Ashes 2022: England ask old enemy for help to try and make series in Australia more competitive

Sick of finishing on the wrong end of the Ashes scoreboard in Australia, England want their young players to be embedded behind enemy lines. But it’s trickier than it sounds.

The trouble with sleeping with the enemy is you are always likely to have a lover’s tiff.

English cricket boss Tom Harrison has written to Australia asking whether England can inject their young players in the Sheffield Shield as a way of making one-sided Ashes series on Australian soil more competitive.

England want to get their youngsters up to speed with Australian conditions and break down the intimidating aura of our wide brown land.

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Zak Crawley enjoyed some high class grade cricket stints in Sydney and Perth.

These types of suggestions are essential if England is to improve its lamentable record of winning just four Tests in Australia this century and one of 31 against India, Australia and New Zealand away from home since 2013.

Something has to change. All bold suggestions are welcome. Nothing is off the table.

It’s a given English players need to visit Australia more to crack the curse – maybe grade cricket is the answer – and while the Shield proposal is a good one, making it work is much trickier than it sounds.

The first problem is that it assumes England’s young players are good enough to play in the Shield, and that’s a big assumption.

It’s true Zak Crawley (Sydney and Perth) and Rory Burns (Sydney) had several high-class grade stints in Australia that could have warranted state selection.

But many others have visited here for meagre returns at club level, which would complicate their selection for the Shield, particularly when they are taking the place of a young Australian player.

Ollie Robinson didn’t really fire in his Sydney grade stint.

Australia would want to put a lot of thought into where players were placed.

You would not send a wicketkeeper-batsmen to Perth because they have a busload of them, nor a batsman to Queensland where his selection would threaten the place of Bryce Street or Matt Renshaw.

The trouble is Shield spots are at a premium in Australia because there are just six Australian states compared to 18 first-class counties in England.

There is also a feeling the Shield is a higher standard than people give it credit for, a fact spelt out this summer by the performances of Usman Khawaja, Travis Head and Scott Boland, who decimated England in a way they rarely decimate rival Shield teams.

When England’s outstanding batsman Joe Root was just a boy, a decade ago, he played district cricket in Adelaide and finished the season in second grade after averaging 29 in first grade.

High-quality seamer Ollie Robinson played 14 matches for St George in Sydney four years ago and took just 13 wickets at 47.

England’s younger players would benefit from the Aussie experience.

Instead of sending random players to Australia, maybe England could send an entire team of youngsters to play in the Sheffield Shield.

If England are genuinely keen to bridge the gap they should copy one of Australia’s ploys which worked successfully before the last Ashes tour in England.

High-performance manager Pat Howard introduced the English Duke ball to the Sheffield Shield to help Australian bowlers master it before the 2019 tour of England, in which Australia retained the Ashes.

Whether England would have the humility to do the reverse and try the Kookaburra – a ball they dread bowling with in Australia – in their competition is another matter, but it could only help them.

English authorities have always rated the Duke a superior ball – which it probably is – but there is no doubt English bowlers have more problems adjusting to the Kookaburra than the other way around.

Originally published as Ashes 2022: England ask old enemy for help to try and make series in Australia more competitive