Joe Root – Anshuman Rawat

England At The Ashes Look Like Deer Caught In Headlights

What was billed as a close Ashes series prior to the first Test at the Gabba in Brisbane has now been reduced to a one-horse race

After a day that saw Australia lose just one wicket and a relative Test rookie Mitch Marsh pile on an unbeaten 180, apart from the small matter of an unbeaten double century by Oz captain and the man of the moment Steven Smith, England assistant coach Paul Farbrace said, “We don’t have that extra pace and we haven’t got the highest quality of magical spin. We’ve got what we’ve got and we’ve had to work exceptionally hard”. An exaggerated version of the statement could well be, “We’ve got what we’ve got, we just have to learn to bat, bowl and field”.

Exaggerations are like that – outlandish. But they tend to convey the core import of a conversation.

England is not competing in the current Ashes, because England is “not playing”. The performances of its key stars, namely Alastair Cook, Joe Root, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, and Moeen Ali, can best be described by the reflexes of a deer caught in headlights. Make no mistake, that is not only half the English team, but the only half that is experienced enough to be leading a fight in a tough battle like an away Ashes series.

Alastair Cook, who played his 150th Test in Perth, has made a total of 83 runs in the six inningsat an average of 13.8 in the three matches so far. Captain Joe Root fared slightly better, scoring 175 at an average of 29. Amid a largely untested upper and middle half of the batting line up, these two fine batsmen were expected to lead the way for England. Lead they have not, scoring a grand total of 258 runs between them in the first three Tests.

Contrast the collective effort of the top English duo with Steven Smith alone’s 239 in the first innings of the third test, and you get the picture.

The bodies are toiling, the sweat is flowing, the shirts are getting dirty, but the brain just does not seem to be guiding them well.

At the other end, with Anderson, Broad, Voakes and Overton being different expressions of the same variety, the success of the English bowling depended a lot on the variety provided by their ‘number one spin bowler’, Moeen Ali. Alas, he fared just as bad as the batsmen mentioned earlier. In the six innings of the first three matches, Ali took a measly three wickets for 317 runs, at over 100 runs per wicket. In contrast, Australia’s number one spinner Nathan Lyon, till writing this piece, has taken 14 wickets for 347 runs at 24.7 runs apiece.

Clearly, the English team has not spoken with either the bat or the ball. Since ability cannot suddenly disappear overnight, it clearly seems to be a case of the heart not giving company to the body on the pitch.

Is it because of the controversy surrounding Ben Stoke’s exclusion from the Ashes party due to an altercation outside a Bristol nightclub in September, a little before the Ashes tour?

Did the incident during the early stages of the tour that involved England wicket-keeper Jonny Bairstow greeting Australian opener Cameron Bancroft in a bar in Perth with what eventually was termed as “non-malicious meeting of heads” add to the psychological chaos? After all, it was considered weighty enough to lead to a midnight curfew being imposed on the squad.

And then, there was the bizarre one of England batsman Ben Duckett being suspended pending an internal investigation by the ECB after he was involved in an incident at the same bar, in which he is believed to have poured beer over the head of James Anderson.

There’s a lot going on in a captain’s mind already. He certainly can do without such ungainly distractions. Bairstow indeed accepted prior to the third test that the off-field incidents have let Root down.

This is not to pin all the blame for the performance on the field to those incidents. It is just to say that the English brains do not seem clutter-free enough to be facing the Oz challenge. The bodies are toiling, the sweat is flowing, the shirts are getting dirty, but the brain just does not seem to be guiding them well. They know who and where they are, they see the Aussies coming hard at them, but they are not able to react to it.

The Two Things England Need to Do at Old Trafford

This sports journalism piece was first published on Huffington Post (UK) here.

The second Test between England and Pakistan beginning tomorrow (July 22) at Old Trafford has acquired a strange tension, which is vastly more intense and different from the buzz surrounding the crowd reaction to Mohammed Amir’s return to the stage where he had let the cricketing world down.

