Reverse Swing

After England’s collapse in their first innings and Gilchrist’s assault of a century yesterday you didn’t dare to hope for that much from the fourth day’s play from the WACA.

True, Duncan Fletcher had said it was only a case of the next four batsmen getting in and the ever-bullish Pietersen has been saying how it was possible to go to Melbourne only 2-0 down but you felt that even with the Perth wicket losing its bounce that England would struggle, such is the psychological double nelson that Australia has on the team.

And it’s not just been the failings of the England team, the English media has conspired with their Australian counterparts in putting in the boot. On Sky yesterday there was the sight of Stuart Law wearing a suit but with a bat in hand demonstrating to Charles Colville how to play on the WACA pitch. “You’re English now aren’t you?” twittered Colville and the message seemed to be that Stuart Law with his suit, collar and tie could make a better job of batting at Perth than the current crop of English batsman.

Law mentioned that he’d been ready to help England with advice on how to play on Australian wickets but Duncan Fletcher hadn’t contacted him, which leads us into England’s lack of batting experience on Australian wickets. While some of England’s top 6 have played club cricket in Australia, none of them has played test cricket and this must have been a factor in the series. The Australians, of course, have the advantage of nurturing their batting skills and knowledge of the England players in the safe and friendly environment of the county championship before moving into the international arena, as Hussey has done, and as Jaques, Cosgrove and White will undoubtedly do in the near future. The ECB has probably noticed this and in the interests of future competitive series they will approach Cricket Australia about the possibility of two scholarships for each Pura Cup side for promising young English batman. After all if the Ashes contests are too one-sided then a non-contest won’t draw the crowds in Australia, as the empty spaces at the WACA today demonstrated.

In the mean time, this match and the rest of the series gives England’s batsman the chance to spend time at the wicket and toughen up for contests in the future – think Alan Border hardening his resolve in those 1980s Ashes defeats. Ian Bell and Alistair Cook did just that today with the latter scoring his fourth test century at the age of 21 before being drawn to a McGrath delivery that stretched across him. The performance of both batsmen shows that we have the right players in the team. England could still win tomorrow but the victory would be of the magnitude of one that happens every hundred years :1981 Headingly.

Panesar and Harmison looked relatively untroubled as they put on their last wicket partnership of 40, demonstrating that runs were there to be made on this wicket. This was more significant than the minor inconvenience to Australia of the runs from the last-wicket stand.

Hoggard made the new ball swing and dismissed Langer with a great delivery but once the newness had disappeared batting largely looked comfortable, although Panesar did get some turn.

The teams may have been roughly at level pegging after 5 sessions but in the sixth you could feel England being ground out of the series. The question that remains is whether England will be still holding onto the Ashes by tomorrow evening.

You couldn’t have scripted this one better – Monty Panesar comes into the team and takes 5 wickets – and England rustle out Australia for under 250. Talk of a flat WACA wicket proved premature and the caught behinds where he surprised Symonds and Warne with extra bounce after they went after him must have felt pretty good. It says a lot about Panesar in that in the previous over Symonds had hit him back over his head for a couple of sixes as well as for a four. He’s got a great temperament and with his trajectory and dip he brings something different to the England attack. Getting Gilchrist caught at short leg was pretty good too, especially after Ponting’s words this week about how the left-handers would take advnatge of Panesar spinning the ball into them.

If that wasn’t enough there was also the resurgence of a 4-wicket Harmison, who has suddenly found his threatening line again. Whether this came from bowlng on a wicket with more help or the work he has put in with Kevin Shine this week it doesn’t matter – it’s back, that’s the main thing.

Then at the end of the day Australia counter-attacked with Stuart Clarke bowling superbly to Collingwood – seaming and then seeming to swing the ball away with the shiny side outwards. Despite losing 2 wickets England will be pleased with today, but they’re going to have to play consistently well to win this game.

You know a whole nation is against you when even the Aussie laundries are playing their part in regaining the Ashes. Sajid Mahmood writes:

I’ve been trying to find a laundry that doesn’t shrink my clothes. I keep putting them in the wash and they keep getting smaller. Don’t ask me why.

With three matches to play Adam Gilchrist and the Australian team are already looking beyond the Ashes regained and are now searching for new goals in world cricket. England are an almost ticked-off item on the to do list.

At the start of the series there was talk about Gilchrist’s vulnerability from around the wicket and the drop in his batting average, and his duck at Brisbane seemed to confirm this. But thanks to the helpful England bowling attack he was nicely played into form at Adelaide with his innings of 64. And he’s not the only one to have benefited from the generosity – Justin Langer and Michael Clarke are just two of the others who were under threat just over a fortnight ago and who are now cemented into the team.

Indeed, one of the two not to show any form, Damien Martyn, was so disappointed with his failure against this England attack that he quit from all forms of cricket “with immediate effect,” making himself $600,000 poorer in the process.

