Dave Tickner's Five-fer: Fourth Ashes Test, Melbourne

Melbourne Five-fer: Day five

Bereft of life

After four days of arguing about the significance of a dead rubber, attention turned to a dead pitch. At least here there was agreement. By day five, the MCG pitch was unfit for purpose.

A Test pitch should not be flatter on day five than it was on day one. And it was pretty flat then. By today, it wasn’t even the good kind of flat that at least has pace and bounce. It was slow and low and dull.

The drop-in pitch just didn’t deteriorate in any useful way. All it did was get slower and lower and more dispiriting for anyone trying to bowl on it. Especially against Steve Smith.

The problem for the MCG is what to do about it? It may still have the C as its middle initial, but this is no longer a cricket ground. Not primarily. It’s an AFL stadium. That’s the moneymaker, and that’s the sport calling the shots. People only care about the inadequate drop-in pitches for five days a year.

The drop-in pitches are here to stay, but it’s hard to see how they are going to improve unless they start damp and risk a short and silly Test match.

Melbourne Cricket Club chief-executive Stuart Fox issued a statement admitting the pitch “has not contained the bounce and pace that we expected” and confirming the pitch preparation will come under review.

"We review all elements of our performance at the conclusion of every event, and the quality of the pitch is no exception,” he said.

Here’s hoping something is done. Or one of the great cathedrals of cricket faces a dreary future, and the hassle of updating two of the banners in the Members’ Bar on a regular basis.

The second best of all time

The benign conditions notwithstanding, Steve Smith produced another epic in an increasingly ludicrous career.

In Test cricket, there is literally no higher praise that can be bestowed upon any post-1948 batsman than the second best of all time.

Smith has genuine claims on that mantle. He is second only to the Don on an increasingly large number of lists. His Test batting average is 63 and a half and rising. Today he scored his 600th run of this series (at an average of 150) and his 3000th Test run in Australia (at an average of 76).

At some point in the future his eyes are going to go and his preternatural ability to place the middle of the bat in the path of any ball from any position will desert him.

Until then, and for as long as he respects his talent the way he has in this series when he has retained unwavering concentration despite his utter domination of the English bowlers, he will demolish more records, confound all technical analysis and enrage all purists. This is Steve Smith’s world, we just live in it.

Moeen’s woe

That Moeen Ali was unable to make significant inroads for England on this pitch is no disgrace. That he was outbowled – again – by Dawid Malan and Joe Root is more of a problem.

While Sydney’s reputation as a spinner’s paradise isn’t quite borne out by the recent evidence, it’s still a rough state of affairs that he is likely to miss out there having dragged himself through four miserable Tests, but in any conditions it looks a kindness to leave him out. Even if it means having to play another batsman, four seamers and just rely on Malan and Root for spin.

While Root’s dismissal owed more to Warner’s slog than any great artistry in a delivery that did at least land in what passed for footmarks on this pitch, the reason Warner attempted it is revealing.

Root, a part-timer, had the confidence to bowl with the field up, encouraging Warner to do something rash after hour upon hour of self-denial. Moeen had the field spread far and wide.

What a catch

There have been some fine catches in this series. Jonny Bairstow’s today may just have been the best of the lot.

With the pitch as slow and low as it was, Bairstow had taken the calculated gamble of standing as close as he dared to Jonny Bairstow. His positioning was more akin to an Under-15s match than a Test. He can’t have been more than 12 yards away from Shaun Marsh’s flappy defensive shot.

Sod’s law dictated that the ball that found the edge was one of the very, very few that flew through with good pace and carry. Bairstow flung out a left glove and held on, like a goalkeeper making a point-blank save.

It opened the door for England for just a moment before reality kicked it shut again.

Draw comfort

England won’t wish to crow too much, of course, but this was a genuinely important result. They were unable to force a result, but against batsmen willing to eliminate risk as Warner, Smith and Mitchell Marsh did so well there was little blame to be attached to England for that.

They will take a great deal from this draw, the first in Ashes cricket since Michael Clarke’s botched declaration at The Oval in 2013.

England were able to turn things round after Australia initially got on top – a significant first. Once on top, England managed to stay there and put Australia under severe pressure well into the final day.

