England v Australia A - Day One

It is seldom wise to draw too many conclusions after one day’s play, and today was no exception. England’s second string bowled pretty well in seamer friendly conditions and will be slightly disappointed to have let Australia A off the hook, but batting became easier as the ball became softer and the seam became flatter. Tomorrow should be a good test for England’s batsmen, particularly against the very useful Clint McKay.

Good Day

Steve O’Keefe

There’s a school of thought that O’Keefe should have had Xavier Doherty’s place in the uber-squad, in spite of only having played a handful of first class games. He batted well at a time when his side really needed him to and it will be interesting to see how he performs with the ball tomorrow.

Steve Smith

Another spinning all rounder who took his chance well. His batting can still be slightly agricultural at times and his bowling will need careful mentoring to avoid him turning into the new Cameron White, but there’s no doubting his talent.

Chris Tremlett

It’s easy to forget that Tremlett was in the twelve for the first four tests of the 2005 series and it’s a while since he last played for England, but the move to Surrey seems to have rejuvenated him and, once he’d got his length right, he was quite a handful.

Ajmal Shahzad

Shahzad was unlucky not to get a place on the full tour and he bowled at a good pace while moving the ball. One for the future, certainly.

Matt Prior

As Ian Ward said on Sky, he took five catches but did so without any fuss. If Australia select Haddin (as they will) then England will have the superior keeper, which I couldn’t possibly have imagined writing two years ago.

Bad Day

Australian Batsmen

It was unfortunate for the Australia A top order that they had to bat in difficult conditions and they didn’t make a great job of it. It was easy to see why Phil Hughes isn’t in the uber-squad in particular. Meanwhile, Watson, Katich, Hussey, North, Haddin and Ponting all failed in the Shield, albeit in tricky batting conditions. The only glimmers of hope came from O’Keefe, Smith and a return to batting form for Mojo Mitch. All he has to do now is land it on the cut strip.

Champagne Moment

Monty (or should it be Jonty?) Panesar’s diving one handed catch. Truly astonishing.

The New King of Spain?

I like Nathan Hauritz. I’ve always admired sportsmen who make the most of whatever talent they have, and Hauritz certainly falls into that category.

As a bowler he is not blessed with the ability to give the ball a real rip, but he compensates by bowling challenging lines and, on good days, getting decent drift away from the right hander. The lack of biting turn makes him less effective on pitches that should, in theory, help him, but it helps to make him more effective in unhelpful conditions, since he has had to learn to bowl cannily rather than spectacularly. As a fielder he is more useful than his rather unathletic appearance might suggest and as a lower order batsman he has become a handy run getter, to the point where it might be worth batting him above the more talented, but flakier, Mitchell Johnson. In short, he is Australia’s Ashley Giles.

As part of Australia’s set-up, however, he has two problems that Giles didn’t face. The first is that he will, inevitably, face unfavourable comparisons with the bowlers that went before him. Anyone would have struggled to fill Shane Warne’s branded boots, but the contrast between the two, both as bowlers and as characters, couldn’t be greater. Perversely, the qualities that Hauritz brings to Australia, not least his self-knowledge and understanding of his shortcomings, are what they need at the moment, but he is always going to resemble warm Tizer after the champagne fountains of Warne and MacGill.

His second problem is his captain. This isn’t necessarily Ricky Ponting’s fault: he has very little experience of captaining spinners who aren’t constantly causing batsmen problems. He, and whoever his successor turns out to be, need to learn fast, though, because they have to make the most of what they’ve got and look forwards rather than back. Ponting needs to understand what fields to set and, most importantly, when and how to use Hauritz, or whoever ends up being Australia’s number one spinner, most effectively, since they can still play an important role without being the genius that was Warne.

A word of caution to England supporters who think that Swann’s superiority over his opposite number will automatically win back the Ashes: in 2005 the spinners on each side were Ashley Giles and Shane Warne, and look what happened then. If Australia’s cricketing brains can work out how to make the best of the resources available to them then their bowling attack could be very dangerous indeed.

England v Australia A

England have had a decent build-up so far – a win over Western Australia that was pretty comfortable in the end and easily the better of a draw against South Australia. It was good to see them playing proper first class cricket as well, unlike the glorified practices that they indulged in in 2006/07. All of the batsmen have had time in the middle and the bowlers are clearly so confident in their preparations that they’ve de-camped to Brisbane rather than travel to Hobart for the game against Australia A. Compared to some Ashes tours of recent years, things are moving along positively serenely, although it’s worth remembering that in 1986/87, when they last won the Ashes in Australia, the warm-up games were so bad that journalist Martin Johnson infamously described as them as ‘having only three weaknesses: they can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field’.

All is not entirely rosy, however. Although all the batsmen have scored some runs they haven’t tended to do it at the same time, particularly in the first innings, which was a problem that they also had in the summer. Steven Finn also seems to have been struggling slightly, hence the rather overblown praise of his bowling in the second innings at Adelaide. Andy Flower is a lot better placed to make this judgment than I am, but it might have been prudent to give him a run out against Australia A. On the other hand, it will be useful practice for England’s second string bowlers, who wouldn’t want to have to go into a test completely cold, and in particular for Ajmal Shahzad to prove that he should have been on the full tour. If whether or not to rest bowlers is the England management’s biggest headache then they must be pretty pleased with the way that the tour is progressing.

Australia A, on the other hand, will have players who are keen to make a point, both those who have been named in the seventeen man squad and who, therefore, will feel that a good performance could push them even closer to a test cap and those who were not named and will want to prove the selectors wrong. We will be in a better position to evaluate England’s chances and, especially, their batting line-up, after this game.

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.

What are the Australian selectors thinking of?

I must admit that I am baffled by the Australian squad announcement, not by the players that they’ve named but by the fact that they have felt it necessary to pick a squad that is bigger than that of the touring party. Is their thinking that they need to be putting pressure on the incumbents to perform? Or are they thinking that they need to publicly acknowledge that there are good young players coming through? Are they, indeed, thinking at all? Given that they are an essentially conservative group of selectors who almost certainly already know their side for Brisbane, it is difficult to see what message they are trying to send out, but the message that people are getting is that they don’t appear to know what they are doing. Oddly enough, ten years ago there might have been some mileage in doing this, if only to demonstrate the fearsome strength in depth that there was in Australian cricket at the time, but few of the reserve names will have the English team and management losing sleep. Xavier Doherty, for example, had a very impressive ODI debut against Sri Lanka the other day, but his first class bowling average is in the high forties and his prospects of playing test cricket anytime soon seem slim, so why bother naming him in a squad?

Some years ago, Gideon Haigh wrote a piece for cricinfo in which he said that the Australian selectors would only have to start earning their money once the great players had retired. The evidence is that they’re doing a fairly ham-fisted job of it.