Australia’s plan for the Ashes: frugal bowling, stodgy batting

Australia plans to bowl smart and bat ugly, in the hope of winning their first Ashes series in England since 2001.

Peter Siddle has been studying England’s bowling tactics. Picture: Getty Images

Australia plan to bowl smart and bat ugly, breaking with tradition in the hope of winning their first Ashes series in England since 2001.

You don’t show your hand in these situations, but there’s a tell from the team’s brain trust and all signs suggest a radical approach to the series.

Expect smart bowling and clever use of bowlers, gritty batting and a frugal approach with the ball. Runs will be hard to come by for batsmen and Nathan Lyon could be the only bowler who appears in all five Tests. But even that is not certain.

The R word is taboo in Australian cricket, but it is back and the quicks will be rotated through the series.

For years Australia’s bowling plan was bowl fast and if that didn’t work bowl faster. While there is still respect for the damage that can be wrought by the likes of James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc or Pat Cummins, there is a belief that brains are as important as brawn.

Australia have almost as many bowlers as batsmen in the squad and the team are expecting the first to compensate for low scoring from the second.

Chris Rogers, a batsman who knew England cricket inside out after spending much of his career on the County circuit, used to say to David Warner that an inside edge was as good as a boundary when the ball is swinging and seaming.

Cameron Bancroft was not pleasing to the eye in Southampton but he batted for four hours, snicked them and wore them in an innings that guaranteed his place in the squad. It was the same story with Marnus Labuschagne in the first innings when he hung around for a 41 that was, in effect, as good as 141. Both players were bruised and battered and both had some luck, but they showed a way to keep their wickets intact. Pretty boys do not last long when it gets tough.

Some, like Matthew Wade — and to a lesser extent Warner — are valued because they know how to score runs.

They will not waste opportunities.

Wade went to the next level as a batsman when he moved from the flat decks Victoria play their cricket on to the testing pitches at Bellerive Oval, and that should help him in England.

“Moving from Melbourne to Tassie has definitely made me a better batter,” he said after being named in the squad. “To be able to bat at Bellerive is certainly a challenge and if I had have kept batting the way I was batting at the MCG I certainly wouldn’t have been making any runs on that wicket. It’s obviously a bowler-friendly wicket at times in Bellerive and you have to find a way to score runs.

“I could hit the ball really nicely when I played at Victoria and we played at the MCG which everyone’s seen is a flat wicket and that’s probably been the big difference that I really had to look internally and work out how I was going to go about making runs.

“Doing a heap of work with (batting coach) Jeff Vaughan to do that and I feel like I play the ball a heap later than what I did two years ago, I probably chased the ball out in front, now I let the ball come to me and let the ball do the work. Playing with the Dukes ball as well in Australia has probably helped that as well, it swings a lot more.”

Peter Siddle is the weathervane of the bowling plans. He’s not nearly as quick as the others or as quick as he used to be but like Rogers he knows how to play in England.

Ireland’s bowlers weren’t smashing “heavy balls” into “the V” when they dismissed the home side before lunch on day one of the Lord’s Test, but they let the ball do what it does in the air and off the pitch. The veteran Victorian is that sort of bowler.

He has watched Jimmy Anderson and the England’s seamers in these conditions and learned what it takes.

“He plays the conditions well,” Siddle said. “He understands the overheads, the wickets, what it looks like, the times that they’re bowling, whether to be really aggressive and trying to take wickets or holding back a little bit and trying to contain and build pressure and get wickets as a team.

“That’s one of the big keys in England.

“When I’ve played my stints in the county circuit, that’s the main basis of the team set-up.

“If the conditions are right you be really aggressive and try and take wickets, and then there are other times when it’s similar to out here when the sun was out and the wicket had dulled out a little bit, there mightn’t be as much happening.

“So you might have to be patient and build pressure.

“He and Broad together have shown, over the years, that by doing that they can have great results and I think that’s something they can take out of it.

“And their game plan, we can try and mimic that throughout this series and I think the closest we can get to being like that, I think that’s the best we can be and gives us our best chance.”