Preview

With only ten days to go, the Australian squad having been announced and England’s warm up progressing nicely, it’s time to polish the crystal ball and make myself a hostage to fortune.

Australia have been losing a lot of late. It’s been a bit odd, because they’ve played a lot of good cricket and they have some very good players, but they have completely lost the knack of finishing games off. An indication of where they are at the moment is that dead rubber victories, until recently considered the preserve of the lily-livered Poms, now provide crumbs of comfort in a newly bewildering cricketing world.

The problem of not finishing games off is not entirely a new one, either. Cardiff is the most famous example but prior to that South Africa were twice let off the hook in the series in Australia, recording a series win that more ruthless opponents would not have permitted. This is rooted in the past: for fifteen years or so Australian sides, and Australian selectors, didn’t have to think too hard. They were so much better than their opponents that, as Matthew Hayden would put it, they simply had to ‘execute their skills’. When this was challenged, most notably by India in 2000/01 and England in 2005, they were shown to have no Plan B, but that scarcely mattered when the Plan A was so remorselessly effective.

Their problem now is that the Plan A no longer works as it once did, which isn’t surprising given the raft of truly great cricketers who have retired over the last three or four years, but there is still no evidence of a Plan B. When momentum starts to shift they have neither the personnel nor the mindset to arrest the change and to drag the game back. Mitchell Johnson is the most obvious example of this: when all in the garden is rosy then he can be devastating, but the flaws in his action and, it would appear, in his psychological make-up, are such that things only need to be slightly out of kilter for his bowling to become more of a liability than a help. Given that the personnel isn’t going to change much in terms of quality they have to change the way that they approach the game.

This criticism is different from saying that they are a bad side. They would have to be superhuman not to suffer in comparison to the sides that preceded them, but they need to be much more aware of their shortcomings if they are to maximise their strengths. They can no longer bully the opposition into submission – they have to be smarter than that. This is the true challenge for Tim Nielson and Ricky Ponting.

England, in the meantime, are not without their flaws either. The batting was alarmingly brittle at times in the summer and there is a perception that the quicker bowlers will be less effective if the ball isn’t swinging. Alastair Cook has got into the habit of only playing big innings when his place is under threat (although the same could be said of Mike Hussey and Marcus North) and much depends on the mood and form of Kevin Pietersen. What they do have, however, is a settled, contented side that is well coached and has been winning consistently, but which seems to have a high level of self awareness. They are also in the happy position of having little to live up to: England have played wretchedly in Australia for the last twenty-four years and whatever they do it will almost certainly be an improvement on recent history.

The likelihood is that this series will be won by the side that does a better job of hiding their flaws. As things currently stand I would say that that is more likely to be England.