THE ASHES Joe’s boys finally come to the party SKIPPER IS PITCH PERFECT
Top draw! England give Root an Ashes boost
Root refused to confirm Moeen’s place for the fifth Test when he said: “Moeen has struggled this week but is a fine player.
“Like other guys he has proven before when it is not going his way he is able to wrestle it back in his favour.
“He will have a big future for England. It is important that everyone knows that.”
The final match of the series is one that England are desperate to win and Aussie skipper Steve Smith rubbished the suggestion in some quarters that Test performances in a series that has already been decided are in any way inferior.
Smith said: “You’ve just got to continue to try and play good cricket and win the game for your team, dead rubber or not, it’s still a Test match and every Test means something to each and every one in both changing rooms.
“No one ever thinks of anything as a dead rubber.” JOE ROOT hailed his team’s character and resilience in avoiding another Ashes whitewash – and then backed them in Sydney to go one better than the draw.
And Root the Mechanic s hould t ake a bow at marshalling England in such a way that, unlike in 2006 and 2013, the wheels have not only stopped falling off this tour... they have repaired a puncture and popped one back on.
It might only have been a draw on a flat MCG pitch, but after three defeats – no, make that eight defeats in succession Down Under – this was a big step in the right direction.
Solid
No matter that it came with the Ashes already safely pouched by the Aussies, this was a performance built on solid foundations with Alastair Cook back to his best.
Don’t forget that this was a tour that began with an allrounder suspended pending a criminal investigation, moved on via a ‘headbutt’ in a bar in Perth, and followed up with two defeats out of two. They sandwiched a team curfew which was lifted once to allow the tour to be rocked by a drink poured over James Anderson’s head in the same Perth bar, before being damaged by another heavy Test defeat.
Right up until Christmas it had been a shambles of a tour, and yet somehow the squad stuck together and kept on working, kept on trying, kept on believing and kept on playing.
And, finally, after they had been written off by all and sundry, their senior players led by the sort of example that they had wanted to do all along to give them a chance of winning a game by outplaying Australia.
A final day exhibition of patience that culminated in another century from Steve Smith, his 23rd in Test cricket, was enough to deny England the win on a flat, unresponsive pitch in Melbourne.
But since England were the only team who could win on the fifth day at the MCG, they can take more than a l i ttle satisfaction from the way things panned out.
“Of course we didn’t want it to be a whitewash,” said Root. “We came into this game, fully excited about winning, making sure that was the main focus.
“That mentality wasn’t hard to get the guys in the right frame of mind for that. They had a lot of disappointment coming away from Perth.
“You could see the way they went about training to prove a lot of people wrong and make sure that we got something good out of this tour.
“After three tough games and three tough results, to come back and put in a performance as good as that is extremely pleasing for me as a captain.
“That’s a fair reflection of us as a side. We are a better team than we have shown on this trip, and that’s a benchmark for us to move forward.
“We have to try and go one better in Sydney and get that win that we want.”
Helpful
Root will be hoping for a more helpful surface for his bowlers at the Sydney Cricket Ground though and, like many, he questioned the value of such a low-grade Melbourne pitch for a showpiece fixture.
Sure, this was not a pitch for high-octane entertainment.
But spare a thought for the groundsman, who had got his calculations slightly wrong and is being pilloried when the inclusion of a Mitchell Starc or maybe even a Mason Crane might have made all the difference.
Test cricket is about light and shade and as long as these kind of pitches remain a rare occurrence, viewers and players shouldn’t be too precious.