64 Tuesday December 21 2021 | the times
SportThe Ashes
Adelaide Oval (final day of five):
Australia beat England by 275 runsMike Ather ton
Chief Cricket
Correspondent
Australia v England
BT to ditch Fox commentary
and put together own team
Elizabeth AmmonBT Sport is set to use its own
commentary team for the remainder of
the Ashes series rather than relying on
the coverage provide by Fox Sports, the
Australian host broadcaster.
David Gower, the former England
captain, will be based down under along
with a team of pundits including Mark
Taylor, the ex-Australia skipper, for the
three matches to come, starting with
the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
They will work with a group of com-
mentators in London, which is set to
include Mark Ramprakash, the former
England batsman and assistant coach.
BT Sport had already taken the
decision that it would cut away from the
Fox coverage for any commentary
stints involving Michael Vaughan,
because of the investigation into allega-
tions that he used a racially offensive
phrase towards four Asian Yorkshire
players during a match in 2009.Vaughan, 47, missed the first two
Tests after testing positive for Covid but
he will work for Fox Sports at the
remaining three matches. The 2005
Ashes-winning captain strenuously de-
nies the allegations against him, saying
that he never used the phrase “there are
too many of you lot, we need to do
something about that” as was claimed.
UK viewers have been critical of the
commentary on the first two Tests, with
many finding it to be too partisan,
which has also partly prompted BT to
change its approach. Fox will provide
the pictures as the host broadcaster but
Gower, who left Sky Sports after
25 years as a commentator and present-
er in 2019, Taylor and three or four
other commentators yet to be named
will be in a studio at the MCG, inter-
changing with commentary from BT’s
London studios. It will also continue to
use former England players such as
Matt Prior and Alastair Cook for
analysis during breaks in play.A tour two years in the planning has
unravelled in nine days of cricket. Only
one team in the history of the Ashes has
come back from a two-Test deficit to
win and that was one inspired by a
cricketer, Don Bradman, regarded as
the greatest the game has seen. If the
history books provide glum reading,
then present viewing is not much
better, despite the spirit so evident on
the final afternoon as England clung
doggedly to the hope of a draw.
There was fight, of course there was.
After the early dismissal of Ollie Pope,
all England’s batsmen had to be prised
from the crease and the way in which
they made Australia work for their
gains only added to the regret from the
night before when their best batsman,
Joe Root, was dismissed by the final ball
of the day. Had he survived that exami-
nation, who knows what might have
been on the final day?
Although a beating competitive
heart is the minimum expectation of an
international team, England carried
the game far, far deeper than many
thought possible once two wickets had
fallen in the opening hour. It wasn’t
until after tea, with the shadows long
lengthened over the entire ground, that
Australia administered the full stop
when Jhye Richardson accounted for
James Anderson after he fended a short
ball into the gully.
That the day carried any residual in-
terest at all was due to Jos Buttler who,
one day, when the pain has subsided,
will be able to tell his grandchildren
about the time he blocked like Geoff
Boycott. Playing his second-longest
Test innings, Buttler defied Australia
through much of the morning, all of the
afternoon, and until two overs after the
tea break, by which point he had
brought some hope where previously
there had been none. There were
24 overs remaining when he was
dismissed.
The freakish nature of his dismissal
only added to the pain. Pushed onto the
back foot by the pace of Richardson,
who took his maiden five-wicket haul
by bowling quickly and with great
spirit, Buttler misjudged the depth of
his crease, dislodging the bails when his
back foot brushed the stumps. It was a
cruel way to go after an innings of as-
tonishing self-restraint (26 from 207
balls, including only nine runs in the
extended afternoon session), although
after a duck in the first innings and
three dropped catches, Buttler knew he
had ground to make up.
He is old enough and experienced
enough to know that the encomiums
that will follow his fine rearguard
action could have been obituaries for
his Test career instead, had Alex Carey
accepted a chance before he had scored
A familiar story
2010- 11
2013- 14
2017- 18
2021- 22P 42 W 6 L 30 D 61990- 91
1994- 95
1998- 99
2002- 03
2006- 07England’s miserable record in Australia
since start of the 1990swould account for Eng-
land’s present predicament on
the basis of Leach’s absence
from Adelaide, but his
non-selection reflected
much of the woolly and
flawed thinking that has
characterised the tour-
ing side’s Ashes cam-
paign so far. Would
Leach have made a differ-
ence? Probably not. Should
he have played? Of course he
should. Mark Wood was rested,
they say. But for what? England are
now 2-0 down.
