Woeful England give up with a whimper
English game broken as latest collapse leads to 4-0 defeat before Root joins the buck-passing
The most hopeless of all england’s Ashes tours — and the competition is fierce — ended with one last collapse, one last wave of the white flag, one last attempt to explain it all away as the fault of a system beyond anyone’s control. By collapsing from 68 without loss to 124 all out in the space of 22.4 sorry overs on the third evening at hobart’s Bellerive Oval, england did more than slump to a 4-0 defeat that brings their record in Australia to 13 losses out of 15 since winning the series here in 2010-11. Worse than that, they rounded off a trip on which everyone has been culpable, but no one has taken responsibility.
Tasmania had never hosted an Ashes Test, yet it needed the equivalent of a little over seven sessions for its cricket-loving islanders to reach a rather sad conclusion: the english game is broken and it is going to take time to fix.
If only a small terracotta urn were handed out for passing the buck. england would win it hands down.
Before the fourth Test in Sydney, Ashley Giles, the managing director of men’s cricket, said selection was a matter for head coach Chris Silverwood and captain Joe Root, the impossibly crowded fixture list a question for those above him.
Before this game, eCB chief executive Tom harrison said the domestic schedule, which for so many years has been unfit for purpose, was the domain of the Professional Game Group. As for the international schedule, that was down to other chief executives at other national boards.
Then, last night, Root insisted the problem was not the players — the same players who in 10 innings failed to reach 300 once, fell short of 200 six times and took 20 Australian wickets in one Test out of five — but a county system that has not provided them with the tools to take on the best.
he made some fair points, especially about the failure of the domestic game to encourage big first innings totals, or world-class spinners and fast bowlers.
But it was not county cricket that persuaded Ben Stokes to pull Mitchell Starc to deep mid-wicket, or Sam Billings to chip Scott Boland to midon, or Ollie Pope to wander across the crease and get bowled round his legs by Pat Cummins. earlier on the tour, it was not county cricket that made Root bat first at Brisbane, or england drop so many catches, or make a mess of almost every important selection.
Throughout, Root has argued that performances have not lived up to the talent in his dressing room. Yet there comes a point where fighting talk begins to sound delusional.
It may well be that he remains the best man to take england to the Caribbean in March and beyond but only because there is no one else suitable for the task. If there were, some of the tactical ineptitude on display these past few weeks would have cost the captain his job.
Ironically, perhaps the only key figure out here who has not looked to shift the blame is Silverwood — and his job appears more in danger than any.
It was in keeping with a grim tour that no sooner had england earned a glimmer of a chance of a consolation win than Australia snatched it away.
The first half of what turned out to be the final day of the series belonged to Mark Wood, who picked up careerbest figures of six for 37 to dismiss Australia for 155 in their second innings, their worst total of the series.
he did it by scaring the living daylights out of the batsmen with the kind of short-pitched assault that was supposed to have formed the basis of england’s Ashes challenge back in the days when Jofra Archer and Olly Stone were still fit.
It was thrilling to watch but galling too. Wood, remember, was rested from the second Test at Adelaide because england wanted to save him for later battles. By the time he returned at Melbourne, the series was gone.
Still, his heroics set england 271 for victory and at 68 without loss shortly before the second interval, WinViz even had them as marginal favourites — the first time all series that they had been ahead on the algorithms.
But Rory Burns chopped Cameron Green on to his stumps for 26 and the final session turned into a rout as the pink ball did the seamers’ bidding under the lights.
Dawid Malan fell in similar fashion to Burns, before Green made it three in a row by having Zak Crawley caught behind for an attractive but unfulfilled 36. Stokes completed a disappointing tour by falling to Starc for five and it was 101 for five when Root received an unplayable delivery from Boland that barely got off the ground and hit his off stump halfway up.
A series that began with three half-centuries for england’s captain finished with a top score of 34 from his last five innings and an average of 32. The wait for an Ashes hundred in Australia goes on.
The rest of the innings was little more than a surrender as Australia romped to their 10th win in 10 day/night Tests and england to their fifth defeat in six.
After Billings and Pope had contrived their own downfalls, Chris Woakes edged an awful hack at Boland, before Wood and Ollie Robinson were both bowled backing away.
Victory by 146 runs was presented to Australia on a platter: england had been dismissed twice in the game in 86.3 overs, less than a full day’s play.
At least you could not accuse them of doing things by halves. On an awful tour, they had saved the worst until last.
This has to be rock bottom. They cannot go any lower. This has to be the moment England draw a line in the sand and really mean it when they say they will prioritise Test cricket.
