3 minute read
An Ashes cliché that we repeatedly embrace in The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is “the wheels are coming off”. (There’s actually a whole chapter on it, which is about the last Ashes tour.) It’s a term that crops up depressingly frequently when England are in Australia. On day two of the second Test, Brydon Carse in particular didn’t appear to be rolling too well – but for some reason he seemed oblivious.
England have been putting all their bowling eggs in the right-arm quick basket this series. One over from Will Jacks was enough to dissolve the mad notion they’d actually picked a spinner for this match.
In the first innings of the first Test, the strategy worked out well, but they don’t have many moves to make if their solitary basket starts to lose its integrity, as it has done a few times since. We don’t know whether Australia have consciously identified Carse as the weakest patch of rattan, but there was no point on day two when he wasn’t getting flayed to all parts.
Carse though is not like the majority of historic England tourists. He didn’t really seem to notice. As the world looked on in pity, he sat there in the driver’s seat, face impassive, pressing the accelerator, forlornly spinning his denuded axles.
Utterly undeterred by his abject motionlessness, Carse then took two wickets in an over – one of which was Steve Smith.
He didn’t much react to those developments either. This is how he reacted to splattering Cameron Green’s stumps.
Smith’s record in day-night Tests is not as good as his overall record, so for this match he’s resorted to using the anti-glare eye stickers that were so memorably employed by Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
Sixty-one runs seems a reasonable return on this piffling AliExpress investment, but if he wants to make a hundred perhaps there are a few more lessons he should take from the great man. We suggest adopting a more elbow-centric technique and sidling around the crease like the Artful Dodger with rickets.
Carse’s understanding of the whereabouts of his wheels sadly didn’t improve after momentarily finding and reattaching them because not too long after, he grassed a sitter.
In his defence, it’s tough to take the safer Jamie Smith approach of ‘leaving it for first slip’ when you’re fielding at mid-on.
Carse was far from the only England fielder to drop a catch in the final session. There’s a question mark about delivery times, but you can probably get a decent discount on eye stickers if you buy them in bulk.
Speaking of delivery times
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