It’s not much in what remains a desperately disappointing tour. But after what happened after surrendering the Ashes within three Tests in 2006 and 2013 it is tangible success.

If nothing else, Stuart Broad and Alastair Cook have shown they remain valuable cricketers for this England side. Defeat and failure for either man here would have led to growing clamour for England to move on without them.

• Fourth Ashes Test recap
• Fourth Ashes Test report
• Fourth Ashes Test odds

Melbourne Five-fer: Day four

Carry on

So impressive have Alastair Cook’s feats over the last couple of days been that today he broke records without even facing a ball.

James Anderson’s instant dismissal left Cook carrying his bat for his overnight 244. It was the highest score ever made in Tests by a batsman unbeaten at the end of a completed Test innings, and 491 the highest team score to include the feat.

It was the first time it had ever happened in the 110-Test history of the MCG, and the first time Cook had done so in a 272-match first-class career.

Cook is only the ninth England batsman to carry his bat in a Test, and the first since Michael Atherton 20 years ago.

Tamper bay

With little cricket played and England in the ascendancy, the main talking point of the day is likely to revolve around some mischievous Australian innuendo around innocuous footage of James Anderson working on the ball.

While Australians in the commentary box and on social media were quick to cast aspersions, it seems unlikely any formal punishment will be forthcoming.

The social-media confection should not be confused with the standard sight of umpires trying to limit the fielding side throwing the ball into the keeper on the half-volley; that’s a standard game the players and umpires go through whenever reverse swing is being sought. Indeed, Australia’s fielders did exactly the same during England’s innings.

Unless further footage comes to light there seems to be little evidence that Anderson or anyone else has done anything wrong here. But if Tests continue to be played on pitches as slow and unresponsive as this one, then maybe we should let bowlers go to town on the ball anyway.

A tale of two Warners

David Warner’s growing maturity as a cricketer if not a human is neatly encapsulated in his contrasting efforts in this Test.

Having begun it by racing to 83 not out before lunch on day one, here he blocked his way to 40 not out from 140 balls of stoic resistance to ensure that England’s hopes of a consolation victory were already receding before the rains came to force an early conclusion to the day.

England have bowled well to Warner throughout the series, better than they have to any other Australian. Their plan to him is a relatively simple one – dry him up and hope for an error – but they’ve stuck to it resolutely. It’s to his enormous credit that he still found a way to contribute.

Khawaja concern

Usman Khawaja made nice 50s at Adelaide and Perth but neither went any further than that. The risk with failing to cash in on such starts is that you’re only a couple of failures away from looking out of sorts.

So it’s proved for the elegant left-hander, whose form appears to have deserted him at the ‘G. Early attempts today to impose himself against Moeen Ali went well, striking him for six and four within his first 10 minutes at the crease, but he soon looked all at sea once more against Anderson. It was no surprise when he tamely nicked off outside off stump.

It’s nevertheless a strange turn of events for a batsman whose career before this series had been defined by its utter assurance against seam bowlers in home conditions and cluelessness against spinners.

Khawaja was already in danger of becoming a ‘horses-for-courses’ selection used only in home Tests. Now he is in real danger of not even being that. Hard to escape the thought that at 31 his is a career in danger of going slightly unfulfilled.

His record of 1890 runs at a tick under 43 is no disgrace, but feels a lightweight return for heavyweight talent.

Let’s review

England are up against it now if they are to force a final-day victory here. That may not be their fault after so much play today was lost to the weather, but one hindrance is entirely self-inflicted after a curious early review for caught behind against Cameron Bancroft.

A caught-behind review has no umpire’s call safety net, and so a fielding side need to feel reasonably certain of success – especially so early in the opposition innings. None of England’s players seemed fully convinced that Bancroft had got any bat on an attempted cut shot at Stuart Broad, and Root’s decision to take it upstairs was a head-scratcher.

That the batsman in question was Bancroft, whose number England have had since his unbeaten second innings in the first Test at Brisbane, makes it all the stranger. Root could yet rue his recklessness.

