Archive for the ‘waca’ Category

Many a slip ‘twixt urn and lip

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

I wouldn’t say the new England, the England that got the best of a draw at Brisbane and beat Australia at Adelaide, had made me blasé about the likelihood of retaining the Ashes.

While likelihood had hardened into certainty for some, it still felt too much like a novelty to me to take an England that can win games Down Under for granted. The scars left by Australia’s 5-0 demolition of us in 2006/7 go too deep.

Mitchell Johnson was chiefly responsible for England’s collapse yesterday. Today, they really had no one to blame but themselves.

Ian Bell and nightwatchman Jimmy Anderson will walk out to the middle tomorrow. England are 5 wickets down and it will require 310 runs and individual acts of heroism to stop Australia from squaring the series. With two whole days to go in this Test, that ain’t going to happen.

Oh, England batting collapse, how we thought we had waved good-bye to you, hopefully never to see you return – well, not in this series, anyway.

But this is England, and their capacity for digging themselves a hole, jumping in and handing their opponents the shovel should never be underestimated.

This is not to say England have gone backward, but if this team is to retain the urn and look beyond that to climbing up the Test rankings then there are things they clearly still have to work on.

They are still relatively weak against spin, although thankfully this isn’t a problem they’ve had to deal with against this opposition. But against venomous pace bowling on a bouncy, fast WACA pitch they have had to learn to readjust from the low, slow tracks they’ve become accustomed to, and it has been a struggle.

England’s second innings got off to an edgy start and they never looked comfortable. Strauss and Cook were out to good balls; Pietersen, Trott and Collingwood wafted late and ineffectually at balls they should have left. Looking to impose themselves on the bowling, all they did was hasten the increasingly inevitable.

Hometown heroes Mike Hussey and Mitchell Johnson prospered with bat and ball respectively, with Hussey feasting on the England bowling; anything short-pitched was pulled disdainfully to the boundary.

Swann bowled hardly at all, and Finn was once again expensive. Of the bowlers only Tremlett emerged with credit once more, taking a well deserved 5 wicket haul, in a losing cause.

And so England go to what will be the last day of this Test on a hiding to nothing. Perhaps, after the dream of the Adelaide victory, with the series square and two Tests to go, this will have been the wake-up call they needed.

They cannot afford complacency, nor can they afford another abject collapse like this one.

Mitch ado about nothing

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Mitchell Johnson, dropped from the Australian team at Adelaide and banished to the nets, said today in an interview after his explosive bowling on the second day of the Perth Test, in which he has so far taken 6-38: “I got to work on a few things”.

What those things are was not immediately obvious. Nothing about his action seems to have changed, particularly: still the same low, slingy left arm; his head still flopping over like a rag doll’s when the ball is released.

The only obvious difference seems to have been between the ears.

Mitchell’s always been a lippy bastard. Quiet off the field, he has plenty to say on it. He and various members of the England team have exchanged a few verbals in this match, and not for the first time.

The difference here is that he let the ball do the talking as well.

On a wicket offering him extra pace and bounce he found swing too, using it to lethal effect in removing Cook, Trott, Pietersen and Collingwood for a total of 7 runs before lunch. The balls that accounted for those last three were late inswingers that were nigh on unplayable.

How often have you watched a fearsomely talented quick self-destruct in spectacular fashion? Steve Harmison is perhaps the other bowler of recent times who most readily springs to mind.

Confidence is everything with these men. Consistency too, with Johnson in particular veering dramatically between lethal blitzkrieg and damp, wayward squib.

Cricket Australia had begun to lose patience with the rapidly diminishing returns Johnson was giving them, after all that time spent nurturing him in the Petri dish of its Academy, and after all of those second chances.

When Johnson bowls this well he is worth taking a chance on.

After all the howling invective and demands that he be dropped at Adelaide, those criticisms levelled at him now seem academic. It was probably less a case of “working on a few things” than it was simply having a break. Over-coaching is one of the most insidious destroyers of a young bowler’s form and confidence there is.

Johnson bowled like Jesus today. Next time, he may just as easily bowl like garbage.

Perhaps Australia’s selectors should just accept that.

Ghosts of Adelaide haunt England no more

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

England have won their first Test in this Ashes series. It is only one win with three more Tests to go, but it feels like the Ashes are England’s.

After the horrible trauma of the last time England played Australia on their home turf, I can only begin to describe how weird this feels.

It’s like breaking out of the basement dungeon Australia have kept us prisoner in, and watching while they get run over by a train.

It feels like freedom, and it smells like victory.

England needed just over an hour to dispose of the six remaining Australian wickets to win by an innings and 71 runs. Graeme Swann got a five-for with support from Jimmy Anderson, Steven Finn, and the golden arm of Kevin P. Pietersen.

Two hours after the match ended, the rain came down like Armageddon.

I still think it was a gamble for Strauss to declare. He got lucky. If the rain had arrived any earlier, with Australia, say, 8 wickets down, he would have been ruing that 40 minutes spent adding runs he didn’t need. If Michael Clarke had hung around, and Hussey and Haddin had reprised their Gabba heroics, England could easily have run out of time, ending up with a draw when they deserved better.

But, after this stunning victory, that is really just cavilling on my part.

Because Australia are now in the position we became so used to seeing England in – captain without a clue, revolving-door approach to picking a bowling attack, and batsmen who, in the words of Michael Vaughan circa 2008 are “hitting it really well in the nets” but not quite so well out in the middle.

And fuck me, but that feels good. Weird, but good.

Ironically, despite each side’s exchange of fortune, there has been some synchrony in that both teams have suffered casualties.

Stuart Broad is out for the remainder of the tour due to a torn abdominal muscle, and likewise Simon Katich, who admirably made do without the use of a runner, is out for the rest of the series with a ruptured Achilles.

Broad is more easily replaceable than Katich, with Chris Tremlett being the most obvious choice for the next Test at Perth, where the fast, bouncy WACA wicket will be tailor-made for him.

Philip Hughes will most likely step in for Katich. Hughes is in good form at the moment in domestic cricket, and clearly the Australian management are keen to give him another opportunity in the Test arena, though Andrew Strauss maintains his technique remains flawed and can be exploited.

If this Test does prove Simon Katich’s swan song, I will miss him. Nice bloke, good batsman (if ugly as hell), once tried to strangle Michael Clarke.

I will also be surprised if Marcus North hasn’t finally worn out the patience of Australia’s selectors, but as replacements Usman Khawaja and Callum Ferguson were less than convincing in the Australia A game in Hobart.

Xavier Doherty will almost certainly not play in Perth, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nathan Hauritz back. I thought they were a tad hasty in dumping Hauritz in the first place; he doesn’t have all that bad a record against England. They also need to stop summarily picking and discarding bowlers because they’re not the next Warne, and give one bloke a decent go.

Doherty got a lot of stick in this match, but he should not bear the brunt of criticism; the batsmen gave him little to defend in the way of runs. Michael Clarke’s form remains bingled since his break-up with Lara, and Ricky Ponting needs to drop down the order.

Watching the reaction of the Australian press over the next few days will be revealing as well as entertaining.