.
england have been spirited verbally in this Test, but cannot really back their harsh words up with intimidating actions. Whatever Australia give out, they know they have Starc and Cummins to enforce. The biggest bullies are in their gang. Other sports can implement as many marginal gains as their data or medical teams can manufacture — in cricket there is nothing quite like a genuinely fast bowler putting one up the batsman’s kilt.
Steve Smith always has that: the nuclear option. And he’s going to use it. What a player Cummins looks, and what an Ashes player he might have been had injury not kept him out of the last three tours. Australians have been shouting him up since he made his Test debut in 2011 in only his fourth first-class match but he missed the back-to-back Ashes series in 2013 and 2014 and was only a late call-up in 2015, when he did not play until the one-day and Twenty20 internationals. So this is his first home series, and his first Ashes, too. he could yet prove Australia’s most significant player.
An excellent quick bowler, Cummins is quickly gaining all-rounder status, despite batting at nine. he kept Smith company in Brisbane during his match-winning 141 and did the same with Shaun Marsh here during his unbeaten 126. Cummins took 37 balls to get off the mark — the longest sequence of dots for an Australian batsman in a Test since 1991 — but it did not faze him.
WheN he got going he picked off england’s military medium, and reduced Moeen Ali to collateral damage. As Australia have unearthed an all-rounder in Cummins, so england are losing one in Ali, whose bowling was unworthy of the status of multi-tasker. By tea, root was looking the better spin option and was on in his place. At the height of his tailspin Ali conceded 14 runs in one over.
Mitigation can be found in the side injury that was causing his problems before the series began, or the burst finger blister that is, by all accounts, quite gruesome and wreaking havoc with his delivery. Some within england’s camp thought it might even be serious enough to affect root’s thinking if he won the toss on Saturday — Ali getting an extra day or so to recover if england chose to bat.
In the end, root won the toss and inserted, a decision he may now regret for a great many reasons. Ali has an obvious problem and Australia have the highest total ever made by a team in this new late-finishing format.
england will be batting in the eye of a 93.5mph storm on day three, as sure as night follows day.