• Fourth Ashes Test recap
• Fourth Ashes Test report
• Fourth Ashes Test odds

Melbourne Five-fer: Day three

Record breaker

Well that was little short of astonishing. We covered yesterday the changes that allowed Alastair Cook to reach his century. The 140 runs he added today, still unbeaten, were more of the same. It now sits as an innings to be judged by its ludicrous numbers.

Just 244 runs from 409 balls, and 178 runs since Steve Smith dropped him at slip yesterday.

The highest ever Test score by a visiting batsman at the MCG, beating Viv Richards’ 208.

The fifth double-century of Cook’s career – second on England’s all-time list.

His 11th score of 150 or more in Tests - the most by an Englishman.

The highest Test score of 2017, beating Cook’s own 243 against West Indies at Edgbaston four months ago. Remember when his career was on the line a fortnight ago?

Ten hours and 37 minutes at the crease. The fourth Test innings of 10 hours or more in Cook’s career – only Mahela Jayawardene can match that.

An innings that takes Cook from ninth to sixth on the all-time Test runscorers list, overhauling Jayawardene, Shiv Chanderpaul and Brian. Actual. Lara.

The third-highest score by an England batsman in Australia – Cook now has third and fourth spot on that particular list.

If James Anderson gets out tomorrow morning, the highest ever Test score by a batsman carrying his bat, beating Glenn Turner’s 223*.

Dead wrong

Inevitably, the talk has already begun about the significance or otherwise of Cook’s innings. His detractors continued to argue, no matter how high his score soared, that it mattered not because the Ashes were gone and this is just a dead rubber.

It’s an argument that holds no water.

For one thing, this was not a dead rubber for Cook. It may be slightly dramatic to say he was playing for his career, but only slightly.

Cook has also played in two 5-0 Ashes whitewashes. He knows the damage they cause, how they can break teams and players. It wasn’t only his own career potentially on the line here. Avoiding a whitewash - which England should at the very least achieve now even if they don’t manage to force a win - is not winning the Ashes, but nor is it an irrelevance.

Bird feed

Players always look better when they’re not in a side than when they are, and Mitchell Starc has looked pretty good in the side. In absentia, he looks like an all-time great.

England’s last five wickets have added nothing to the total throughout this series as Starc led a short-ball barrage that demolished a fragile tail.

Jackson Bird is not Mitchell Starc. He’s been less threatening than any England bowler, conceding over 100 and taking no wickets. From five out, all out England are now helping themselves to game-breaking 100-run stands for the ninth wicket on top of a 59-run alliance for the seventh.

That this has come in a game when England have also managed to dispatch Australia’s tail with atypical haste just throws into sharper focus the importance of lower-order runs and, by corollary, those bowlers able to consistently prevent them.

Mo problems

What do England do about Moeen Ali? It’s a huge problem now that even their strong position in this match cannot mask fully.

His 14-ball 20 was enjoyable in a farcical, knockabout way, but the main emotion watching him thrash around like a number 10 with a decent eye (like a less effective Stuart Broad, essentially) was sadness.

This is a man with five Test centuries, a man who has opened the batting for England and who is far, far better than just swiping as many as possible before an inevitable dismissal on a slow, low pitch offering no turn.

How has it come to this? He batted, in truth, like a man who knows he won’t be playing in Sydney next week. And England probably do need to take him out of the firing line. Like Joe Root’s absence from the fifth Test four years ago, this is not the end but a practical necessity at this point.

England’s huge problem is how to balance the side in Moeen’s absence. They surely can’t play Chris Woakes at number seven. But equally they can’t play three seamers and a debutant leg-spinner in Mason Crane.

It’s a mess. England may have to think creatively and look outside the named squad to the Lions. Liam Livingstone could certainly bat seven and bowl some handy overs of spin, but it sends an awful message and involves acknowledging the flaws inherent in the original squad; a risky business for the selectors with scapegoats being sought for another Ashes defeat.

There is, of course, the nuclear option for those who just want to watch the world burn: Benjamin Andrew Stokes.

Caught out

The dizzying, freewheeling, logic-defying Cook-Broad alliance that took up much of a final session that will have left many sleep-deprived England fans thinking they must surely have nodded off at some point around 5am came to a controversial end.

