The Times - UK (2021-12-21)

the times | Tuesday December 21 2021 63

Sport

If England had started the Adelaide

Test match as they finished it, they

might have given themselves a chance

of winning, let alone drawing. But of

course they didn’t, because they rarely

do in Australia. They come to life and

start to express themselves only when

their reputations are on the line, their

futures at stake.

They are like the old county profes-

sional who has a rubbish season until he

scores a couple of hundreds in late

August or early September, around the

time contracts are up for renewal. Sure

enough, it swings them another gig. Or

the puppy that makes a mess on the

floor but gives you those cute eyes that

persuade you to let them into your best

room again — until they despoil your

favourite carpet for a second time.

Among those who showed fight on

this final day were Chris Woakes, who

was definitely looking at drinks-carry-

ing duties for the Boxing Day Test after

underwhelming with the ball, and who

may well still end up doing them, and

Stuart Broad, who often bowled the

wrong lengths and took only two wick-

ets in the game, which suggests his

absence at the Gabba was not quite the

body blow to England’s prospects that

many had suggested it was.

But Jos Buttler was, above all, the

man who so nearly carried the day, just

as it was his errors behind the stumps,

alongside a first-innings duck, that did

most to hand Australia the initiative.

Buttler has previous in this respect.

His maiden Test hundred — and his

only century in his first 46 Tests —

came in a match against India in 2018

when all was essentially lost; score 521

or bat out two days for a draw was

England’s task. In other words, the

pressure was largely off, as was the case

in Adelaide, where no one was giving

them a price.

The survival instinct is clearly strong.

Last year, in a Test against Pakistan at

Old Trafford, Buttler (alongside

Woakes) took England home in a

run chase after he made several errors

with the gloves. After that game Buttler

admitted that had he not made runs he

would probably not have played Test

cricket again. “When the game is on the

line it gets the competitive juices flow-

ing,” he said.

Would it really be asking too much

for the competitive juices to flow a little

earlier? Sadly it appears to be in the

character of English cricketers to ex-

press themselves best when their backs

are to the wall and scrapping for dear

life. Equally it seems to be innate in

Australian cricketers to run from the

front. This has set the pattern for so

much Ashes cricket.

Perhaps because English sporting

teams have become conditioned to

lose, and in English cricket’s case they

have become conditioned to coming

second best to Australia, there has al-

ways been an affection for the plucky

underdog, the gallant loser.

Of course there is a special place in

heaven for those who can avert what

seemed certain humiliation. In cricket

this goes back at least to the Willie

Watson-Trevor Bailey partnership that

Buttler’s competitive

juices need to flow

when battle still on

secured an improbable draw at Lord’s in

1953, in an Ashes series England went

on to win 1-0. It was a stand with long

hours of self-denial at its heart.

Similar was the rearguard at the

Wanderers in Johannesburg in 1995 —

led by the correspondent of this parish,

Mike Atherton — when risk-taking was

eschewed with almost religious fer-

vour. Jack Russell’s best-support per-

formance of 29 from 235 balls bears

comparison with Buttler’s 26 off 207.

It is perhaps the mentality of the

small islander: we may not be as big or

as strong as others, but we are orga-

nised and gritty. This was the mindset

that got us through Dunkirk and it will

get us through other setbacks. Being

outplayed for four days does not mean

that we cannot rise to the challenge on

the fifth.

Win, lose or draw, how many times

have we celebrated the last day of the

Poms? How can we forget Monty Pane-

sar and James Anderson batting out the

last 69 balls to deny Ricky Ponting’s

Australia team a win at Cardiff in 2009?

That was another series, as with 1953,

that England ultimately went on to win.

How can we forget Auckland 2013

Simon Wildede

The key statistics

4,001

Days since England won a Test in

Australia — the final game of the

2010-11 series in Sydney.

24.56

England’s average runs per wicket

since that match in their 12 away

Ashes Tests. Australia have

averaged 44.62 runs per wicket in

those games.

