Schoolboy fields and no spinner as wheels fall off
By the end of a taxing day for captain Cummins, Australia looked ragged, reactive and cowed by England’s assault
Wasting the new ball
Pat Cummins’s decision to entrust Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood with the new ball was surprising, yet had a certain logic: the captain is far less dependent on the new ball, and has a far better record when deployed as first change.
Starc snared Ben Duckett in the third over. For all his magisterial shot-making, Zak Crawley also benefited from some major early fortune – he played and missed several times to the new-ball pair, edged Hazlewood just short of slip and inside-edged Cummins’s first ball past his stumps.
While luck eluded Australia, they were also inaccurate: 37 per cent of deliveries in the morning session to Crawley and Moeen Ali were either in line with the stumps or drifting down the leg side, allowing them to score freely off their pads. Australia resorted to the short ball, a delivery against which Crawley thrives.
Following the ball
Cummins’s tactics were those that schoolboys are taught to avoid: following the ball. Consider how, in one Cummins over, Australia shifted from having six men on the leg side, braced for a short ball, to having seven on the off side.
Every change merely created a new gap for Crawley’s imperious strokeplay, and Root’s 360-degree hitting, to exploit. Decision fatigue is the notion that the more decisions you have to make, the more that the quality of these calls suffers. Perhaps this doubles as an explanation of why Australia have struggled more as the series has gone on: it is not so much facing one day of Bazball that is exhausting, but the sheer cumulative effect.
England’s batting line-up demands constant reassessment from the fielding side, denied the luxury of being able to settle into a plan.
“Today was that perfect storm,” admitted Daniel Vettori, Australia’s assistant coach, who gave an insight into how England’s approach has affected the tourists. “Do you keep going, do you keep pressing? Today was probably the first day that our press was met with them going to seven an over. And I think in the back of our minds, we always knew that England had this in them because they play so aggressively.”
Mostly, Australia assumed a role that seems antithetical to their national cricketing character: as reactive, their fields dictated to by England’s batsmen rather than their own best assessment of how to get a wicket.
Holding back Mitchell Marsh
In keeping with his travails against nagging seam bowling, and curious preference for faster bowlers, Crawley succumbed twice to Mitchell Marsh at Headingley in only 14 balls – both times feathering an edge behind. Yet at Old Trafford, Marsh did not bowl a ball until Crawley had already made 112.
Australia opting to leave out front-line spinner Todd Murphy forced them to use Travis Head in a novel role: as first-choice spinner. Recognising the importance of a calculated assault, Crawley greeted Head with a reverse sweep for four, and then a slog sweep for six. Head’s six overs in the afternoon session yielded 48 runs, while Marsh awaited a chance to bowl at Crawley.
Misplacing the fundamentals
For all that Australia’s tactics were questionable, so were their fundamentals. Overthrows late in the day were another sign of a team who had descended into the slightly ragtag; so was conceding 18 extras, bowling 11 no balls to the hosts’ three. England will hope that this Test leads to a continuation of a trend in the first three Tests, ending in victory for the side conceding fewer extras.