The ill feeling, amazingly, has nothing to do with what happened on the pitch for a fluctuating four days, at the end of which Pakistan won by 75 tension runs. What got England’s goat was the visitors’ showmanship after the fall of the last English wicket, in front of thousands of English supporters. The reaction to the act from the host gallery was swift – especially from pacer Tim Bresnan and captain Alastair Cook, who said it would work as a motivation for his team.

But giving the post-match box-office fireworks a miss, one of the reasons why Alastair Cook & Co. lost was because they never believed they were going to lose the test – neither at the beginning of the match nor when they were given a target of 283 to chase in the fourth innings.

And there was a good reason for the confidence. They had just routed Sri Lanka in an easy series win. Add to it their impressive home record in tests this decade.

But they lost – to their own “naive batting”, as Cook put it, and Yasir Shah, in that order. Unless they make a few changes, the result could be repeated.

Play Yasir Positively; Play Seamers Aggressively

There is a difference between ‘going after’ a spinner and playing a spinner with the ‘best foot’. So, the case of Moeen Ali’s horrendous dart at Yasir and Gary Ballance jumping on the sides and getting bowled behind the legs are both prime examples of how not to play a spinner. Jonny Bairstow going to the back foot and getting bowled to a flipper by Yasir is also a form of going after the bowler – because the underlying assumption is that the batsman has got the bowler on the mat and that he can cut the bowler any time.

And yet, the idea is not the opposite – to try to block Yasir away. That was the other extreme that was tried by the English batsmen during the course of the match. Unfortunately for them, they found out that it can’t work for a period spread over 40 overs in an innings.

The best way to play a spinner, as any batting coach would tell you, is to rotate the strike. Yes, with many men around the bat, it isn’t always the easiest of things to do. But that’s when footwork comes into play – something that you ought to possess in a decent amount if you are deemed good enough by your country to face wrist or finger spinners from the Indian subcontinent. A decent footwork allows a batsman to move about the crease while, importantly, covering the stumps in such a way that LBW is taken out of the equation.

Pace bowlers need rhythm to succeed; spinners need that, and a lot of space.

Yasir aside, there is no need to give undue respect to the seam bowlers. If England has to succeed, the batsmen would have to tackle Pakistani pacers aggressively. It should not be impossible for a team that is more used to the mix of pace and swing than most Test-playing nations.

In other words, play Yasir positively and the Pakistani seamers even more so.

Unlock the Resources

James Anderson, who was the world’s number one Test bowler before Yasir Shah overtook him with his exploits at Lords, and Ben Stokes are expected to walk straight into the side after their time out due to injury – replacing Jacob Ball and Steven Finn respectively.

But England needs to bring Adil Rashid in for Moeen Ali – and not just for the ‘that’ shot by the latter in the second innings. Pakistan is filled with right-handers and therefore leggie Rashid offers a much better option than Moeen. Also, Rashid has the confidence of rattling the Pakistani batting line-up once, barely six months ago in Dubai. And he can bat a bit too.

On the other hand, with the pitch at Old Trafford traditionally being receptive to spin bowling, there is a case for playing both of them – at the expense of, perhaps, James Vince. In all honesty, it is a toss-up between Vince and Gary Ballance. But left-handed Ballance should be a better counter to the leg spin of Yasir. Also, he has a better record of the two.

But the most vital part of managing the above resources is the need to unlock – or unclutter – the resources.

Alex Hales, in all fairness, is not going to play for four sessions of a test match in this series. Give him the freedom to express himself without self-doubts about his role as an opener.

The same for Joe Root. He got so bogged down under the pressure of expectations after the departure of Cook in the second innings that it ultimately led to his dismissal. It’s time to remind him that he alone is not expected to win it for England.

On top of that, England will have to fight fire with fire when it comes to expressing it on the field. Get into the Ashes mindset and give it back to the opponent. Most English players would be able to do more push-ups than their Pakistani counterparts. Let it show in the middle.