At about half past four yesterday morning I gave up. As Ben Stokes’ brave century innings came to an end – and even the faintest hopes that any Englishmen may have harboured of clinging to the Ashes were extinguished – I couldn’t quite bare to listen to the institution that is Test Match Special describing Mitchell Johnson tearing through the England tail, yet again.
It has been a painful month or so following the Ashes this time round. For a kid whose first real taste of cricket was the, now almost-mythical, 2005 series, watching England being simply blown away has been a weird sensation. That’s not to say that they’ve not been extremely poor in that period since ’05, just go back to the 06/07 Ashes whitewash for proof of that, but there has been a disturbing lack of fight around this England team that, a ginger northerner excepted, seems to have settled around the squad like a dense fog. Perhaps Jonathan Trott’s sad withdrawal due to illness is a microsm of the issues at play here, because far too many senior players just haven’t had their head in the right place.
It’s hard to say why Alastair Cook’s form has been such a pained mirror image of his last trip down-under, and explaining how Matt Prior has gone from England’s player of the year just last June to a shivering wreck behind the stumps is equally mysterious, but to me what stands out is the way in which both batsmen and bowlers have struggled to show any fight.
The Aussies have had David Warner at the top of the order; infamous during the British summer for his pugilistic impulses, his aggressive demeanor has been channeled far more productively into making runs this winter. Meanwhile Mitchell Johnson has turned the English lower order into some extremely tentative bunny-rabbits. As much as Joe Root was clearly standing up Warner in a Walkabout bar over the summer months, he hasn’t been quite so pugnacious on the flat Aussie wickets. Kevin Pietersen deserves an article all too himself, but in playing his own little sideshow game in every innings he’s looked out of touch in more than one sense of the phrase. As a collective, the English side has failed to – forgive the simplistic cliché – want it as much as their antipodean counterparts.
I could continue to explain the deficiencies of the remaining English players, the coach, and even the selectors, but that has been done very well in a great number of other places on the internet. Instead let’s have a think about what happens next. The Australians are fired up and desperate to repeat the whitewash of seven years ago, whilst the English reaction to what has probably seemed inevitable for a while will be both fascinating, and incredibly telling.
The problem is that, for all those calling for wholesale changes, there isn’t a massive selection of options out in Australia. By all accounts, the three tall fast bowlers – Tremlett, Finn, and Rankin – are all just as mentally scrambled as the current XI, whilst from the batting ranks, Jonny Bairstow at least doesn’t seem to be trusted by the hierarchy. There’s no point in flogging dead horses though, so I’d like to see the likes of Bairstow, Gary Balance, and Finn given a shot. This Aussie team isn’t comprised of superheroes; perhaps a few younger players in a situation without the pressure of trying to retain the urn might be able to make a bit of an impact? Even if they fail, we’d have learnt something about there ability to face up to the likes of Warner and Johnson.
What I really want to see though, is an England team which worries Australia. I don’t think that’s even come close to happening yet this series, but it would make the late nights in the company of Boycott, Aggers, and the rest less like Chinese water torture. Let’s see Mr. Cook powering past 8000 test runs, Ian Bell continuing to look like a world XI batsman alongside his teammates rather than in spite of them. Let’s see Graeme Swann and James Anderson remind us how good they are, and best of all, it’d be great if we could get back to calling Shane Watson Mr. LBW.
Because if we can’t beat our Australian cousins, teasing them has to be the next best thing. And we can’t do that if we end up on the end of a 5-0.
