This team’s Ashes buildup began two years ago but in Brisbane they fell to factors that a well run side would have coped withEveryone has a plan until they get punched in the face. England started work on theirs two years ago. “Job No 1 is to help Joe to keep moving forward so that in two years’ time we can go to Australia and make a real impact,” said Chris Silverwood in his first press conference after he took over as England’s head coach.Usually it’s the players and coaches who say the press talk about the Ashes to the exclusion of everything else. This year it’s been the other way around: Silverwood has come back to his plans for...
While Root has had a brilliant 2021 at the crease, his teammates have let him down but Malan has come good at the right timeAnd on the third day, some hope. The game changed as that 159-run partnership between Joe Root and Dawid Malan stretched on through the afternoon, the miseries for England of the first two innings receded, replaced by the promise of a better contest ahead. Root’s 86 was a vital sign that his duck in the first innings was an aberration, while Malan’s 80 was, in a way, even more important. England won’t win anything if Root doesn’t score runs, but the truth is, they don’t necessarily win much when he does, either. He peeled off a...
Australia batsman knows only one way to play and his 150 at the Gabba was a classic of the genre with sixes and risks takenPerhaps it has had its time, but a staple of cricket commentary used to be nominating which player you would like to bat for your life. For those of my vintage, it was always Steve Waugh. Chewing gum, trudging, plonking his bundle of baggy green rags on his head, Waugh would rake his flat stare over a pitch and an opposing team as if he would literally rather die than give them his wicket. He kept his average above 50 by sheer force of will. He came across as the ultimate obdurate bastard, the man who...
The problem with England’s bowling is their batting, but poor planning and structural neglect are not helping eitherHalf an hour into a lovely clear, sunlit Brisbane morning on day two of the first Ashes Test something extraordinary happened. Actually there were two things. The second of these was the commentators on Fox Sports stopped talking. This was a transformative event in itself, like having some painfully lodged object surgically removed from your inner ear: a toothpick, a kebab skewer, an endlessly burbling babel fish who speaks only 1990s Aussie Test great side-mouth pub chat.In medieval times there was a widespread belief in trepanning, or literally drilling a hole in your skull, to “remove the pressure” of horrendous pre-aspirin headaches. Listening...
Australia bowlers’ controlled brilliance in the opening overs set the tone and England and their captain had no answerSix weeks ago, in a basement snug in friendly, rainy Manchester, Joe Root had talked about fine margins of angle and bounce, about Australian soil, Australian leather, Australian height; the cultural geometry of Australian fast bowling.Root had already spent a month indoors visualising bowlers and plans. He talked about the way his own learned movements betray him, about reprogramming that voodoo-ish understanding of the planes of movement around off stump; and about the fact Australia’s bowlers would be focusing on the same space, the same angles, the route to the edge of his bat. Continue reading...