Ashes 2021-22: All the England news ahead of the Boxing Day Test
James Anderson has sided with dumped wicket-taker Stuart Broad over captain Joe Root as infighting from the visitors continues.
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England’s blame game has escalated once again with Jimmy Anderson siding with axed seamer Stuart Broad in taking aim at Joe Root and the captain admitting his batters have trust issues with Australian pitches.
The tourists have won one out of their past 11 Tests under coach Chris Silverwood and have dropped four players – Rory Burns, Ollie Pope, Chris Woakes and Broad – in a desperate bid to keep the Ashes series alive with a victory at the MCG.
Recalled opener Zak Crawley is averaging 11 runs while returning No.5 Jonny Bairstow – who will play his third Boxing Day Test – has made just one half-century from his past 24 Test innings.
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Speed demon Mark Wood and off-spinner Jack Leach, who both played at the Gabba, have also won their places back after sitting out the second Test.
Root blasted his quicks for getting their lengths horribly wrong in Adelaide, but Anderson has echoed Broad by sticking up for the veteran attack.
“We have to be better at assessing it during a game. We can‘t just go after the game, ’we should have bowled fuller’,” Anderson wrote in a newspaper column.
“Maybe we could have gone a touch fuller at times but we still created quite a few chances that were not taken.
“We did not bat well enough on a pitch where the data said it was one of the flattest Adelaide surfaces ever produced and the pink ball did the least it has ever done in a day-night game.”
Root’s team must defy history by winning three Test matches on the bounce to reclaim the Ashes from 0-2, something no England side has ever achieved.
The finger-pointing intensified in the lead-up to Christmas, but Root – who has had his future as Test captain questioned – didn’t let his misfiring batting line-up off either.
“The challenge coming here is you watch guys like Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, they’re very good at leaving on length,” Root said.
“In England you can’t afford to do that, so we don’t grow up trusting that bounce.
“That might be a hard thing to do in a six-week block in these conditions. But one thing you can do is understand where your off stump is and make sure you’re not playing at balls that you’re not scoring off for no reason.”
Aussie batting coach Michael Di Venuto told News Corp: “We have certainly left well so far in this series. I think it is more to do with playing in our home conditions and trusting the bounce of the pitches; and that the ball is going to bounce over the stumps.
“Similar lengths in English conditions are going to top the top of off stump. This is probably where they have been drawn into playing the ball more and it can become a hard habit to break.”
Startling admission that shows just how unprepared Poms are
England will resist the urge to raid the Big Bash League for a Boxing Day boost with all four of its potential Test changes set to come from the 18-man Ashes squad.
Under-siege coach Chris Silverwood forced his men to relive their Adelaide Oval nightmares by replaying 14 of the 20 wickets England lost in the day-night Test on a TV in the dressing room, staggered by his floundering batsmen’s inability to leave balls that weren’t in danger of hitting off stump.
Young opener Zak Crawley, versatile batter Jonny Bairstow, paceman Mark Wood and one of Jack Leach or Dom Bess are being considered for the MCG blockbuster as England clings to hope it can emulate the feats of Don Bradman’s 1936-37 Aussies by going on a three-Test rampage after starting an Ashes series 0-2.
Sydney Thunder paceman Saqib Mahmood and Sixers batter James Vince headline 13 Englishmen with BBL contracts and, while the England Cricket Board has not ruled out drafting one of them in for the fourth or fifth Tests, it won’t happen in Melbourne.
Mahmood, 24, snared 4-22 on debut against Brisbane Heat – which included the prized wickets of Chris Lynn, Sam Heazlett, captain Jimmy Peirson and fellow Englishman Ben Duckett – while Vince is averaging 22.6.
It’s understood the BBL back-up plan would only eventuate should England suffer an injury.
Dawid Malan said his team lacked so much experience in Australian conditions that it had to learn on the job in the midst of the Ashes furnace.
“They’re trying to find ways to face bowlers they’ve never faced before, but also get used to the bounce here,” the No.3 said. “This (MCG) wicket might be slightly skiddier, so we don’t want to go out and leave every ball and get bowled or lbw now.”