Broad speared a Pat Cummins short ball to third-man, where Usman Khawaja made good ground and took a wonderful running catch. Or so it seemed. Replays showed the ball had in fact popped out. None of those replays, though, showed the ball hitting the ground despite logic telling you that it simply must have done so.

Because the on-field umpires had given a soft signal of out, the lack of smoking-gun evidence to alter that decision meant Broad’s fun had to come to an end.

It was all a bit unsatisfactory. The soft signal is nothing more than a soft guess from two umpires each a good 80m away from the incident. Their decision was surely based largely on Khawaja claiming the catch and being of good character. It doesn’t feel quite enough.

The soft-signal system will inevitably come in for plenty of criticism, but it is, like democracy, probably the least bad option available in an uncertain world.

In a Test that has destroyed the truism that batsmen always know when they’ve hit the ball, we must also accept that fielders don’t always know when they’ve caught it.

We also know that TV pictures often add confusion rather than clarity to the subject of low catches. The two standing umpires very often have the best view, especially for catches in the slips and infield where the vast majority of such instances will occur.

Here, the soft signal effectively allows the TV umpire to throw back to the two men who actually had the best view in the likely event of pictures failing to clear things up.

This all works less well for catches in the deep, but this may be one area where we have to accept that uncertainty and imperfection remain.

• Fourth Ashes Test recap
• Fourth Ashes Test report
• Fourth Ashes Test odds

Melbourne Five-fer: Day two

Backing up

England’s best day of the series? You could make a strong case, with the only real caveat the small yet inconvenient fact that it came after the series was already lost.

But ignoring that small, trifling detail and it was a day that had almost everything England could want. They managed to run through the Australian tail. They managed to back up one good session with another one and then another one. They had a good day with the ball, in the field and with the bat.

And perhaps most important of all was the identity of the men responsible for a nation of nervous wounded people checking their phones at 7am and for once not having to fight the urge to throw them through the nearest window.

Before the series, the concern for England was that they were too reliant on their established stars. Three Tests in, and England’s problem has been their reliance on the rookies.

So taking control of the Test on the back of wickets for Stuart Broad and an unbeaten century from Alastair Cook with crucial supporting roles played by James Anderson and Joe Root is hugely significant.

It’s no exaggeration to say the careers of Cook and Broad were in jeopardy, while Cook himself knows that holding on to the captaincy after a heavy Ashes defeat requires some blood-letting.

There’s little doubt that an England team starting next summer with Cook and Broad in it is stronger than one without them.

If England are being really greedy, a quick 80 and five second-innings wickets for Moeen Ali would be just the ticket now.

Here be drag-ons

England’s day began with a bang as they picked up five wickets for 82 runs in the morning session. Three of those five were drag-ons and the other two were lbw.

It shows what a strange pitch this is. It really is quite flat, but it’s also quite slow and few players have really had its measure. David Warner, Steve Smith and Shaun Marsh all managed to play fluently as too, briefly, did Tim Paine. The rest of the batsman, though, found it a real struggle.

Joe Root has had to work harder than normal for his 49, while Cook was every bit as fluent and controlled – if not quite so destructive – as Warner had been the day before.

Three players chopping the ball on to their stumps, in any conditions, is also a touch fortunate. England haven’t always had luck on their side in this series – and will still point with some justification here to Shaun Marsh’s first-ball lbw reprieve. Today, though, things went their way. Time to capitalise.

Broad appeal

Broad has bowled almost exclusively around the wicket to the left-handers in this series with almost no success, his dismissal of Usman Khawaja yesterday ending a 69-over barren spell.

Today he went over the wicket and found just enough off the seam to trap Shaun Marsh lbw on review.

He was immediately in one of those moods where suddenly a wicket looks like it could fall at any moment. It’s hard to think of another bowler with a record to match Broad’s – he’s now only three away from 400 Test wickets – who can get in and out of rhythm so frequently and mysteriously.

There seems no rhyme or reason to it, but when the wind is right and the planets align and his knees pump that little bit higher Broad becomes a completely different beast.

Today wasn’t quite an 8-15 day, but it was still one of those Broad spells where one dare not look away.

Cook up a storm

And talking of remarkable returns to form, this was an extraordinary day for Alastair Cook. Nobody, even those willing to call time on his career before today’s century, can truly be surprised to see him make runs.