Robinson bowling off spin, Lyon rip-
ping it square and England’s spinners
sat on the bench. You couldn’t make it
up, really.
The margin of defeat was a mighty
one, and the fighting spirit on the last
afternoon should not camouflage the
fact that England, for the second time
in as many Tests, have been out-
thought and outplayed. Once again the
batting has been completely under-
whelming and they will face a returning
and refreshed Pat Cummins next after
Australia announced an unchanged
squad for the Boxing Day Test. Root’s
Ashes dreams hang by a thread.Fighting spirit cannot mask
off the eighth ball faced. Such is the
game: Carey, who had not put a foot
wrong until this point, would have fret-
ted as long as Buttler was out there
fighting for the cause, while Buttler has
now been given an opportunity to turn
his tour around.
To say Carey dropped the chance
created by Mitchell Starc would be an
exaggeration, as he allowed the edge to
slip by without attempting to intercept
it. As the edge flew between him and
David Warner at first slip, Carey
feigned to go and then stopped, at
which point Warner simply stepped
aside to allow the wicketkeeper room to
dive and the ball flew to the boundary.
Had that been taken, England would
likely have subsided by lunch, but
Buttler did not give another chance
until dismissed.
There was only a sliver of hope for
England at the start of the day, reduced
further when Pope and Ben Stokes fell
in the opening hour. Pope’s tour has not
started well. His defence has looked
shaky against Nathan Lyon, resulting
in a tempo the wrong side of the line
between assertive and frenetic, and in
the second innings here he failed to
cope with the angle of Starc, fencing at
a ball fully two stumps wide. As the ball
nestled in the hands of Steve Smith at
slip Pope did a small jig of frustration —
this was a sucker punch.
Stokes had defended resolutely
against Lyon, with plenty of close
catchers for company. His method was
to play deep from the crease and move
across to off stump, to negate the spin,
so Lyon varied his pace and the amount
of side and over-spin put on the ball to
try to deceive Stokes in the air. He final-
ly did so, after an hour, with a ball a little
quicker and flatter than before, produc-
ing a thunderous appeal and a leg-
before decision upheld on DRS review.
The expectation was for a quick kill,
much as had happened at this ground in
2017, when Australia’s victory came in a
rush on the fifth morning. It was Chris
Woakes who stopped the rot, by joining
Buttler in the 57th over of the in-
nings and staying with him
until eight overs after the
second new ball had been
taken. Woakes’s bowling
has been ineffectual
throughout the opening
two Tests, but his simple
batting technique
compares well with his
top-order colleagues.
Woakes’s was one of only
two wickets to fall in the after-
noon, as the ball softened
and the pitch fell to sleep,
and Smith continued to
search for the break-
through. It needed a
good ball to beat
Woakes and Richardson
provided it with a sharp
break-back that crashed
into middle stump. Ollie
Robinson lasted 39 balls before
edging Lyon to slip, bringing the off
spinner level with Shane Warne for
wickets taken on this ground. Tea came
with 26 overs remaining and two wick-
ets required. Hope was snuffed out with
Buttler’s dismissal shortly after the
break.
Given Lyon’s success, and the way he
combined with Starc to shackle En-
gland, one of the odd sights in this game
was to witness Robinson lumbering in
to bowl off spin on the fourth day. Once
an off spinner at the Kent academy by
all accounts, he was requisitioned into
action by the stand-in captain, Stokes,
in the absence of a first-choice spinner,
Jack Leach, and Root, who was off the
field having his injury attended to.
Now, no one in their right mindMoment hope died: Buttler treads his stumps
23
Test defeats as captain
for Root from 58 games —
an England record, one
ahead of Alastair Cook.
Root also has the
record for wins (27)3
Captains to have lost
more Tests — Graeme
Smith (SA, 29 out of 109),
Stephen Fleming (NZ, 27
out of 80), Brian Lara
(WI, 26 out of 47)