England Pass First Test

After all the predictable hyperbole and hogwash of an Ashes build up (myself included) comes the predictable hyperbole and hogwash that follows the first Test. It makes little sense to deny that this trend will continue until after the series reaches its conclusion but it is useful to remember that the only “fact” in Ashes reporting is that the true facts will be trumped up, overanalysed and examined to the point of nonsense as we contemplate what is surely one of the most celebrated draws in sporting history.

Admittedly this analysis is something of a wet fart and two fingers up to a stunning turnabout by Andrew Strauss and his team, ending up with something of a points victory after five days when defeat seemed an almost certain outcome after three.

The captain, Trott and double centurion Cook gave a physical and most notably mental masterclass over the course of the last two days as records tumbled at the Gabba, a ground that England have more often than not left 1-0 down in the series. The pitch was admittedly placid; a batting paradise but anyone who has tried to bat through even fifty overs on a Sunday would have to doff their respective hat to the marathon that took England past 500 at the cost of just one wicket for the first time in history.

It was undoubtedly a body blow to Australia, a side who have for the last six months been dogged by accusations of failure to kill of sides in the manner to which cricket lovers and followers have grown accustomed in recent history. That said, just as the Australian expectation of victory after Hussey and Haddin’s wonderful stand was shown to be vastly flawed, so delighted analysis of England’s fightback should be tempered by a sense of place in the series.

The match provided wonderful moments. Siddle’s birthday hat-trick, Strauss’s lionesque roar upon reaching three figures in the second innings after failing in the first, not to mention the undeniable symmetry of Hussey and Cook’s innings, both producing big scores when questions were raised about their place in the side. Beyond that though, not much has been learned that wasn’t known before.

The basic fact seems to be that without much more helpful conditions that those offered on the last three days in Brisbane, neither side (in their current incarnations) seem to have the ability to take 20 wickets to win the game without relying on batsmen errors. As Swann struggled more than he has at any time in his England career to date on a pitch that admittedly held little for him, their lack of bowling depth was exposed once more. I have no doubt that Swann will get better (he had a similar first Test in Cardiff) and although England will be delighted by Steve Finn’s wicket haul neither he nor anyone else in the bowling lineup can be expected to take six wickets every innings in the hope that the rest can claim the other four.

In spite of this, I expect England to be unchanged for Adelaide. Stability has been been as much a hallmark of the Strauss/Flower reign as intensity and preparation, and with England having gained (at best mental) superiority in the series there is no call for change.

Australia on the other hand have much to contemplate before announcing their line up for Adelaide. With questions over his fitness, the selectors have an excuse to drop the out of form Michael Clarke but they won’t take it. Despite showing a startling lack of fluency for a player so great to watch at his best, and shelling Cook before he had even reached his century, the selectors will be loathe to drop their vice captain and he will surely be given another shot.

The player most under threat is Mitchell Johnson. Although Ben Hillfenhaus also looked largely toothless, he at least showed an ability to stick at the task in hand, remaining under three an over. In contrast, Johnson’s 42 wicketless overs cost over 4 runs each. Although the big hearted bowler is willing to fight, there doesn’t seem to be much fight left in him, as evidenced by his duck, dropped dolly and missed run out. He is a man it is difficult to not like but he didn’t help himself by predicting that he would bounce out Strauss and terrifying the rest with his pace and bounce only to wind up as safe to face as a Swiss army general on leave. The selectors (who themselves are under scrutiny following a recent reshuffle) will know that should they select him and he fail, or worse England take a lead in the series then the decision may be one that haunts them. With this in mind I, like most expect him to miss out in favour Doug Bollinger who has performed with a level of consistency that Johnson has found almost impossible to find over the last year.

The quick turnaround to Adelaide certainly favours England. As the side with the momentum going into the series they have the momentum thus far within it, but if the first Test taught us only one thing it is that the next match, day, delivery will be an arm wrestle, and these two evenly matched will have to fight tooth and nail to secure any victory. Both sides are capable of getting into winning positions. Both have players capable of producing wonderful individual performances. But both sets of players would trade the centuries, the wickets and the records for a 1-0 lead and neither side showed in Brisbane much evidence of having the tools to dominate the only scoreboard that counts. All that the first Test means now is nothing, and rest assured that both captains and coaches will be reminding their charges of that every day before the first ball is bowled in Adelaide.

