Shane Warne: Australia’s ‘Bodyline’ barrage leaves Poms broken, bruised and staring at an Ashes whitewash

I WARNED you, didn’t I? SHANE WARNE writes the Poms are lucky they are headed to Adelaide and not Perth, and highlights the three key areas they must address to avoid Ashes disaster.

Joe Root is rocked by a Mitchell Starc bouncer.

IT was a good thing for Australia that the first Test didn’t finish in four days.

It meant the English players left the Gabba after day four knowing they were going to lose, went to bed knowing they were going to lose, and went to the ground on Monday knowing they were going to lose and then lost heavily.

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It can be very deflating for team morale sitting around knowing the result is not going to go in your favour.

I expected this good English side, once they got into a position of strength, like they were at drinks on day two, at 4-246, would go on and make a big 400-plus total and start to boss the game.

Joe Root is rocked by a Mitchell Starc bouncer.

But they struggled when the “Bodyline” bowling started. Australia took too long to get in to the short-pitched, aggressive in your face bowling - but once they did, England lost 5-56 in the first innings and 5-40 in the second.

So to stay in the series, England need to do three things.

- Work out how to play the short ball better.

- Work out a plan to get Steve Smith out.

- And the six English left-hand batsmen need to work out a way to play Nathan Lyon.

If England can’t get a handle on those three things, they will be in trouble.

We saw through the Gabba Test that as the wicket quickened up, all the English batsman looked at sea against the short ball and really had no plans which is a surprise as the Poms must have known that the short stuff was coming and practised accordingly.

Even the captain, Joe Root, who copped a very nasty blow to his helmet struggled with the chin music.

I still think he has demons in his head about playing in Australia and would like to conquer the fast paced surfaces here as he struggled on his last tour.

Australia were not at their best at the Gabbatoir but they still blew England away which is a real worry for the visitors. England are extremely lucky that the next Test match is a day-night one in Adelaide where the pink ball will swing. This is where Anderson, Broad and Co. have the opportunity to showcase their skills.

Both Jimmy and Stuart will have to pull their fingers out and ramp up their speeds to become a threat as they were both well below their normal pace in the first Test.

England must find a way to claim Steve Smith’s wicket.

If we were off to Perth, where it can be fast and bouncy then they could have been in for a real drumming.

But on the other side England have shown, like they did earlier this year when they were beaten badly in the first Test by South Africa, that they have a lot of fight and can bounce back. Remember they won the next three.

England desperately need their two best players, Root and Anderson, to stand up and perform like never before or England are going to get blown away.

Anderson bowled well in Brisbane, and he has 508 Test wickets. But he averages 35 against Australia, and 38 in Australia and needs to find a way to make the pink Kookaburra ball talk as well to have an impact against the Aussies.

If he and his captain don’t stand up in Adelaide, this series is going to be a whitewash.

Can England tame the Lyon?

They need to stand up like Steve Smith did. The Aussie captain may have had a lot more exciting hundreds, and has played many more a free-flowing innings, but there would be none that were more satisfying than this hundred in Brisbane.

No-one in the game has ever batted like him, and no-one will probably ever bat like him. But he averages over 70 as captain, more than 60 overall in 57 Tests, with 21 hundreds.

He has elevated himself, on that back of this game, to the number one Test batsman in the world, with AB De Villiers and Virat Kohli the only ones challenging him for that spot.

Originally published as Shane Warne: Australia’s ‘Bodyline’ barrage leaves Poms broken, bruised and staring at an Ashes whitewash