Tomorrow, England start again, and they simply have to win the second test match. I do not mean that they need to ‘feel like’ they have won. I mean that they actually need to win, and the scoreline needs to be 1-1.
Sloppy and over-confident?
A lot of attention has focussed on the first innings declaration. My view is that England would soon have been bowled out anyway. Probably, England would have lasted 3 more overs or so for little benefit, and the Aussies would not have batted until the next morning. Then everyone would have been critical of the none-declaration.
You can agree or disagree with the declaration – and its not a call I would have made – but it is not why England lost the game. Neither did over-aggresion. Equally, the Australian negativity did not win them the game and neither did Pat Cummins captaincy. His batting and bowling won them the game – not his tactics.
England lost because they were sloppy – simple as that. When I say they were over-confident, what I mean is they picked players who were not match fit and hoped to get away with it. They were wrong.
They might have got away with carrying one or two players, but all of Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali, Ollie Robinson and Jimmy Anderson looked either rusty or were unfit. That is almost half the team. Add in Stuart Broad’s no-balls, Harry Brook’s failure to convert starts into scores and Joe Root’s second innings shot, and it looks very sloppy.
BazBall is working
Despite all this, BazBall is working. I have never seen so much noise and moaning coming out of Australia during an Ashes series. Not a day goes by without the wisdom of one of the Aussie old boys. Matt Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Mark Taylor, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin….the list goes on. Except for Marnus Labuschagne, the players have been quieter since the first game, but before that, they were pretty bullish.
The Australians know that BazBall presents the greatest threat, and they would love nothing more than to see the England players go all ‘meek and mild’. Then it would be back to the last Ashes series, which, as we all know, is null void.
Lords: Room to improve
I heard Jim Maxwell calling for Ben Foakes, saying that the Aussies can get better, but England can’t. The good news for Stokes is that this is not true. When a team makes as many sloppy errors as they did in Birmingham, it gives a great deal of room for basic improvement.
All we need now is for Michael Vaughan to ‘roast’ Jonny Bairstow. That is a sure-fire way to generate a Bluey Hundred.
Cricketed 