The Sunday Times - UK (2021-12-19)

The Sunday Times December 19, 2021 5

overshadowed. Malan, cutting

crisply and defending compactly,

passed 50 for the sixth time in 12

innings against Australia, which in

another context might have

produced hosannas of praise.

There was a little hiss as pressure

eased: Mitchell Starc was used

sparingly; Michael Neser proved

unthreatening; Jhye Richardson

conceded Australia’s first no-ball of

the summer.

After dinner, Australia tightened

up, with drier lengths, stricter lines

and a meaner spirit, swarming

England like a Twitter mob intent

on cancellation: four for 57 in 30

overs does it full justice.

Yet to make a scoreboard impact

with the bat this summer, Green

continued his progress with ball,

persistent and pacy at Root, until

England’s captain was undone

again by his open blade, ending a

partnership of 138 off 237

deliveries.

Stokes miracle cure

needs shelving now

The batter wound up. The ball

disappeared into the Basheer

Stand. The commentators cued

superlatives. Back to the wall, Ben

Stokes was taking the second Test

on as only he knows how.

Back to the wall, however, is a

decidedly unpromising vantage

from which to take anything on.

There is usually a reason you’re

there. You have essentially run out

of options. There is a reason walls

are favoured by firing squads. They

are not interested in a contest.

Stokes, of course, is a wonderful,

dramatic cricketer, and the élan

vital of this England team. His

selection caused hearts to soar. For

a man who plumbed such depths

this year, he has sounded positive.

“If we don’t believe,” he argued

after play on the second evening,

“we’re already beaten.”

Stokes’s six to leg and his four

over cover off Nathan Lyon in early

evening at the Adelaide Oval were

hardly the strokes of a believer.

Quite the opposite. Having played

himself in carefully over two hours,

Stokes had been joined by Stuart

Broad, a bagatelle with the bat

these days, with a second new ball

in the offing and the possibility of a

follow-on looming — a triple-horned

batting dilemma, to which, he

concluded, slogging seemed the

only answer.

This could be questioned: it is a

sad state of affairs if Broad, in his

150th Test, is not to be trusted with

any strike at all, even simply to

defend his stumps. And, perhaps

inevitably, it didn’t work: aiming

towards the footbridge the

following over, Stokes dragged

Cameron Green on to his off stump,

with England still 253 runs in

arrears, and now a single wicket

left. In the end, the touring side did

not quite halve Australia’s score.

For some years afterwards, it was

argued that Headingley 1981 had

the negative consequence of

causing English cricket to trust in

miracles and overinvest in Ian

Botham. Has Headingley 2019 had a

similarly perverse outcome? For all

the romance of the wall, surely the

objective should not be ending up

there.

England’s best session of the

series had nothing to do with walls;

for a couple of hours it made the

playing field look almost level. Joe

Root and Dawid Malan, last seen

pursued by lightning, made the

most of clear skies and a softening

ball to pass unharmed through the

first session. Root was even slightly

Heroics of Headingley

have generated blind

faith in ability to thrive

with backs to the wall

GIDEON

HAIGH

the Test and white-ball teams has

been too cosy for too long.
When a successor to Trevor Bayliss
was needed as head coach in 2019,
there was a desire among the players

to find someone who would not
disrupt the ecosystem, and Chris
Silverwood was chosen in part
because, as a member of the

coaching staff, he would meet this
requirement. Yet England need to
shake up what has been settled for

too long — around a powerful group
of Root, Ben Stokes, Buttler and the
white-ball captain Eoin Morgan — and
pose some trickier questions of Root

and Morgan than Silverwood has. It is
time to inject some mongrel spirit.
Neither Root nor Silverwood
appears to have much faith in spin —

they have gone with all-pace attacks
in Tests remarkably often — and they
have surely put too much faith in data

analysis when it comes to player
management and team selection. But
if you get rid of your national
selector, what do you expect?

