England’s attack for this game consists of an aging Jimmy, a washed-up wide, a county mid-speeder, a part-timer with a mare and a 20-year-old Shaggy who has only played a few top-level games. result? 479-4. When you think about it, this is not a surprising result. The closet is embarrassingly empty.
While Anderson has generally played well on this tour, the conditions just didn’t suit him. That really exposed us. Other members of the attack simply did not meet international standards. Stewart Broad clearly used to be, but he can no longer do it with any degree of consistency. 80 mph doesn’t cut it if you’re not really doing much with the ball (unless the pitch is helping you). See Vogel, Jackson.
I don’t really want to go into detail, so I’ll just link to George Dobell. It’s great to see that many of the topics we’ve discussed repeatedly on this blog are receiving national and international attention. I would like to ask Tom Harrison how he can think English cricket is in poor health when decent but not quite the best players in the world like the Khawaja and Marsh brothers take us to the cleaners.
The raison d’être of this blog is to focus on England rather than Australia, but I will say one thing for the Australians, they have completely surpassed us both on and off the pitch. I suspect the policy of giving the Mariners very little slow pitch is a deliberate ruse. This is a very smart guy.
Everyone knows teams need real speed or top-notch spin to conquer twenty wickets on a dead surface. By setting wickets like this, Australia completely stifled England’s attack while softening their own batting lapses.
Obviously this strategy also gave England’s batsmen more chances, but clearly not enough – partly because our seniors weren’t playing, partly because the momentum (and pressure on the scoreboard) was against us, partly because We are not as good as many people think we are.
Overall, this trip was a very frustrating experience. But all is well in the English cricket garden, isn’t it?