6 minute read
If the Gabba is a fortress then it’s one where trebuchets and battering rams have taken out a fair few chunks of wall. In their last five Tests there, Australia have won two, lost two and drawn one. Needless to say, one of those wins was against England.
The Gabba is the bounciest Test pitch in the world. According to the BBC, good length balls arrive 2cm higher than in Perth (1.06m v 1.04m). This one’s also a day-night Test.
Which is the more significant element? The bounce or the pink ball?
There was a lot of pressure on England’s batters to go and play the Prime Minister’s XI under lights, but they didn’t.
In a deafening world of outspoken Ashes pundits, the loudest voices feigned outrage at this decision. Others with no huge desire to draw attention to themselves were more measured on the matter. Peter Siddle, who played in the match, was among those who said it made sense to skip it given the Manuka Oval offers such minimal bounce.
“There’s not going to be a lot they can get out of it, other than maybe seeing a pink ball under lights. That’s probably the only benefit they’re going to get,” he told Fox Sports.
Former Queensland captain Stuart Law was even more firmly against the idea. “I wouldn’t want to bat in Canberra and then go to Brisbane,” he said. “You’ve got a ball bouncing at knee-high and then you’ve got a ball bouncing at chest-high. It doesn’t really do you too much good.”
England have two night training sessions at the Gabba, which sounds like decent prep.
In every sky, above my head
Queensland faced Victoria in a day-night game a couple of weeks ago. The players said the middle ‘twilight’ session was the toughest for batting, but it doesn’t seem like it was one of those freakish pink ball games where no-one knows what’s going on.
More strikingly, the most recent day-night Test here was two season ago when Australia were beaten by the West Indies. As Micko pointed out in the comments last week, the Windies had been flogged by 10 wickets in the first Test, thanks to a whirlwind Travis Head century when all the other Aussie batters had failed, only for the written-off tourists to fight back in absolutely the finest of styles. Cricket rarely unfolds precisely how you expect. Kavem Hodge, Joshua Da Silva and Kevin Sinclair made fifties in that match, while Head notched a king pair.
The same sentiment applies to last year’s game, albeit in a slightly different way. Head was back in form with 152, only for a tonne of rain to save India. It was also at the Gabba where England were sliding towards a formulaic defeat in 2010, having conceded a 221-run first innings lead, only to come out for their second innings and make a still unbelievable 517-1.
Absolutely ridiculous stuff. Read all about it.
Starc raving bonkers
It’s reassuring to know that colossal team totals can occasionally materialise against the odds because another factor in this match is that man Mitchell Starc. The left-armer’s anatine dealings with England’s opening batter certainly threaten to continue given he averages 17.08 with the pink ball. Indeed last time he played a day-night Test, he bowled the West Indies out for 27 – the kind of total that demands we explicitly state there is no typo.
Throw in an England batting line-up that is currently attracting the kinds of superlatives you’d ordinarily only find in a 1980s Cadbury’s advert and it feels like we could be in for some low scores (particularly given that roughly 30 per cent of the reason we got a two-day Test in Perth was because Australia’s batters somehow managed to do even worse in one of their innings).
Is there any chance England can deliver the inconsistency for which they’ve become known in Brisbane? If Ollie Pope can be dissuaded from driving more airily than Doc Brown in Back to the Future Part II then that might prevent the start of a collapse (and the start is the part of a collapse it’s most useful to avoid).
Yes, a few other batters made the same mistake, but not with quite the same wholehearted commitment. Pope had any number of previews of precisely how he was going to get out and he damn well persevered with his approach until he managed it.
Maybe do something different next time.
Team news
England picked five quick bowlers for the first Test and it was over inside two days. Spin feels very tangential at times like this, but let’s again state the facts: Shane Warne is the top Test wicket-taker at the Gabba. Shane wasn’t your average spinner, of course, but the third-highest wicket-taker here is Nathan Lyon, who – in some ways at least – kinda is.
England have however responded to Mark Wood’s injury with the barest commitment to spin bowling, replacing him with Will Jacks, a good cricketer who isn’t really in any meaningful sense a bowler.
Jacks has taken half as many first-class wickets as Joe Root and fewer than world-renowned part-timers such as Mike Atherton and Jonathan Trott. As strategic decisions go, this is very much a ‘give one of the batters a pair of gloves and tell him to keep wicket’ kind of move.
Again, the true emphasis is almost fully on pace. Robin Smith would have loved playing this England team. He would have square-cut them to confetti.
Jacks’ selection might work out, of course, but Stokes’ reasoning makes for grim reading. “Talking about the tactical element of a day-night game, you do try to look at Australia – they play a lot of day-night cricket here – how they use their spinner as an attacking option, or more to give the bowlers an easier rotation and to get through the overs quicker to have more time with the new ball under lights.”
It sounds like a plan for a very specific circumstance with a pretty decent chance of backfiring if England do find themselves in the position to actually try it.
The big news for Australia is Usman Khawaja’s back. It’s still knackered. They’ll most likely stick with Travis Head as an opener. Because he just made a hundred, Australia are talking up their batting order as ‘flexible’. However, another word for it might be ‘unsettled’.
Should we all be opening batters now? What’s the official line?
Conclusion
Storming the Gabba is not impossible. It may look imposing, but you can actually get in round the back. In 2021, India managed it with basically their third team.
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