58 Monday December 6 2021 | the times
SportThe Ashes
5
Chris Silverwood has confirmed that
Ben Stokes is ready to play in the first
Test of the Ashes series despite the
England all-rounder having not
appeared in a competitive fixture since
July 26.
England’s head coach wants to assess
weather conditions before finalising
the starting XI for the match at the
Gabba, which starts at midnight tomor-
row, but he said Stokes “looks good to
go”. The hosts had no such qualms, an-
nouncing their team almost 72 hours in
advance of the scheduled first ball.
Travis Head, who averaged 18.30 in
the County Championship for Sussex
in the summer, is preferred for the final
batting slot to Usman Khawaja, who
scored 171 in the most recent Test
England played in Australia. Mitchell
Starc, who featured only once in the
2019 Ashes series in England, has
fought off a strong challenge from the
in-form Jhye Richardson.
“[Stokes] feels that he is in a really
good place,” Silverwood said. “Watch-
ing him bat, he looks in a really good
place. He will have fewer overs under
his belt than most but is bowling with
good pace and got quite a bit out of the
wicket the other day. He is hitting the
wicket hard, getting the ball off straight.
He looks good to go... From the noises
I’m hearing I should imagine he’ll be
telling me he’s ready.
“It’s massive, really. We felt a lift
when his name came back into the hat
for being on tour, not just from his
cricket point of view but him as a
person. We’ve seen how devastating he
is with bat and ball, and that knock at
Headingley [in 2019] will be hurting the
Australians and will be hurting for a
while to come. They will be wary. They
know he can take anybody down.”
During a training day on which the
captains, Joe Root and Pat Cummins,
lined up for photo opportunities on the
outfield at the Gabba, and several
players spoke during a curated media
blitz, it appeared that England are
inclining towards a bowling attack
centred on controlled fast-medium
bowling in which there may be a place
for a spinner but not Mark Wood, argu-
ably the fastest bowler in either camp.
The weather has improved in
Brisbane after last week’s downpours,
raising hopes of quick pitch conditions,
although there may be more rain later
in the week.
Asked if Wood must play because of
his extra pace, Silverwood said: “We’ve
been successful without pace as well.
Yes, we like pace and I know it’s one of
the things I banged on about early on
when we talked about the Ashes, but
we’ve got other bowlers with great skill
sets as well.
“The disciplines are sharp, the areas
that they bowl, the various types of
movement we can create. And we have
been successful with an attack which
hasn’t really had that pace of Wood or
people like that. We’ve got the skill set
to be successful here and pace is one
part of that.”
Wood himself acknowledged that it
was possible to be drawn by faster,
bouncier surfaces into bowling the
wrong lengths, and that bowling tocontain, which appears to be England’s
plan A, was not necessarily his strength.
“It’s about not being too short, that’s
maybe where you can get sucked in. It’s
all right saying the right things now, but
when you’re out there and you see the
first one fly through it’s like, ‘Oh, here
we go,’ ” he said.
“It’s about trying to work with the
captain, keeping that length. If we stop
Australia scoring that will be a major
plus for us as a bowling group.
“When we did well here last time [in
2010-11] we managed to keep the run
rate down. That’s not really my kind of
bowling but if I can try to get some
wickets to slow the scoring down, hope-
fully we can work in partnership and
build pressure. We’ve got to be on it.
Not too short.”
Silverwood said that England’s No 6
spot would be occupied by either
Jonny Bairstow or Ollie Pope. “It is one
of the talking points we have at the
moment. We will make a decision clos-
er to the time.”
He also conceded that England’s
build-up on the Gold Coast, with the
Test specialists housed in one group
and a later set of arrivals from the T20
World Cup, including Silverwood
himself, in another had presented
challenges. “At one point we were sepa-
rated by a fence, and you just wanted to
get yourself involved [together]. We all
probably felt frustrated that we couldn’t
do that... As frustrating as it is, we had
to get through it.”