Doubt and Inexperience Leaves the Door Ajar for England

Unless you have been around for a goodly time longer than I have there are certain things one has come to expect from our little island when it comes to international sport. Every four years the footballers will talk a much better game than they produce, a plucky Brit will reach the semi finals of Wimbledon and then implode, and under no circumstances will an Ashes tour Down Under result in anything other than the handing over of the famous urn to the old enemy.

However, after contrasting summer successes the general thinking is that England not only have a good chance of winning the Test series, they are favourites over Australia in all three formats off the back of their recent victory in the T20 World Cup.

The Australian media have already set about promoting their team as underdogs in order to transfer pressure from Ponting’s team to Strauss’s men, but sifting through the meaningless mutterings you can find an occasional stat or quote which explains exactly why Australia are so concerned.

The stand out fact is that the current Australia squad comprises of individuals who simply do not know how to beat England. With the exception of the captain, all have lost more than they have won, and many have tasted nothing but defeat. Contrast this with the last tour four years ago, when a team of veterans, fresh from the gut wrenching loss in that great 2005 series utilised that pain and their experience to dish out a humiliating 5-0 drubbing. Ponting can no longer turn to players who know about the pressure, who have time and again outfoxed the same opponents and it is the experience of Warne, Hayden, Glichrist and McGrath he will miss this year as much as the talent.

In addition to having weaker weapons at his disposal, Ponting is also going through a crisis unlike any that he has endured since being given the captaincy. Having led Australia to three consecutive losses, the captain has also struggled with the bat and is now facing a (much overhyped but none-the-less hurtful) media witch hunt about his captaincy, after an outburst by former team mate Warne on Twitter over his field placings for spinner Nathan Hauritz. He has admitted that failure in this series would almost certainly end his reign as skipper.

And ultimately this is the real difference between now and the last Ashes tour. Australia are, for the first time in a long time contemplating failure. In the glory days it just wasn’t a word they used, not even a thought they entertained, yet before a ball has been bowled it is being talked of and by the captain no less.

This doesn’t mean for one instance that the series will be an easy one for England. This will be attritional, energy sapping and mentally exhausting cricket of the finest quality and Ponting will squeeze every drop of sweat from his players before they concede a single match. What it does show is that England have a chance, and it isn’t just media hype, it isn’t mere hyperbole, all of Australia knows it. Their current situation brings to mind a quote from the BBC’s Phil McNulty about Fabio Capello’s side; “they need to come to terms with the fact that they are no longer at the top table of world competition [...] and they won’t be there for a long time either.” It is an ugly truth for a team that not only sat at the top table, but had the head of it for so long.

In years past, any mental pressure would get the best from one of those great Australian players of the past decade. Playing mind games with them was something you did at your own peril. This tour is the first in decades where there is some mental fragility for England to put pressure on. In 2006/07 they came up against a wounded animal, eager to reset the status quo. This time, England face something more akin to a puppy; still very talented, still boisterous, still eager for victory, but without the experience or knowledge of how to achieve it’s goal. With the teams almost impossible to separate on paper, the key to the series will be whether Ponting’s inexperienced team are hindered by all this knowledge, or inspired to stunning individual and team performances as previous colleagues would have been.

England’s Key: Part 2 The Bowlers

Most articles with a part 1 have a part 2 and in this piece we look at the England bowling attack, and attack that the England selectors have to believe has the ability to take 100 Australian wickets over the course of the next five Test matches.

It is often said that in professional sport there is nowhere to hide, a problem exacerbated for the individual once the adrenalin of an international call up has worn off. Any weakness or fragility will be seized on more ruthlessly by opposition, fans, managers and selectors.

Over the next few months, nowhere will this adage be more prevalent than for the England bowling unit. In a quest to find balance since the departure of Andrew Flintoff, the England selectors have stuck with a four man attack. Unable to call on a stellar top six to secure regular high scores, and without a natural all rounder to pivot the team around, England have compromised, selecting 6 all out batsmen, with a Prior behind the stumps and a four man bowling unit.