The only way the England team was going to win/draw the series was if the bowlers were good enough to put Australia under sustained pressure, and this hasn’t happened yet. One of the principles of recent English selection has been continuity even after defeat, giving the unsuccessful players a chance to redeem themselves. While this has sometimes worked the supporters and press are baying for change, and for the inclusion of Monty Panesar. With Perth now rumoured to be more helpful for spinners, this time the Fletcher/Flintoff axis will go for Panesar. But who will he replace?

Giles may have given up on himself but the England tenet of no long tail and batting till 8 is paramount, and they could still go for 2 spinners, so Giles could play alongside Panesar. (They’re unlikely to drop Harmison, on the grounds that he may come good one day. It seems ironic that England’s selection is classed as conservative when they continue to gamble on Harmison. I would pick Mahmood instead of Harmison, as he can reverse-swing it and deserves a chance to show what he can do. He can hardly be any more erratic than Harmison. Mahmood is also a more useful bat than Harmison and could do a job at number 8.) So it could be that in a Fletcher/Flintoff selection with Panesar coming in, Anderson loses out despite his performance in Perth against WA.

To summarise: I would like to see 2 changes – Panesar and Mahmood in for Giles and Harmison. However, I expect Fletcher/Flintoff to make 1 change – Panesar in for Anderson.

I woke up this morning expecting to see Ian Bell bowling as the match meandered to a draw, only to find England playing one-day cricket, unsuccessfully defending a too-small total. How England managed to move from 97 ahead with nine wickets standing at the start of play to a six-wicket defeat remains one of the great conundrums of test cricket.

True there was more help for Warne in the wicket and he bowled beautifully; Lee found some reverse swing and Clark was as accurate as ever. To bowl out England on this wicket with four frontline bowlers is an astonishing achievement and Flintoff, in his post-match interview generously praised the Australian bowlers. It was in their heads at the start of play that they could win this one.

But what of England? They scored slowly, failed to rotate the strike, and failed to counter-attack in any form. At the start of play they believed they could only draw the game, and in playing for that they lost it. If the Australians were in England’s postion they would have believed that victory was possible- nearly 100 ahead, nearly all wickets in hand, the POMs are as good as beaten, let’s set them a target and put the pressure on them. And that really, is the difference between the two teams.

Duncan Fletcher has just been interviewed on Sky and has said that the England batsmen found it difficult to cope with the reverse swing from the Australian bowlers. One of the criticisms levelled by their own media at Australia in the 2005 series was that they didn’t have anyone who could bowl reverse swing. Now it looks like they have. It seems that Troy Cooley’s return home has had a significant impact.

According to Sky commentator David Lloyd, Shane Warne was calling Ian Bell the Shermanator in the last session of the day. To which Bell’s reply was “I’ve been called worse.” Personally I can’t see any resemblance between the Coventry-born batsman and the American Pie character.

The Shermanator Ian Bell

It’s been some time since an England batting pair was as dominant as this – going close to three sessions without losing a wicket, the highest 4th wicket partnership against Australia.

70 years since an England player, Hammond, scored a double century in Australia. At the start of the series you would have got fairly long odds on the next player to achieve this being the unassuming Paul Collingwood.

McGrath was reduced to a poor man’s Stuart Clarke and Shane Warne had to resort to the Ashely Giles songbook, bowling wide of leg stump to keep Pietersen quiet. Of course the placid wicket had a large part to play in this, and the sight of Jones standing up to Hoggard with the new ball towards the end of play gave you the measure of its batter-friendly nature. But the outfield was slow too, and it wasn’t easy to score unless you cuffed it hard like Pietersen or took a chance and lofted it.

It will be interesting to see if Giles does anything with the rough outside the left-handers’ off stump, and whether Flintoff or Anderson can conjure any reverse swing. You feel it’s going to be hard work taking another 19 wickets on this pitch.

He should have played. You could hear the collective groan as an unchanged team was announced. Whether Fletcher has got this right or wrong we’ll know over the next few days, but make no mistake this is one on which his reputation stands – he’s going to be judged on this.

Another day, another test venue but some things are remarkably the same. Monty is sitting with Chris Read on the player’s balcony looking pissed-off. Both of look pissed-off, and the two of them pissed off together magnifies the effect. You can tell that sitting on the balcony they’re conspicuously not griping in public, but back in the hotel room it may well be different. Read looks more than pissed-off: at Brisbane his face said there was a 1% chance of playing in the series; at Adelaide it’s less than that and he’s taken to idly flicking through a newspaper, knowing that Duncan will never look his way.

Monty has worked hard on his loop this week, making adjustment to the Australian conditions and Duncan has been helping him. Earlier in the year Duncan said that Monty was the best finger spinner in the world, and this week Monty has said that Duncan is the best coach. Has it got him in the team on a track that may take spin later? No. You can see it going through his head as he sits there. “What have I got to do to get in this team?”