Speed gun proves England are off the pace in Ashes series
It took just three deliveries yesterday for Josh Hazlewood, Australia’s slowest seamer, to bowl a delivery quicker than England’s fastest of the match.
They came to the city of churches full of hope. Sandwiched between the Gabba, where Australia’s record is impregnable, and the WACA, where England’s is atrocious, this was their chance.
It would be difficult to underestimate, then, the scale of the disappointment by the close last night, hope not extinguished for sure but flickering and fainter than before.
That they only lost one wicket in evening session after Steve Smith declared Australia’s innings closed with 28 overs remaining in the day’s play, was close to a miracle in itself.
There could have been no harder examination of England’s batsmen, even if the heaven-sent rain that swept in meant that they faced only nine of those overs.
England, so far, have been lucky with the rain. On the first day, the morning showers enabled them to regroup after a shocking start with the new ball. On the second evening, it prevented further prolonged probing from Australia’s quick bowlers under lights, so that Mark Stoneman remained the only casualty by the close, leg-before to a fast, full delivery from Mitchell Starc.
It took just one delivery of England’s innings for Starc to bowl the fastest ball of the match, just five more for him to nudge above 150kph. Then, just three more deliveries for Josh Hazlewood, Australia’s slowest seamer, to bowl a delivery quicker than England’s fastest on
the clock, Stuart Broad. Talk the toss all you like, but the difference at the moment is to be found right there, with England’s one-paced attack unable to make rapid enough advances, booting up another 150 overs in the field here.
Nevertheless, whatever Root anticipated when he asked Australia to take first use of Damian Hough’s pitch, it is fair to assume that the highest total made here in day/night Tests, and the impression of raggedness in the field by the end, was not part of the grand master plan. A small sample size, perhaps, but no team had passed 400 at Adelaide under lights, Australia’s 383 against South Africa the highest hitherto.
Root will carry that with him throughout the rest of this match, and beyond, and Australia’s fielders will be keen to remind him of it before and after every ball. So will Australia’s newspapers. It is a burden. That is why captaining England down under is the ultimate test of character and he will have to be on his mettle with the bat when his turn comes.
It was a little past 6pm local time, when Australia breached the 400-mark, but the sonic boom from the crowd that greeted it, reflected instead on the sweetly pulled four that also took Shaun Marsh to a career-resuscitating fifth Test hundred. After a day when Marsh excelled, and Tim Paine scored a brisk half-century in the morning, to jump-start Australia’s day, the local selectors could sleep easily last night.
By the time Marsh went to a hundred, England had long carried the look of a team waiting to walk the plank. Shortly afterwards, he ballooned a catch towards slip off the shoulder of the bat, where Alastair Cook and James Vince collided in one of those pantomime moments, the ball forced from Cook’s hand by Vince’s dive, with a full house braying and revelling in the apparent calamity.
England endured a horrible second day, then, made more difficult by the initial lift they received courtesy of a wicket with the third ball of the morning, Peter Handscomb deep in his crease and leg-before to Broad. The previous evening, Handscomb had walked from the Oval in heavy “conversation” with a variety of England’s bowlers, one further reason for the animated reaction from Broad when the decision went in his favour.
This presaged a highly competitive first hour, with the ball nipping more than it had on the first day, and England’s seamers bowling with far more purpose and urgency. As such, batting looked a tricky business. Anderson thought he had claimed Paine twice leg-before, only to be denied each time by DRS after umpire Gaffaney had sent the batsman on his way.
Paine’s wicket would have been of immense value, because it was he, rather than Marsh, who was keeping the scoreboard moving, with some crisp drives and crafty running between the wickets. Finger trouble apart — he was rapped on the right index finger twice by Craig Overton — he responded to the situation as a predecessor of his, Brad Haddin, used to do, which is to say with bristling purpose. When he launched Moeen Ali for six over straight mid-wicket, the impression was further strengthened.
After Handscomb’s dismissal, success was sparing: just one more wicket fell in the morning — Paine pulling to Moeen Ali in the deep to give Overton a second wicket — and one in the afternoon, as Australia stretched their first innings out with the intention of both batting England out of the game, and then bowling in the dreaded evening hours. England looked one-dimensional, with Ali’s continuing ineffectiveness not helping matters.
Throughout a slow afternoon, as Marsh inched his way to his hundred, and Pat Cummins further highlighted the toothless nature of England’s attack, there was a real sense of foreboding in the press box and beyond. When would Smith call a halt to the torture? How ugly would things then get?
Smith let the fun continue for 20 minutes after tea, and might have let it continue a little longer, such was England’s evident misery.
Nathan Lyon replaced Cummins and England moved to bodyline mode, bouncing Lyon ad nauseam with fielders in far-flung corners of the empire. Lyon, off the mark with a six, swung the bat merrily; Marsh enjoyed himself enormously, at one point smashing Broad back over his head for a mighty six, and the crowd whooped and hollered, delirious at England’s loss of control.
The declaration came as twilight descended, and Root’s worst nightmare had come to pass. At the change of innings, a bugler sounded Waltzing Matilda, the crowd, which had dispersed in numbers the night before, now stayed to watch the Poms roasted on the spit, and Australia’s seamers loosened their limbs menacingly in the middle. Because of the rain the threat did not quite come to pass, but England have plenty of ground to make up.