Just over a month ago, Australia were thought to be nailed on to continue their domination over England in the Ashes. How could so many have got it so wrong?
The cracking (if apocryphal) story goes that after the 1989 Ashes Test series Graham Gooch left a message on his phone’s answering machine that went: “Please leave a message as I’m out, probably lbw Alderman”. And lo did people chortle at Gooch’s self-deprecating English humour and admire Alderman’s 80-odd wickets in two Ashes series in England. Good times.
Today, not so much. Today, England’s pace attack own Australia. And you wonder: might any of these current Australian batsmen leave a message on their phone (or a meme on their Twitter, or whatever) along the lines of: “Sorry I can’t take your call because I’m out c Root b Broad going hard at a full-length out-swinger early doors because in Australia deliveries don’t tend to deviate a massive amount even early doors and you can play through the line and go hard at the red rock and smite it through the covers and it’s only bounce you have to worry about and you don’t worry about that much because its likely to be consistent because Australian wickets are all so ‘good’”?
Might they do that? You’d suggest they would not. Not yet, anyway. It’s all bit too raw for Australia just now. There’s still a Test to play and the Ashes are gone. Michael Clarke is gone, or as good as, after saying he wouldn’t be. Steve Smith, save for Lord’s (SFL), has gone from the best since Bradman to baby-faced Broad-bunny.
And the Australian Test cricket team has gone from feared international beast master to splay-footed hacks. Any semblance of seam off the pitch or swing in the air and Australia’s batsmen looked like drunks on a boat. Smith, Clarke, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Marsh, Adam Voges, all went with “hard” hands at the shiny red Duke, playing through the line and snicking off to one of eight or nine drooling, slavering slips fielders, each man thinking: “oh yes, here comes the sweet fruit, bring it to me, bring it to me…”
And England, SFL, were just a lot better. Batting, bowling, catching, calling “heads” at Trent Bridge.
And so Australian cricket debates its very soul and people blame the wives and girlfriends (oh, please) and “disharmony” and the suits order another “review” and … well, you know … whatever that turns up, whatever critique on the minutiae of man-management the latest crack HR firm unearths, the bald-faced fact is this: Australia can’t bat outside Australia. On Australian wickets Australia will dominate. In another country, Australia are a bad man’s pants.
Yes, there was a “watershed” Test series in South Africa not too long ago after which Australia claimed the mantle of No1 Test nation on Earth (South Africa has it back again now). Yes, they beat up on the West Indies in two Tests over there. But apart from these outliers Australia have travelled worse than a carton of milk on a hot day in the back of your granddad’s ute. There have been series losses – floggings, even – in India, Dubai (against Pakistan) and now England. They’ve toughed it out on South African wickets against that stellar pace attack and earned justifiable kudos. That’s not easily done. Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander are testing material. But South African pitches and conditions have more in common with the MCG and the Gabba than Mumbai or Trent Bridge or dusty old Dubai. And there’s the rub.
England, meanwhile, prepared for the Ashes Test series with Test matches in the West Indies and at home against emerging, attacking New Zealand. England went into a Test series having played Test cricket. And they were playing at home, and knew what to expect. Australia – you’d assume – knew what to expect, sort of, but it seems did not prepare adequately for it. They practiced with the Duke, sure. But the Brisbane nets are very different from a muggy morning upon a Trent Bridge greentop. Why not prepare for a seaming greentop on a seaming greentop? Why not prepare for a series in England in England? You know, like England did.
The latest review might turn up some answers.
Yet before the series, Australian cricket reckoned it had plenty of things right. And it could make a good case. And didn’t everybody in Australia believe in their heart of hearts that Clarke’s men would probably win, and win well?
Yet that view proved 100% wrong. Bad Boy Bubby wrong. WMDs in Iraq wrong. Burke and Wills spurning Aboriginal guides to search for an inland sea wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’ll admit it: I got it wrong, and I wasn’t the only one. You couldn’t tap many Australian pundits pre-series who didn’t think Australia would win the Ashes and that England would struggle to win a solitary Test. The most generous or cautious conceded a draw to the rain and another to a flat track at Lord’s, at best, and Australia to win 3-0. For, obviously, Australia’s pace attack was better, their batting was better and their team harmony compared to England’s was better.
Australia had just won the World Cup (in which England lost to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, New Zealand and Australia). England had drawn Test series against “lowly” Test teams West Indies and New Zealand. And the last time the teams met in 2013-14 Australia won 5-0 and Mitchell Johnson took 37 wickets and terrorised England like they’d thawed out Jeff Thomson.
But most people got it wrong.
And so here we go into the dead rubber fifth Test at The Oval (which, by the by, is a terrific name for an oval) and England lead 3-1. England! Three-one! And if it’s a sultry London morning and the wicket has a tinge of Ireland and Cook wins the toss, why wouldn’t he again unleash Stuart Broad to do what Stuart Broad can do which is bowl full and quick with swing and seam and bounce, and rip through Australia like Curtley Ambrose on a bender on a bowling green? You put Broad (and, gasp, James Anderson) on a green top under an overcast first morning and well, you’re happy to win the toss.
Could Australia’s bowlers do what Broad, Anderson, Steve Finn and Ben Stokes did at various times? Clarke said he would have bowled at Trent Bridge, too, such was the wicket. But would the bowlers under his command have been capable of unleashing such hell as Broad? Given their batsmen’s utter capitulation in 18.3 overs and 26 minutes before lunch, they had plenty of time to make whatever hay there was on the wicket. Yet England appeared to bat on a different pitch.
But it wasn’t a different pitch. It’s just that Broad bowled brilliantly. And all series (SFL) the Australians have not bowled brilliantly. Not either of the fire-breathing left-handed leather-flinging Mitchells, not Josh Hazlewood, not Peter Siddle (who was not required because the others were considered more dangerous and you could make a good case for that). Nathan Lyon did what Nathan Lyon does – create “pressure” by asking questions. But he never bowled on a fifth-day wicket. And Ryan Harris’s old knees didn’t let him play at all.
And here we are. Thinking up witty phone messages.