They have both insisted that they
have no wish to repeat the mistakes
of the previous two Ashes tours, but

for those who have watched England
in Australia many times before, there
is a strong sense of déjà vu.

English cricket is also being

buffeted by some strong forces.

Bilateral international cricket is

under threat from the T20 leagues

and in an attempt to keep the talent

happy, the ECB has allowed players

time away from international duty to

cash in on the riches. This has helped

white-ball players but done nothing

for the Test team. In fact, this

approach has merely added to the

workloads of the top players,

accelerating the likelihood of

burnout.

Stokes badly damaged his finger at

the Indian Premier League this year,

and his lengthy rehabilitation

jeopardised his involvement in this

tour. Moeen Ali, who has also built up

a significant IPL reputation, recently

retired from Test cricket. Jofra

Archer’s fitness was always likely to

Anderson is on his

fifth Ashes tour,

Broad his fourth. Is

this the best use of

precious tour spots?

be compromised. Players are being

permitted to spread themselves too

thinly.

It would be no surprise if Buttler

soon went the same way. His is a

classic case. He has been involved in

everything going since his recall to

the Test team in 2018 and it has not

produced the results expected.

There was also collateral damage

with his return. Bairstow did a better

job as batsman-keeper at No 7 than

Buttler has done since taking his

place, but Bairstow is now a marginal

figure in Test terms. Whether he can

be successfully returned to his

former role is another matter. Buttler

is an experiment that has run its

course.

The players have been put to work

in too onerous a fashion since the

start of the pandemic in the cause of

shoring up the ECB’s finances.

England have fulfilled more fixtures

since March 2020 than any other

international team. They have played

too many matches, and spent too

much time in quarantine and

biosecure bubbles.

Is it any wonder that the players

sometimes do not look like they

know what they are doing, or why

their over-rate is so slow?

Stuart Broad’s deflating return to

Test cricket continued when he

took a nasty blow to the face from

Jhye Richardson’s brutal bouncer.

Having taken only one wicket in

26 overs as Australia piled on the

agony for England in their first

innings, Broad was forced to take it

on the chin again — literally this

time — as he copped a short ball

from Richardson that came back

sharply into him and struck him on

the chin, via his glove.

There was a delay as the 35-year-

old underwent a concussion check

with the England medical staff, left.

He also appeared to exchange

some words out in the middle with

David Warner, though Broad got

one over the opener when he later

ran him out in Australia’s second

innings. Broad recovered from the

blow to hit Richardson for six

before he was out for nine, caught

off the bowling of Mitchell Starc.

Broad impressed with the bat

early in his Test career, making 169

against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010,

but he has struggled in recent

years — his confidence seemingly

having taken a knock after he had

his nose broken by Varun Aaron’s

bouncer, which got through the

grille of his helmet during a Test

match against India at Old Trafford

in 2014.

BROAD TAKES IT ON THE CHIN

In the absence of Pat Cummins

and Josh Hazlewood, Starc has been

Australia’s attack leader here by

experience gap rather than

nominated order. He bowled

accordingly, taking two for 12 in a

smothering seven-over spell. Malan

and Jos Buttler, who is having a

wretched Test match, perished to

needless, fretful strokes.

The giant screen provided

regular updates of Lyon’s figures at

the Adelaide Oval as he tiptoed up

on Shane Warne’s wicket-taking

record by ending Ollie Pope’s

frantic cameo, then picked off the

tailenders Chris Woakes and Ollie

Robinson after tea.

In a way, this was England’s

poorest performance of the tour,

accentuated by its following their

best. They have had moments here,

glimmers there. Root has purred

through the year like a Brough

Superior; at last, in Malan, he has

someone in the sidecar. Robinson

looks a bowler; Haseeb Hameed

does not appear out of his depth.

But they keep ending up at that

wall, and it leads nowhere good.

Gideon Haigh is cricket writer for The

Australian

THE ASHES

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