Making runs is Alastair Cook’s business and has been for well over a decade now. He was always going to get some somewhere. The questions were how and how many.

And it’s here that eyebrows could more legitimately be raised. It would have been perfectly rational to expect Cook’s “return to form” to in fact be more stubborn refusal to accept being out of form, grinding out runs despite looking dreadful. Something approaching the legendarily awful 2010 century he made against Pakistan when in a similar bad trot.

This, though, was far more like the centuries Cook made later that year in this part of the world.

This was Cook in prime form, Cook at his absolute best. The vagaries of batting form are even more mysterious than those of Broad’s bowling, but it was clear very early on that this was a different Cook.

Crucially, his trigger movements were tight and decisive, their timings just right: not so early that his front foot would be planted, not so late as to leave him rushed. It’s been the latter that has dogged him for the first three Tests here.

But with his technique now wrestled back into shape, everything else began to flow. Cook will never be the most attractive batsman, with only his pull shots and cut shots scoring high for artistic impression.

At his best, though, he finds a way to drive through the covers and down the ground. They’re never attractive, often appearing to the shots of someone who’s had the concept of the drive explained to them but has never actually seen a human attempt it before, but they are effective. Today he scored down the ground throughout his innings and looked assured doing so.

Cook climbed above Allan Border and Mahela Jayawardene in the all-time Test runscorers list today, while his 32nd Test century takes him to the top 10 alongside Steve Waugh.

He also now sits alongside Sunil Gavaskar as the only visiting batsman to make a century at each of Australia’s five major venues, filling the one gap left after his 2006 Perth hundred and his glorious 2010/11 triptych in Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney.

He’s also now only 4105 behind Sachin Tendulkar. It may seem fanciful but today was another reminder of the folly of doubting Alastair Cook.

Role reversal

One couldn’t help but wonder during the evening session what would be the reaction in Australia had England’s wicketkeeper been standing up to the fourth seamer as Tim Paine was for Mitchell Marsh.

This series has been framed by two things: the otherworldly batting of Steve Smith, and the brutality of Australia’s “pace cartel” bludgeoning England into submission with their constant 90mph attack.

Today, circumstances conspired to leave things looking rather different. Smith failed to add significantly to his overnight 65, while an Australia attack trying to cover for the absence of figurehead Mitchell Starc then found themselves coping with a significantly underpowered Pat Cummins.

He was suffering – quite visibly at times – with illness. We all know what the euphemistic “upset stomach” on the official release means.

Now the fact that Cummins was still able to bowl at all, let alone still able to send the ball down at 85mph, is to his credit but there’s no doubt that England’s batsmen were suddenly facing a rather different and less visceral test.

Jackson Bird is a fine bowler, although he didn’t show it here, but he lacks the fearsome pace that terrorised England in the early part of this series.

England have themselves shown that pace isn’t everything, and Bird may very well still have a significant part to play in the outcome of this match. But there’s little doubt England were happy for the respite from the relentless 90mph barrage.

• Fourth Ashes Test recap
• Fourth Ashes Test report
• Fourth Ashes Test odds

Melbourne Five-fer: Day one

Kaboom at last

Very little has gone right for England in this series. One of their few clear successes was the way they’d kept a lid on David Warner.

Warner’s influence on the first three Tests was minimal, with his one significant contribution coming in a fourth-innings jamboree at Brisbane when the game was won.

England’s tactic has been simple enough: dry up his runs and wait for mistakes. He’s generally, eventually, nibbled at something outside the off stump and nicked off.

The plan worked perfectly for England once again. Unfortunately, though, not until the afternoon session. In the morning he smacked 83 not out off 94 balls and managed to grind to three-figures from there despite an astonishing let-off on 99.

Warner’s batting in the morning session was everything we’ve come to expect from the left-hander but had seen so little of in this series. Solid defence married to withering power and precision when capitalising on anything loose.

His cut shot sent the ball aerial a couple of times, which teased Joe Root. Should they keep the deep point out, as they have throughout the series, or keep the man in as a possible catching option? England tried both without making it work in that morning session.