Crawley, 23, has dominated two seasons of grade cricket in Australia, smashing two centuries and nine half-centuries. He averaged 57.2 across 32 games for Wembley Districts and Sydney Cricket Club in 2016-17 and 2018-19 respectively.
“Zak’s obviously a very talented player,” Malan said. “He’s a tall bloke who plays the short ball really well so there’s every chance that he’ll be really good here.”
The post-game review – similar to the confronting session Australian coach Justin Langer held in the aftermath to Ben Stokes’ heroics at Headingley in 2019 – included a comparison to way David Warner, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith expertly got out of the way of non-threatening deliveries.
“We learnt that for the majority of us there’s a lead-up to the dismissals and how bowlers set you up,” Malan said. “A lot of our dismissals were probably soft ones in the sense we could probably have left them.
“That doesn’t mean we go out to leave balls, you still have to score. Cricket is about scoring runs, it’s not about surviving, it’s not about leaving balls.”
Malan (80 and 82) and captain Joe Root (89 and 62) are the only Englishman to pass 50 this series. “Scoring 80 is good, scoring 180 is brilliant. That’s the goal,” Malan said.
Leach bowled to Bess on Thursday and worked closely with spin coach Jeetan Patel, while Bairstow was the first one to the MCG nets, hitting the ball sweetly for about an hour.
An England staffer put markers down at 5.5m and 7m for Craig Overton in a sign England wants to fix its lengths, which Root blasted as far too short after the second Test. But Malan denied talk of a rift between Root and his bowlers in the fallout to those pointed comments.
“When you lose there’s always going to reports that people are at each other. There definitely isn’t (disharmony),” Malan said.
“One of the things we’ve been doing this series is actually chat amongst the players and encouraging players to challenge each other on a lot of things.”
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There are clear signs of tension between the England bowling group and captain Joe Root over tactics as England looks for someone to blame for the lacklustre showing in the first two Test matches.
The situation among players looks so serious that Ricky Ponting believes Root should be more authoritative and tell his bowlers to stick to his plans or be dragged out of the attack for not following orders.
After losing the Adelaide Test and falling 2-0 behind in the five Test series the visiting captain said the bowlers had to share some of the blame.
“If we’re being brutally honest, we needed to bowl fuller,” Root, who also said the batting needed to be better, said in the wake of the loss.
“As soon as we did in that second innings, we created chances. We need to do that more, we need to be a bit braver, get the ball up there a bit further because when we do, we‘re going to create chances and make life difficult.
“That‘s one of the frustrating things because it’s something we did four years ago and got it wrong and we didn’t learn from it. We made the same mistakes last week (in Brisbane) – we just have to be better and we’ve got to learn those lessons very quickly.”
Veteran quick Stuart Broad, who has made it known in the past he is not always happy with management decisions, had defended the bowling in his newspaper column for the Sunday Mail.
“I think we held the game well on an opening day which returned a bit of a strange scorecard: Australia were 221 for two at the end of play and you would expect it to be something closer to 321 when losing so few wickets,” he said.
“But they didn‘t particularly time the ball well, the pitch didn’t allow them to, and although there was an argument that we could have bowled fuller, because the ball did so little, our economy rates would have gone through the roof.
“Without movement, fuller means you‘re bowling genuine half-volleys and that’s not a great place to be. As the TV coverage here has pointed out, this is the least a pitch has moved in Australia since 2014, so we held the game well in my opinion.”
Ricky Ponting was incredulous when he heard Root blame the bowling.
“I nearly fell off my seat when I heard that,” Ponting told cricket.com.
“Whose job is it then to make them change? Why are you captain then?
“If you can‘t influence your bowlers on what length to bowl, what are you doing on the field?
“Joe Root can come back and say whatever he likes but if you‘re captain, you’ve got to be able to sense when your bowlers aren’t bowling where you want them to.
“And if they‘re not going to listen, you take them off, simple as that.
“Give someone else a chance that is going to do it for you. Or you have a really strong conversation with them on the field to tell them what you need.
