Speaking after the first test, Michael Vaughan ridiculed the idea of momentum within a series: his view was that matches themselves develop a momentum but that series themselves have sufficient gaps between matches for teams to re-group and start afresh. Someone clearly failed to tell the Australian management.
In the aftermath of Perth much was being made of Australia’s pace attack, conveniently consigning to history the events of the first two tests, and so it wasn’t an enormous surprise to see them name an unchanged side. Not a great surprise, but a mistake. Cricket fans can make too much of history, but it is less than eighteen months since Australia won a test in helpful conditions at Headingley and duly named an unchanged side for the Oval, only to find the pitch turning square. This hasn’t been their problem yet, but, as Shane Warne pointed out, you pick a side for five days, not for the first morning.
It was a good toss for England to win, undoubtedly, although one wonders whether Ricky Ponting, still scarred by Edgbaston in 2005, would have had the courage of his convictions and bowled first. It is, however, one thing to win the toss in helpful conditions and quite another to take full advantage, as England did.
England bowled beautifully, with scarcely a loose delivery among the two hundred and fifty plus that they sent down, but they were helped by some awful batting. To paraphrase Maurice Leyland, no-one likes facing swing and seam bowling but some hide it better than others. Australia’s top order have had significant problems all series and they were on display again: Shane Watson was undone playing hard at a ball that got big on him, Ricky Ponting was stuck on the crease, Michael Clarke wafted and god only knows what Phillip Hughes thought that he was doing. Like Mitchell Johnson he has so many technical flaws that one wonders what on earth his state and national coaches are doing.
So far in this series, Mike Hussey has come to the wicket with the score 100, 2, 134, 28 and 64, so 37-3 was familiar territory for him. This time, however, he failed, and with him went Australia. The batting order looks horribly lopsided anyway, with a decent test number eight at number six, a talented but flaky number eight who has barely scored a run all year and then three number tens. The tail wagged at Perth but that increasingly looks the exception rather than the rule: from 66-4 the last six wickets fell for thirty-two to leave them embarrassed. When I got up on Boxing Day morning I saw that England were fifty-two without loss and assumed that the start had been delayed by rain – it took some time for my addled brain to register the sheer scale of the humiliation that has occurred.
The pitch certainly improved as the day went on, but Strauss and Cook batted sensibly and Australia didn’t carry the same discipline and threat that the England attack had. Mitchell Johnson, deadly in helpful conditions in Perth, was awful, conceding forty-two runs from his seven overs and flinging one ball so far down the leg side that it was like watching him at Lord’s. Without a decent spinner to tie up one end it could be a very long few days for the Australian side and for their supporters, who left in droves as England turned the screw.
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