4 minute read
It didn’t even take three days for England to lose the first Test in Perth… but the second Test performance in Brisbane was actually way worse. Here’s why.
1. It took longer
England achieved some historic lows in Perth, but at least they contributed to the brevity of the Test in a positive way too by bowling Australia out for the lowest total of the match. There was at least some cause for optimism in that isolated feat.
In contrast, while some observers blackly complimented the tourists on at least making it to Day 4 at the Gabba, consider what accounted for that extra time. If you pass two hours failing to dismiss either Mitchell Starc or Scott Boland then a longer match duration isn’t really an achievement, is it?
2. Australia had no spinner
Australia went into the first Test shorn of their captain and two-thirds of their seam attack and then introduced a policy of sending out opening batters basically at random. For the second Test, they figured they clearly hadn’t made themselves vulnerable enough and so also dropped their spinner.
England steadfastly refused to exploit this by again failing to make it to the second new ball in either of their innings.
3. Fireballs-up
Ahead of this series, there was much talk of England finally being able to fight fire with fire with their bowling attack. Setting aside the fact this is a quite dreadfully ineffective way to fight fire, it’s also becoming quite apparent that fire isn’t the danger it once was anyway.
At some point or other, somewhere or other – we can’t be bothered to find exactly where – we highlighted the fact that scores have been significantly lower in Australia for the last few seasons. It’s widely accepted that a lot of this is down to a change to the Kookaburra ball.
It was therefore a little grim to watch England’s bowlers send down ineffectual and expensive bouncers in this Test on a pitch where the Australians weren’t merely focusing on bowling a tight line and length, but were quite often doing so with the keeper up to the stumps.
Quite why Alex Carey felt it was necessary to do this when he’s already proven himself more than capable of executing stumpings when standing back is a subject for another day. (Read all about that famous moment here!) Perhaps he was just missing Nathan Lyon. We also shouldn’t let Carey’s exceptional performance up to the stumps distract us from the more important point that it was even an option.
As Ian Healy worded it, Carey was keeping up to the stumps against some “quite fast” bowling. They’re not the medium pacers of our utterly disingenuous headline, but Scott Boland and Michael Neser do not whistle it through and only in such company would Brendan Doggett be the man called upon to bowl half-trackers.
4. Brydon Carse’s stippling
England’s bowling was epitomised by Brydon Carse, whose line and length was so consistently erratic it was like he was trying to colour in his entire pitch map, one dot at a time.
Carse’s 4-152 was one slice of luck away from becoming the worst England five-for since Dom Bess’s against Sri Lanka five years ago. He was still the top wicket-taker – but what does that really mean when he was shipping runs so rapidly? What was his actual contribution to this match? That England would have taken those wickets and conceded that same 500-plus total a little slower without him?
5. Will Jacks
Will Jacks did some good stuff, but his is such a bleakly familiar England Ashes tour selection, it can’t help but make our heart reflexively sink. He isn’t a real spinner, so isn’t going to take wickets, and however diligently he batted on this occasion, it seems pure wishful thinking to imagine a man with his career record will make meaningful runs when those who come in ahead of him can’t.
Honestly, best of luck to him. He took a screaming catch and batted for three hours in the second innings. We just can’t shake the feeling that the promise of the latter will have a ‘false’ inserted before it with the benefit of greater hindsight.
Last orders
Amazon still looks to be the only UK option if you want to buy our book, The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments, for someone in time for Christmas. You never know though – sometimes other retailers get a few more copies in, so here’s a page with links to a load of other places you can try.
Less problematically, you can get our email extremely easily and free of charge, simply by giving us your email address (which we will not share with anyone).
Please also consider backing us on Patreon. All pledges are ploughed back into the site as writing time, so it’s a very selfless thing to do and all the other readers will love you for it. We’ll be rather grateful too.