And that means doing much, much more than having the audacity to call for a red-ball reset, as Tom harrison did last week, while trousering a big fat bonus for undermining Test cricket by creating an unnecessary and unwanted new format in the hundred.
it has been done before. As Alastair Cook said on BT after what is surely the worst of all away Ashes debacles, England knew they could not sink any lower when they were demolished for 51 by West indies in Jamaica in 2009. They vowed to put things right and two years later were crowned the best Test team in the world.
Go back further and Nasser hussain and Duncan Fletcher came together in 1999 with England ranked the worst of the lot and began the recovery that was to culminate with the fabled 2005 Ashes victory under Fletcher and Michael Vaughan.
how England could do with a captain like hussain now to drag them off the floor with his force of personality. And how they could do with a coach like Fletcher with a steely vision of where they need to go and the technical acumen and drive to take them there.
it is all very well blaming the system and clearly a domestic game that has been far too in thrall to the white ball is the fundamental reason for England’s shocking demise in Australia.
There is zero trust in a rudderless ECB led by a dead chief executive walking in harrison and without a chairman at all. The board have been asleep at the wheel while England are facing up to a year when they will play more international cricket than ever before with their players in the mood to rebel against any further Covid bubbles and restrictions.
But a broken system does not excuse those who have been responsible for this Ashes being even worse than the nadirs of 2006-07 which was to cost Fletcher his job, and that of 2013-14 that was to do for another coach of real substance in Andy Flower.
That means, for all his desire to carry on and the lack of viable alternatives, Joe Root’s captaincy race is run, Chris silverwood has to pay the price for being given too much responsibility for coaching and selection and Ashley Giles must go for giving silverwood that hospital pass in the first place.
Root cannot survive simply because there is no one else. he has overseen three Ashes without success after admitting before this series that his legacy would be judged by this one. And if anything he is getting worse tactically. he needs to go back to the ranks and concentrate on restoring the very high batting levels misplaced during this series.
The one outstanding candidate to replace Root is Ben stokes. For
all the reservations many, including this observer, have about overloading such an important player, stokes could do the job with one important proviso — he would have to give up Twenty20 cricket, the one format where he has never fulfilled his potential.
That includes the iPL. if England’s top players are serious about rescuing Test cricket, they must give up a franchise tournament that in itself undermines our first-class cricket by taking players away from the red-ball game at the start of each season.
There should be a new coach in place by the time England play their next Test in Antigua in March too. it might not have gone down well within the team when Gary Kirsten made such an obvious play for the job while silverwood
was still in situ, but the south African disciple of Fletcher is the obvious man for the Test job. And Paul Collingwood can take charge of a white-ball machine that shows no signs of malfunctioning under captain Eoin Morgan.
it was Andrew strauss who put the white-ball reset in motion after an embarrassing 2015 World Cup before leaving his post of team director to prioritise his family after the death of his wife Ruth.
That move led to the huge success of the 2019 World Cup but it has gone too far now and strauss, who has made a part-time return to administration as chair of the ECB cricket committee, is the best person to redress the balance. he should return to his old job at Giles’ expense or even replace harrison and run the whole thing.
And strauss could work with a new ECB chair in surrey chairman Richard Thompson, a man with the expertise, dynamism, love of cricket and business acumen to lead the governing body in their moment of greatest need. he has the support of the counties too after his success at the helm of the biggest county of them all.
Root yesterday articulated what has to happen in the short term to ignite that red-ball reset while at his lowest ebb in the aftermath of the pitiful hobart batting collapse and a three-day last Test defeat.
‘What incentives are there in the County Championship to open the batting?’ he asked. ‘What incentives are there to be a spinner or to bowl fast? Anyone coming into Test cricket is doing it in spite of county cricket, not because of it.
‘how do we provide those incentives? We could produce better wickets, hopefully by playing at a better time of year. We could flatten the seam on the ball, maybe by giving our seamers a Kookaburra to work with. That would nullify running in and bowling at 70 miles per hour while encouraging bowlers to create new angles and find different ways to take wickets. And give spinners the chance to bowl in the first half of the season.
‘Then we could double the batting points in a Championship game and incentivise first innings leads above 400. When do our young batters ever go out under the pressure of replying to 450500? When do they have to save a match in spinning conditions?
‘There are lots of things we could change quite quickly but for now it’s how we react to this Ashes. Can we use this experience when we’re hurting to grow and come back as better players?’
They are all valid points and questions. But they are ones for Root’s successor to address. Along with a new coach, team director and ECB hierarchy.
This really does have to be the time for action. This has to be when England really do rip everything up and start again.