13

Years since an England player had

been out hit wicket — Andrew

Strauss against South Africa at

Edgbaston in 2008. Jos Buttler is

only the tenth English batsman

dismissed in that fashion since 1963.

when, already four wickets down at the

start of play (as was the case here in

Adelaide), they hung on until the end?

That was an escape celebrated all the

more because the last man, Panesar,

England’s “Eric the Eel”, had to swim up

the pitch to avoid being run out. As with

treading on your wicket, it’s more

poignant if there are what-ifs.

The truth is that for every Cardiff or

Auckland there are several Adelaides:

the plucky fight ending in futility and

failure. This was, after all, the second

time in four Ashes Tests that England

had tried without success to hold out

for an unlikely draw. At Old Trafford in

2019, they started the fifth morning on

18 for two but still took the game into

the final hour before losing. Buttler on

that occasion contributed 34 from 111

balls. Naturally Joe Root afterwards

praised his players’ tenacity.

As the curtain came down in

Adelaide, Root was at it again. “That’s

the attitude and mentality that we

need,” he said. But the truth is that En-

gland were given one hell of a beating

by an Australia side missing their two

great fast bowlers, Pat Cummins and

Josh Hazlewood. As the Aussies would

say: “Well done, you came second.”

BURNS RUNS: 51 AVERAGE: 12.75

finally appears to enjoy himself

carry to slip. A good workman blames
his tools too, it turns out.
His enthusiasm remains somewhat
guarded. All he would admit the other
night was “a bit of a knack for taking
wickets” under lights, even if this is
like Chris Gayle’s knack for sixes or
Rashid Khan’s fondness for wrong ’uns.
Might Starc’s success and serenity
in Adelaide have had something to do
with his unquestioned status in the
absence of Cummins and Josh
Hazlewood, so that Australia’s other
three seamers spoke for a handful of
prior Test wickets?
Though the first over has remained
his prerogative since the earliest days
of his career, Starc in a full-strength
attack trades at something of a
discount to his usual confederates.
According to the ICC standings,
Cummins ranks at No 1 and
Hazlewood No 4; Starc slots in at
No 13, behind both James Anderson
and Stuart Broad.
Because he bowls a routinely fuller

length in search of swing, Starc can be

more expensive than his fellow

seamers — regarded as a fault in these

attritional times. He has also never

had a summer as indelible as, say,

Mitchell Johnson in 2013-14.

A decade on from his debut,

however, Starc’s overall record of

more than 500 international wickets

is seriously imposing. In Adelaide, he

became Australia’s eighth-highest

wicket-taker, overtaking Jason

Gillespie in eight Tests fewer. His

X factor stood out the more too.

Eight right-arm pace bowlers were

on show in the match, their speeds

tightly bunched between the low

130mphs and the low 140s. From the

left, both over and round the wicket,

Australia’s attack leader routinely

reached the mid-140s — a contrast

that could only be described as Starc.

England had nothing to match up

against him in Adelaide; England

have nothing to match up with him at

all. Anderson swings it, but at lesser

velocities; Mark Wood is quick but not

with his left arm. The best the visitors’

set-up can offer are left-handed throw

downs from assistant coach Ant

Botha, who at this rate will finish the

tour with a left arm longer than his

right, such is his workrate in the nets.

To that first ball of the series, we

will always be returning. It’s worth

remembering for its shock value —

not the corridor of uncertainty but

the tunnel of unforseeability to a

batter disciplining himself to leave,

defend or duck. A fluke? Probably, but

of the uncannily jolting kind.

It’s often asserted that Starc has

been diminished by post-Sandpaper-

gate taboos on treatments of the ball.

The statistics do not bear this out.

Since the Abu Dhabi Test of 2018,

Starc has paid less than 25 runs per

wicket and with the bat averaged

nearly 29. He is more than an ersatz

all-rounder. This might be the

summer that this curiously

underestimated cricketer gets his due.

HAMEED RUNS: 58 AVERAGE: 14.50

DAVE HUNT/EPA; MORGAN SETTE/REUTERS; WILLIAM WEST/AFP/GETTY IMAGES