What can we say about The Ashes that has not been said before? We are not allowed to say England are arrogant – so shall I follow Ben Stokes’ suggestion and just call them rubbish.
The problem I have with Stokes’ comments regarding accusations of arrogance is that the England team is behaving in a really arrogant way. That response of ‘call us rubbish but arrogant is going too far’ is…..just incredibly arrogant. The whole point is that people are not calling England rubbish. They are looking at obviously talented players – and wondering why that talent is not being used. They are seeing the same mistakes repeated and are becoming very annoyed with the consistent reply from Stokes and the team. That response, consistently, says ‘we know better than you how we need to prepare, even though we are losing’.
Well, it would seem that England is in all sorts of trouble in Brisbane, and I fully expect them to have lost heavily, by an innings, before I wake up tomorrow. But they have 3 choices.
- Prove themselves right. They can only do that by winning 3 consecutive test matches. They would love to prove me wrong of course – Stokes to score 300 tomorrow backed up by Will Jacks scoring 150 anybody? More realistically, they have to make it work in Adelaide.
- Own up. Its too late to change for this series, but perhaps if they turned around and said ‘sorry – we got this wrong’, they might be able to come out of the bunker of arrogance, and have some honest conversations.
- Keep making the same, sloppy, stupid decision making – and loose 5-0. If they choose this option, its what they deserve.
Why is this so bad?
Lots of reasons.
This is as poor as anything we ever saw in the 1990s, which was a decade of doom for England cricket teams. The Perth test match in the 1994/5 Ashes series runs it close – I can not begin to remember how many catches went down in that game, but they had played well in the 2 prior games and had won the 4th test match in Adelaide. And this was against a good Australian side.
As Stuart Broad has said, this Australian team is the worst Australian cricket team since 2010. I go further than Broad – they are worse than the 2010 team. Fortunately for those Aussies, they have come up against a side with talent, but lacking in planning, application, fitness and honesty. England has never had such a good opportunity. But they have not been able to take the chance.
But the worst thing of all, something Australian media will want to ignore, is the quality of the cricket. Loose shots, dropped catches and average to terrible bowling. Australia have been average, England have been diabolocial. For The Ashes to continue to mean something, it has to get better.
Cricketed 