With Starc’s inclusion, Australia are
going with a familiar and highly
effective bowling line-up. In 19 outings
together, Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Cum-
mins and Nathan Lyon have taken 321
wickets, or 16.89 a game. This included
all 87 wickets that fell to Australia bowl-
ers on England’s previous tour to the
country four years ago. Alex Carey will
keep wicket in place of Tim Paine and
become Australia’s 463rd Test cap.Stokes is ‘ready
to go’ but Wood
could miss out
Australia team for first Test
Role Tests Runs Batting avge Wkts Bowling avge
David Warner Batsman 86 7,311 48.09 4 67.25
Marcus Harris Batsman 10 428 23.77 0 —
Marnus Labuschagne Batsman 18 1,885 60.8 12 41.67
Steve Smith Batsman 77 7,540 61.8 17 56.47
Travis Head Batsman 19 1,153 39.75 0 —
Cameron Green All-rounder 4 236 33.71 0 —
Alex Carey Wicketkeeper 0 — — — —
Pat Cummins (c) Fast bowler 34 708 16.46 164 21.59
Mitchell Starc Fast bowler 61 1,596 22.16 255 27.57
Nathan Lyon Spin bowler 100 1,101 12.23 399 32.12
Josh Hazlewood Fast bowler 55 445 12.02 212 25.65Australia still finding
unbesmirched, succeeds; Smith, semi-
smirched, must work his passage back
as vice-captain.
Warner, with many of the attributes
of a successful captain, remains
permanently disbarred from office.
Marcus Harris is an indirect
beneficiary too.
More generally, on the eve of the
next home Ashes summer, the exit of
Paine demonstrates that we are still
living out the unaddressed
consequences of the last.
Cast your mind back to the Gabba
Test of four years ago, on the first
morning of which Paine sent his
smokiest sexts.
The prelude will be remembered for
a weird trash-talking Nathan Lyon
presser; the postlude involved Smith
and Bancroft guffawing over a
sneakily leaked nothingburger of a
story about Jonny Bairstow.
Paine was “partying like a rock
star”? Of course he was, because
Australia four years ago was a pretty
obnoxious team. And, frankly, nobody
at CA had any problem with that,
from the chairman and chief
executive downwards. Remember that
putrid parade float after the Sydney
Test? Jeepers creepers.
They didn’t even have a huge
problem with it afterwards. “Winning
is everything... Suddenly we have a
culture problem — we didn’t have one
when we were winning!” anGideon Haigh on good
intentions but bad
decisions in
the wake of
Newlands
T
here is nothing good about
Sandpapergate, even the
word, born of that mindless
habit of affixing the suffix -
gate to any imbroglio. Were
Watergate repeated today, as The
Times writer Matthew Parris has
observed, it would automatically
become Watergategate.
Yet 3½ years on, Australian cricket,
and Cricket Australia (CA), are leg-
roped to the events of Newlands —
just how tightly has been evinced by
the past few weeks.
After all, it was Sandpapergate that
gave us, on the spur of the moment,
the captaincy of Tim Paine, then the
expanding cult around his being a
redemptive figure, which CA knew to
be flawed at best. Only Paine has now
paid the price for that, just as only
Steve Smith, David Warner and
Cameron Bancroft paid the price of
the events of Newlands.
Sandpapergate also defines our
future leadership. Pat Cummins,The Ashes
Ashes Tests
First Test, Brisbane.....................Dec 8-12
Second Test, Adelaide...........Dec 16-20
Third Test, Melbourne..........Dec 26-30
Fourth Test, Sydney ..................... Jan 5-9
Fifth Test, Perth...........................Jan 14-18TV and radio
BT Sport has the rights to the series.
The BBC’s Test Match Special has
the radio commentary rights. BT
Sport will show highlights at 8.45am
and noon.Weather
Predictions of cloud, sun,
rain — and possibly
lightning.Simon Wildede
Sydneyformer employees, including Moxon,
sacked in a cull of 16 staff last week.
Gough will use his radio programme
on talkSPORT today to confirm he will
take up his first position in cricket ad-
ministration. He is set to put his broad-
casting career to one side, although the
director of cricket role will not require
Gough tasked with easing Yorkshire tensions
him to do day-to-day coaching. He will
focus on strategy, planning, recruit-
ment and development.
Gough’s first task will be to find a new
coaching team. Pre-season winter
training is under way and there are no
coaching staff at all. Ajmal Shahzad, the
former Yorkshire and England bowler
working at Derbyshire, is said to be a
candidate for an assistant coach role.Some players may decide to leave in
protest at the sackings.
Lord Patel of Bradford, the new
Yorkshire chairman, held crisis talks
with the players on Friday but the situa-
tion remains volatile.
Patel hopes the swift recruitment of
Gough, who is popular among many
players and county members, will ease
some of the tension.continued from back