Ashes mind games in full swing as fact and fiction lines blurred

English quick Stuart Broad claims the 2020-21 Ashes series in Australia is ‘void’ because of Covid restrictions at the time.

England’s Stuart Broad: ‘Nothing about that series was high-level performance because of the Covid restrictions’ Picture: AFP.

For Australia, the Ashes looms as a matter of secondary relevance given the fact a World Test Championship final – the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on neutral ground – is of more immediate concern.

The English, whether they be biding their time at the IPL, with their counties or in recovery, are fully focused and engaging the traditional verbal jousts.

Sorting fact from fiction is half the fun, starting with Ben Stokes’ bold assertion that he wanted “fast flat” tracks for the contest but George Bailey sounded cynical saying: “I saw that headline, we’ll just wait and see what the conditions hold once we get there”.

Given that seam is to England at home what spin is to India when hosting, it seems odd to concede that advantage, but the proof of that pudding will be in the eating.

Stuart Broad raised eyebrows by claiming the 2021-22 Ashes which England lost didn’t count and in the style of Shane Warne, announced the discovery of a new delivery, revealing a fascinating aspect of the looming battle.

Broad, slayer of David Warner in the 2019 Ashes, is essentially impotent against Australia’s two best batsmen: Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne.

The bowler says that has become his main focus recently.

“I’ve been working on this load-up with Kevin Shine, our bowling coach, to create more flow in my bowling action, because sometimes my action can get a little bit jerky,” Broad told reporters in London this week.

“Just lifting my bowling and higher creates a lot more motion and a lot more flow … (Shine’s) quite excited by what it’s doing.

“It was nice to see last week the ball I’ve been working on come to fruition with (Cameron) Bancroft.

“The ball swinging away from the right-hander is something this flow will create more of.

“It’s designed, to be honest, for Marnus and Smith,” Broad said of his outswinger.

“It’s the reason I wanted to change something, to try and bring their outside edge in more.

“My stock delivery will always be wobble seam trying to nip back on off stump, because I think that’s the most dangerous ball. But to those guys, I think dragging them across with away swing is quite important. So this action tweak is pretty much designed at those two, and it was good to see it really swinging away today.

“You always have to be looking for something to improve … I’m constantly working on things in training to see if something can work to implement in games.”

Broad knocked over Bancroft’s off stump in a recent county encounter and celebrated, even though the batsman is not in the Australian squad.

Historic analysis by CricViz showed Broad, who bowled an outswinger regularly early in his career, began to lose it over time. While balls that moved away from the right-hander or into the left-hander made up 42 per cent of his deliveries in the 2014 English summer, dropping away until they made up must 19 per cent by 2017. That trend continued into the 2019 Ashes.

David Warner well may have been the issue. Broad noted at the time that he was “bowling at left-handers constantly” and lost his shape to right-handers.

Leading into the 2019 series, Australia’s destructive opener was his primary focus.

“When (Warner) sits back in the crease, he’s always cut or square-driven me a lot and hit me to the boundary,” Broad explained in 2020.

“I did quite a lot of research going into that Ashes series of how I could get him out … I just decided I was going to try and hit the stumps every ball, that was my mindset. I’m not going to try and swing it away from him, because I think that gave him a bit of width.

“I’m just going to try and scramble the seam.”

Broad dismissed Warner in seven of the 10 innings in the 2019 series and the opener’s average, which had been 46 in 2015, fell away. The Australian averaged 9.5 and appeared to have no answer to the delivery aimed from around the wicket at his off stump.

However, what the visitors lost with Warner they more than gained from the right-handed Labuschagne and Smith.

Fox Sport’s cricket reporter Nic Savage did the statistical heavy lifting that reveals since the start of 2017, Smith (118.67) and Labuschagne (119) have extraordinary averages against Broad.

More surprisingly, the bowler has dismissed Labuschagne once and has only claimed Smith’s scalp thrice – once when he had already posted a hundred, another with a half-century on the board and once at leg slip after Australia had retained the trophy.

England is – and will continue to – talk up the impact Bazball will have on Australia’s approach to the Ashes.

Broad in the Daily Mail again: “If we can get them playing in a slightly different style they could make mistakes and that would be brilliant for us.

“Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja are all guys who like to bat time and accumulate.

“So if we can nibble away at them and just get them thinking, ‘why are we not scoring quicker? Why are we not moving the game forward?’

“I’d love Smith to dance down the track and sky one to mid-off early doors. That would be classic.”

It was in this column that the seamer attempted to remove the stain of England’s recent 4-0 embarrassment in Australia by asserting, somewhat bizarrely, that it wasn’t really a loss because the visitors were so poor.

“Nothing was harsher than the last Ashes series,” Broad told England’s Daily Mail.

“But in my mind I don’t class that as a real Ashes.

“The definition of Ashes cricket is elite sport with lots of passion and players at the top of their game.

“Nothing about that series was high-level performance because of the Covid restrictions.

“The training facilities, the travel, not being able to socialise. I’ve written it off as a void series.”

To be fair, England’s effort in 2020-21 was even worse than the timid performance put in during the 2013-14 when their series was ruined by a virus called Mitchell Johnson.

Meanwhile, the cricket writer’s in the UK are attempting to keep it real, with mixed success.

The biggest call of the week goes to the respected and reliable Scyld Berry, who is so alarmed about the prospect of Australians warming up for the series in England that he has called on the ECB to effectively fine any county which hires an Australian.

“Never is the favour reciprocated for England batsman ahead of Ashes series in Australia,” he wrote in The Telegraph.

The Ashes being on June 16 at Edgbaston in Birmingham.