The other feature of Warner’s batting today was his straight-driving. That’s one way to counter a gameplan that looks to dry up your strong areas square of the wicket. Given the slow pace in the Melbourne wicket, Warner’s ability to ping the ball straight back past the bowlers was extraordinary, and his eventual 103 only looked better and better as the day wore one.

His efforts in the morning session kidded everyone on that the pitch was flat and easy to score, an early but universal snap assessment that proved to be only half-right.

Crossing the line

Ben Stokes 2013, Mark Wood 2015, and now Tom Curran 2017. Three England bowlers in four years who have seen their first Test wicket taken away from them by the third umpire and a rogue front foot.

The bowler can have no complaints, of course, but the nature of Curran’s indiscretion provided the day’s standout piece of theatre.

Warner had got bogged down in the 90s. He and the crowd had grown frustrated with England’s tactic of bowling as wide of off stump as they could get away with (if only they’d instead been bowling repeated 93mph bouncers at tailenders, then the Australian crowd would have no issue) and it looked like his frustration had got the better of him.

It was a very Warner dismissal as well, the ball lobbed in the air from that strange half-flick, half-pull that he continues to insist on playing.

Gone for 99, until fate intervened. After punching his bat in frustration, Warner had turned on his heel and marched halfway across the MCG outfield before seeing the replay on the big screen and turning back again just as swiftly. Sure enough, the very next ball brought the century and the trademark celebration.

After further words were exchanged between England’s bowlers and their favourite opponent, the tourists did well to hang in and retain their focus. The plan was stuck with, and reaped rewards shortly afterwards as Anderson induced the edge with Warner on 103.

Curran’s error had cost England only four runs, but the significance for bowler and batsman individually was far greater.

Dry state

England’s post-lunch fightback here deserves plenty of credit. With the Ashes gone and Australia – well, Warner mainly – racking up 102-0 in the morning session, it would have been unsurprising, understandable even, for the game to just inexorably slide away from England.

They didn’t let that happen. The afternoon session brought just 43 runs in 26 overs as well as the wickets of both openers.

It bears repeating given the criticism England have faced during this series. They have kept at it. This may seem like a low bar, and it is. This England team may well join the ignominious ranks of the whitewashed, but they have not fallen apart the way the teams of 2006/07 or 2013/14 did. It’s something to cling to.

England dry – 28 overs 102-0 in the morning; 26 overs 43-2 in afternoon session.

Spin twins

The figures tell the story.

Moeen Ali: 6-0-35-0

Dawid Malan 7-1-20-0

It’s not a good look for a frontline spinner when the captain turns to a part-timer with barely 60 overs on the board. It’s an even worse one when said part-timer subsequently outbowls you comprehensively.

Malan is a useful, and probably under-used, leg-spinner. He lands them pretty well and gives it a bit of a rip. But he is a part-timer.

England need Moeen to be more than that, and right now he’s far less.

There are mitigating factors. Moeen has not really been fully fit at any stage of the series, and had to pass another fitness test this morning before his place in the side was confirmed. It’s not his fault either that the selectors lazily and arrogantly used the second spinner slot in the squad to have a look at a player they clearly never had any intention of using.

In the absence of Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali became a key all-round figure in this side. He’s averaging under 20 with the bat and over 100 with the ball.

The wait is over

On December 3, Stuart Broad had Mitchell Starc caught by James Anderson. It was Broad’s 393rd Test wicket. Today, after 414 fruitless attempts, Broad finally got wicket 394 as a scratchy, out-of-form Usman Khawaja nicked through to Jonny Bairstow.

Broad being Broad, he very nearly added 395 with the very next ball as Shaun Marsh – not for the first time in the series – found himself on the right side of a marginal lbw verdict.

Broad was absolutely convinced, barely even appealing until he’d already reached the batsman before turning and pleading with the umpire.

It was hitting the bails, and had the on-field decision gone Broad and England’s way, Australia would have been 160-4 and the game back in the balance. It wasn’t to be, and Marsh set about steering Australia to a position of strength once more alongside the inevitable, chanceless unbeaten half-century from Steve Smith.

• Fourth Ashes Test recap
• Fourth Ashes Test report
• Fourth Ashes Test odds