“That‘s what captaincy is all about.”
Root talked tough after the match saying he expected the quicks to heed his call.
“We need to learn and we need to learn fast,” he said. “We can’t make the same mistakes that we have made so far. But we have to absolutely believe and have that same attitude that we had today. If we do that, I’m convinced we have what it takes to win Test matches over here. But we can’t keep missing opportunities.
“I expect (the players to respond to what I’m asking). We’ve got three massive games now, with the Ashes on the line. If that’s not motivation enough, I don’t know what is.”
Failure may be an orphan, but many are accused of delinquent parenting.
Bowling coach Jon Lewis pointed the finger at selection mistakes in search for fault.
“We felt the ball would move around under the lights a little bit more than it has.
“In hindsight, you might say we should have picked a different side.
“But at the time, we felt like we picked a team that would win the game.”
Broad and Jimmy Anderson were upset to be left out of the first Test.
“It would be wrong in this scenario to kick up a stink,” he wrote. “On the flip side, I love Ashes cricket, love bowling at the Gabba and feel like I could’ve had a positive influence on a pitch like that.
“Of course, in my mind I was 100 per cent preparing to play and that’s especially important given my role. As a new-ball bowler, you are faced with bowling one of the most high-pressured deliveries in world sport.
“Over the past 12 months, Jimmy and I tried to ensure we were as fit as could be in the current Covid climate, ready to go and available for all five Tests in Australia. I think we ticked that box – but England selection is not in the hands of players.
“It is in those of people who have to make choices based on conditions and the balance of the team and our job now with four matches to go is to be ready for the next (Test).
“I was disappointed not to play but I also realise this series is a marathon and not a sprint.”
ENGLAND’S ANSWER TO BATTING WOES AVERAGING 11
England is considering turning to a batsman who is averaging 11.1 runs from seven Tests this year to strengthen its top order as one of four potential changes for Boxing Day.
Openers Haseeb Hameed and Rory Burns both flew to Melbourne with their Ashes series on life support and 23-year-old Zak Crawley is primed to replace one of them is captain Joe Root’s team wields the axe.
The 23-year-old monstered Pakistan with 267 in Southampton last year, but has passed 50 just once from seven Tests since.
Shane Warne thinks Crawley is perfectly suited to Australian conditions and Hameed is probably under even more pressure than Burns after his second-innings duck in Adelaide and occasional errors in the field, including a botched run-out chance against David Warner in Brisbane.
Ollie Pope is considered a slim chance of making it on to the MCG after scoring five and four in Adelaide, which was the worst return from his 22 Tests and dropped his average below 30.
Pope has been left in a spin by Nathan Lyon, who crowded his bat to get him out in the first innings, while the 23-year-old also missed a chance at deep square in Adelaide.
Jos Buttler saved his Test career with his 207-ball defiance on Monday, meaning fellow wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow is likely to replace Pope and play as a specialist batsman.
Bairstow is England’s Mr Fix It – the white-ball opener has batted at No. 3, 4, 5, 6 7 and 8 in multiple Tests – but he was exposed by Mitchell Starc, falling to the left-armer eight times.
Speed demon Mark Wood is certain to return at the MCG while spinner Jack Leach is also likely to win a recall after the pair were mystifyingly left out at Adelaide Oval.
Stiffening the batting order with Bairstow, who has six Test centuries, would give England the flexibility to punt Chris Woakes from the attack.
The No. 8 is the only England player to score 10 runs in all four Ashes innings but he should be in the team to take wickets.
Woakes has bowled 62.4 overs this series without removing a top-six batsman and his sole scalp in the second Test was tailender Jhye Richardson.
Captain Joe Root said England would thrash out its selection in the lead-up to Christmas with one of Stuart Broad, Ollie Robinson and Jimmy Anderson also likely to be left out.
It has been more than 4000 days since England won a Test in Australia and Root’s team would suddenly have to win three inside a month to reclaim the urn.
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Originally published as Ashes 2021-22: All the England news ahead of the Boxing Day Test
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