While this may give the side a balanced appearance on paper, it clearly limits the choices for the captain, most crucially when someone is below par. In a five man attack there is always the option of blackballing an individual who the opposition have taken too, but with only 3 other frontline options and in temperatures that will sore above 30 degrees this is no longer an option.

As a result, England will need the four they select at the very top of their game, and in Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Steve Finn and Graeme Swann they believe that they have a unit who can get the wickets they need to secure a rare series victory on Australian turf. Three have tasted success against Australia before but which of the four is the most important to ensuring the fate of the urn this time around?

Of the three seamers, Anderson is the most likely to devastate a top order should the conditions be to his liking. If he can find swing with the Kookaburra ball and not be afraid to maintain a full length in search of reverse he is someone any batsman in the world would do well to fear. Strauss and himself also have a good understanding of when to attack and when to defend, so the field settings should be supportive to his style and the conditions. Arguably the big question that still hangs over him is how he performs when he isn’t taking wickets and the ball isn’t swinging.

Anderson will share the new ball with Broad, and the compliment each other well. Broad is also the seamer most likely to produce something from nothing, a fact which Australia will remember all too well from the Oval decider last year when he took 5 for 37 in an afternoon to essentially gift his side victory. Once again, it is mental toughness that will be called into question. Broad’s career has been dogged by a number of petulant incidents involving umpires and players alike, and the Australian fans, media and players will look to take him on. That said, I expect him to have a fine series, and he has the advantage of feeding confidence with the ball with strong performances with the bat.

Graeme Swann is the man most expect the Ashes to hinge on. The likable Nottinghamshire player’s rise has been astronomic, and pleasingly for England has coincided with a spectacular dip in form for opposition rival Nathan Hauritz. Should the ball spin Swann is more than capable of taking advantage of it, as shown in his four wicket haul in the second warm up game. His wickets and knowledge, as well as his indomitable spirit will be vital for team mates and results alike. He needs support from his captain, his fielders and from his other bowlers creating pressure at the other end. The idea of bowling n pairs is not one that England have always employed well but if Australia aren’t let off the hook at the other end Swann can cause them real problems.

That said, even though I expect Swann to be comfortably the leading wicket taker for England this series, I do not believe he holds the key to England’s triumph over the course of five matches. I believe that man is Steve Finn.

Although he is an Ashes rookie there has been much hype around young Finn. Good performances against Pakistan and Bangladesh cemented his place on the tour, and he was shielded from the Aussies in the following ODI series. His height and pace give him sharp bounce and the consistency he has for a man of such relative inexperience is nothing short of spectacular. His metronomic action and his ability to place six balls in a row on line and length have earned favorable comparisons with another man who enjoyed more than a modicum of success in this fixture; Glenn McGrath. However, for all his attributes I do not think he will roll the Aussies over on a regular basis on this baptism of fire tour.

Why then do I believe he holds the key? Precisely for the reason outlined at the start of this article; there is nowhere to hide. Should he crumble on that first morning at the Gabba, or should Strauss at any moment find himself unable to throw the rookie the ball the workload on the frontline bowlers increases by a third. While they may be able to scrape through a single Test match like that, the added stress and strain would surely effect their performance later in the series as exhaustion builds up.

This is why Finn is so important. I don’t expect him to match Swann for wickets, Broad for fire or Anderson for mercurial talent. However, the other three need to know that they are part of a four man attack, all with their separate jobs to do. Swann’s is to average between 3 and 4 wickets per innings, something he is more than capable of if he doesn’t have to try and do it all on his own. Finn’s job can be boiled down to a much simpler level. He has to do enough to stay in the team, simply by being economical and chipping in with a couple of wickets here and there. If he maintains his place until the the last ball is bowled at the SCG in January I believe England have a fantastic chance of securing victory. If he can’t, I am not certain there I enough depth in this bowling unit to avoid giving Australia at best a head start in the series, at worst the urn.

England’s Key: Part 1 The Batsmen

Any major sporting event is the perfect excuse for any writer to self-indulge and offer up their editor the perfect excuse for not coming up with two separate ideas for a couple of articles; the two parter. Here at the Comment Bureau we are no different and over the next two articles I’ll be looking at the key performers for England, the men on whom the Ashes will be secured or lost. In Part 1, I’ll be looking at the batsmen.

