Broad and Anderson’s Ashes credentials will be tested on Oval pitch
England must target 80 wickets in Australia and a heavy burden will fall on their veteran pace attack
To win the Ashes series in Australia this winter, England need to take 80 wickets. The Oval Test – starting on Thursday against South Africa with the series poised at one-all but the tourists psychologically on top – will give England their clearest indication to date of whether they have the firepower.
When England last won in Australia in 2010-11 under Andrew Strauss, their bowlers took 86 wickets. Most fell to England’s pace bowlers – 68 of them, while 16 fell to spin, and two to Paul Collingwood’s medium-pace. It would be reasonable to expect a similar ratio this winter as Moeen Ali and his spin partner, if there is one, are unlikely to surpass Graeme Swann.
On the previous occasion that England won the Ashes in Australia, in 1986-7, their bowlers took 79 wickets. In 1954-5 they took 80 (while in the two other post-war series won by England in Australia six Tests were played). When England lose there, which is more often the case, they have taken as few as 57 wickets, as in the whitewash of 2006-7. It would be reassuring to pencil in Stuart Broad for 20 of those 80 wickets England need Down Under.
Last time, when England disintegrated 5-0, he took 21 wickets at 27. He has turned 31, but he has been carefully preserved in that well over half his wickets have been taken for his country rather than his county, and his pace has been holding up.
Whether James Anderson has not so much the pace as the nip to succeed again in Australia will be one of the main lessons to be learned during this coming Test.
The Oval pitch is normally as close as England can come to a traditional Australian one: not much in it for the pace bowlers after the first session, nothing in it for the spinners at any time, just a constant demand for high pace, bounce and accuracy.
Never has Anderson led England’s attack more nobly than in 2010-11, when their 3-1 victory owed so much to his 24 wickets at 26 runs each. But on the last Ashes tour he was down to 14 wickets at 43.9 – and he was effectively dropped in India last winter after two wicketless Tests in Mohali and Mumbai. Does he need an Englishstyle pitch to compensate for diminishing nip, or is he still ageless, even after he has turned 35 during the Oval Test?
At Trent Bridge, when South Africa outplayed England in every department (even in wicketkeeper/ batting, if not wicketkeeping alone), Chris Woakes was much missed. As a swing bowler who keeps his length under pressure, he would have been the perfect replacement after Anderson had pitched too short in his opening spell. But even more than Anderson, who has taken 306 Test wickets at 25 in England and 171 at much higher cost abroad, Woakes has so far needed English surfaces for his success: 40 Test wickets at 22 at home, eight at 63 abroad.
As Jake Ball has had only one game on return from a knee injury – and two wickets for 52 off four overs does not suggest complete rehabilitation – Mark Wood retains his place for the Oval, and rightly, because it is the ideal place for him to learn more about how to bowl in Australia. He may be 27 but his left ankle has limited him to only 41 first-class matches, including 10 Tests, so he is still learning how to construct red-ball spells and think batsmen out. England are surely not going to take those 80 wickets without Wood reverse-swinging the old Kookaburra and knocking over Australian tailenders.
South Africa’s pace attack is simultaneously going from strength to strength. Chris Morris was added as a fourth seamer at Trent Bridge, and now Kagiso Rabada will return – after an over-fastidious one-match ban – in place of Duanne Olivier.
Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander, followed by Rabada, who did not find his rhythm in the Lord’s Test but is due to click, and Morris, bowling as fast as he can, and so unpredictably that he can produce wicket-taking balls from nowhere: it is an attack that surpasses what England can offer, and rivals Australia’s.
With two rookies – Keaton Jennings and the debutant Tom Westley – in their top three, England’s middleorder batsmen have to find some gravitas at long last if they are to win this series.
Being rolled over by one ball, without any need for a second, threatens to become the hallmark of the Trevor Bayliss regime, and it has to stop now he has a captain in Joe Root who is more in tune with his Sydneybred outlook.
In 39 completed innings since Bayliss took over for the Ashes of 2015, England have been dismissed in fewer than 80 overs 16 times – including six times in fewer than 50 overs, as in the second innings at Trent Bridge.
Such a propensity makes for compulsive viewing, to see if the resemblance to a pack of cards persists, but will not strike fear into Australia. Better to play the extra batsman in Dawid Malan, or better still to play Toby Roland-Jones as a fourth seamer to allow Ben Stokes to ease off on his left knee and focus on batting, than play a superfluous spinner in Liam Dawson, which is what he was at Trent Bridge.
Whether he is officially labelled first or second spinner, he might not make a major dent in those 80 wickets England have to take in Australia.
‘Whether Anderson has the nip to succeed will be one of the lessons to be learned at the Oval’