STUART BROAD
There will be no whitewash... but England still face serious questions, with doubts over Moeen... and just how the hell they get Smith out!
My critics were right, but I’m back and now we all want a win
IT was hardly a repeat of seven years ago and the MCG sprinkler celebration but at least England knew when they wandered towards the same Bay 13 yesterday to applaud the Barmy Army there would be no whitewash this time.
There have been eight Ashes Tests in Australia since those giddy days when Andrew Strauss’s England won by an innings in both Melbourne and Sydney to retain the urn gloriously and each one has ended in crushing defeat.
So even if a fourth-Test draw on a sorry excuse of an MCG pitch is a case of too little, too late in another Ashes series defeat in Australia the rot has been stopped and Joe Root was able to smile again on his 27th birthday.
Make no mistake, another 5- 0 humiliation would have been extremely damaging to a very different England team from the one t hat unravelled so bitterly in 2013/14, when their best ever coach, Andy Flower, felt compelled to resign.
Not least, a whitewash and all the recriminations that go with it could have been potentially ruinous to the captaincy and batting of their most significant player, Root, before his reign has really begun.
England ngland h have lost their biggest star in Ben Stokes — and his return seems as far away as ever — so the last thing they needed was for their other hugely important cricketer to go through the trauma of a 5- 0 defeat on his watch.
Root is a tough cookie but the ta me way he surrendered his wicket in this Test was a worrying sign of the mental disintegration that can come from the uniquely brutal environment of a losing Ashes tour.
The captain can at least now be encouraged by a performance he described as much more like the real England and there is no reason why his side should not be able to build on it and win the final Test in Sydney starting on Thursday.
That elusive victory might already have been achieved had there not been so much rain on the fourth day here and a pitch that brought Test cricket into disrepute had not so stubbornly refused to deteriorate as this match went on.
Those of us who feel so strongly that Test cricket should remain a five- day game can only be dismayed by an MCG surface that turned the last day into a non-event, at least after England had taken two wickets in the first session.
That should take nothing away from the extraordinary Steve Smith, who has now batted for almost 250 overs and more than 30 hours in this series to amass more than 600 runs and become t he biggest difference between these sides.
Smith again never looked in trouble yesterday during his 23rd century in only his 60th Test and, when the ball does not move sideways, he is right up there with anyone who has ever played the game.
Thank heavens England have a batsman with similar powers of concentration in Alastair Cook and thank goodness he was not forced out of the England set- up along with Flower in that bitter aftermath of the last 5-0 reverse.
Cook keeping the captaincy was the best thing that could have happened to England and in many ways it is a shame he is not still in charge because it would have protected Root from the excesses of leading in Australia so early in the job.
At least Root knows there will be no temptation for Cook to retire at the end of this series because in batting for more than 10 and a half hours at the MCG for his unbeaten 244, he showed his powers remain very much intact.
The challenge for England’s batsmen now is to display Cook’s application in a final game at the SCG that will, like the fourth Test, be anything but a dead rubber. There is no such thing in Test cricket.
Cook’s determination and skill certainly contrasted with the frenetic innings of Moeen Ali in Melbourne but am an who is having a nightmare series with both bat and ball looks likely to survive the cut for that final Test.
The absence of Stokes makes Moeen all the more important to the balance of the side and it is felt that the introduction of 20-year-old leg- spinner Mason Crane in his place would leave the tail far too long. That does not mean Crane will be denied his debut at the SCG, possibly as a replacement for Tom Curran, who acquitted himself decently at the MCG, with Moeen returning to the ‘second spinner’ role that psychologically suited him so well last summer.
England coach Trevor Bayliss would have loved to have blooded Crane last summer but West Indies’ victory at Headingley meant England could not afford to experiment in the last Test at Lord’s.
It was at Sydney last time that England, in desperation, gave a debut to another leg- spinner in Scott Borthwick along with fast bowler Boyd Rankin, both of whom have not been seen since that disastrous three-day defeat.
This England team will travel to Sydney today knowing that a 3-1 defeat, in a modern Test world where away series victories are so rare, would at least give them breathing space to carry on building under Root and Bayliss.
They are the best men for the jobs — just as Cook and Flower remained the best men to be captain and coach last time here despite the 5-0 thrashing.
It is simply that a 3-1 defeat would give them time to get on with it rather than demand the need for a scapegoat that a whitewash would have brought.
The fourth Test may have been drawn — it should also have been hung and quartered after the last day — but it may prove to be a stepping stone towards a brighter away Test future for England.