Without a single batsman in the top twenty of the ICC rankings you would have thought the Aussies had little to fear from the England top six. However, no matter how weak one’s perception of the opposition batting unit is, there is always a lynchpin whom you feel is both the physical and mental key to dominating your opponent. Get under their skin, get them out cheaply and the rest will suffer for it, far more so than the dismissal of any other team mate. Think Lara, Tendulkar, Ponting; the players with the ability to set the tone not only of their own innings, but of the side’s.

Trying to find this individual in an England batting lineup which is as inconsistent as it is talented is a more difficult proposition. All of the top six have the potential to score hundreds but Prior often fails to push on towards three figures (3 centuries to 15 fifties), Cooke currently finds himself in the worst form of his career and Collingwood and Bell have both repeatedly been in the last chance saloon. Indeed were it not for Collingwood’s mental determination to pull an innings out the bag he may well have joined Bell as something of an Hokey-Cokey cricketer; as much out of the team as he is in it.

Despite Trott having the top ranking, in truth there are only two players in the current lineup with any real claim to this position; captain and predecessor. Ashes winner Michael Vaughan believes that it is the level headed Strauss (England’s outstanding performer for the last two calender years) who will fulfill the role in this series. Vaughan said earlier this week that if Strauss could average around fifty he will lead his side on the first victorious tour of Australia in twenty years, while if he fell closer to the 25 mark Ponting would reclaim the urn.

Despite his undoubted ability to lead from the front, and the validity of Vaughan’s claims, I would suggest that he is ill suited for the role. Strauss is a captain and batsman who commands a huge amount of respect from fellow and opposition players, but there is only one man in the England team that the Aussies truly fear. Think of the man who repeatedly sent Warne into the stands in 2005, the man who had the audacity the switch hit Murali and the man who can’t stay off the back pages even when he can’t buy a run.

The last two years have been a tough time for Kevin Pietersen. After coming back injured from the IPL he was sidelined for the majority of the last Ashes campaign before enjoying a stunning ICC World T20 and being rightly crowned the Player of the Tournament. Despite those performances in the Caribbean the last six months have seen him dropped from the ODI side, have a public fallout with his county club and struggle against weaker bowling units in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

With no Test century since March this year Pietersen’s mental state has repeatedly been called into question.As with Ian Bell there has never been any doubt of the man’s ability, but both have mental weaknesses that have consistently been their undoing. For Bell it has been a perceived lack of maturity and grit in the middle, but for Pietersen it has been a far less forgivable arrogance. Some of his dismissals, often at key times when he could have set a platform for his team have had the air of man who was more concerned with imposing himself at all costs than one who would do anything to cement his team in a strong position. Imagine what a cricketer we would have if one could combine Pietersen’s flair and talent with Collingwood’s mental strength.

Fortunately for England, Pietersen’s preparation for the 2009/10 Ashes could not have been more meticulous. Although a return to South Africa yielded little in terms of runs, it showed a determination to get himself ready mentally that has been lacking in recent times. His half century in the opening tour warm up game provided further indication that although he is still far from his best, the trend is at least an upwards one. Make no mistake, this focus has not gone un-noticed in Australia, with former Somerset captain Peter Roebuck writing in the Sydney Morning Herald that his preparation will ensure that KP finds his form on this tour. In an online poll 71% of Australians agreed.

If he can get back to something approaching his best then there is no doubt that England’s chances greatly improve, however there is something to what both Roebuck and Vaughan say. In a line up packed with inconsistency, Strauss and Pietersen are the two stand out men with the capability of making high contributions, regularly and at the key moments in the series. As a result of this I would have to disagree with Vaughan. It is not about whether Strauss averages fifty that will determine whether England will be victorious. To my mind, if Strauss and Pietersen average between 90 and 100 between them something else will have to go spectacularly wrong for the Ashes not to be in English hands after the five Tests. If you are desperate for the key metaphor to be extended just think of this as being a multi-lock door, because I believe that without both hitting some form England will fall short.