Dave Tickner's Five-fer: Fifth Ashes Test, Sydney

Sydney Five-fer: Day five

Home and Away

Another one-sided Ashes Test in Australia. It’s cold comfort that this is England’s second best Ashes tour in the last 14 years thanks to the drab draw in Melbourne.

While it’s true that England’s 2010/11 victory - a result that seems even more extraordinary with every passing day – means they have prevailed in Australia a decade more recently than the Aussies have won in England it’s also true that that series is the most freakish of outliers.

England may have won their last four Ashes series on home soil, but they done so by a single Test in all but one of those series. And even the 3-0 in 2013 could so easily have been 3-2 had it not rained in Manchester and London.

England’s efforts in Australia over the same period have been thumping defeats. The 2010/11 victory feels like a freak break of serve in the middle of a series of love holds while fending off a flurry of break points on their own serve.

The success of Andrew Strauss’ side can mask England's failures here only so long; they’ve now lost 14 of 15 Tests around it.

Can they be better in four years’ time? For the sake of the Ashes’ long-term health, they have to be.

Root return

It was brave. It was stirring. But was it wise? Joe Root has been widely praised for his return to the middle at the fall of the first wicket this morning after being hospitalised with dehydration caused by a gastrointestinal bug overnight.

But with the draw such a distant prospect for England should discretion have been the better part of valour here?

Root was clearly and visibly struggling when he returned to the middle at the fall of Moeen Ali’s wicket. He could hardly walk in a straight line at times and whenever the situation demanded that he have to do some running he was on his haunches in obvious distress at the end of it. It was no surprise when he failed to reappear after the lunch break. It’s doubtful he’d eaten much.

Remarkably, his actual game held up pretty well despite it all. He wasn’t so much playing from memory as, to borrow a memorable bit of Ronglish, “playing from amnesia”.

There was widespread outcry when Jonny Bairstow came out to bat on the first evening rather than use a nightwatchman. Plenty felt that was a decision that should have been taken out of his hands.

Yet all Bairstow was risking was his wicket. Root’s health was at stake here, and you wonder whether in fact this was the situation that required management to step in and make the call.

The bravery of Root’s return to the middle – and for want of a better phrase he showed remarkable guts here – will be used as evidence that while England have been beaten they have not been broken on this tour. But Root had already showed that fight on the fourth evening, as others did by making Australia work for 88 overs to prise out the last nine, as it turned out, English wickets of the series.

It didn’t need a stricken captain clambering from a hospital bed in brave, noble yet foolhardy pursuit of a lost cause.

Magnificent Seven

Moeen Ali’s disastrous series ended as it began: lbw propping forward to Nathan Lyon. In between the first innings in Brisbane and the second innings here, Lyon dismissed Ali a further five times.

Lyon’s Magnificent Seven is the first time one bowler has dismissed the same batsman seven times in a series since Glenn McGrath made Michael Atherton his bunny in 1997. And that was a six-Test series.

It’s close to 60 years since it happened in a five-match rubber.

Ali’s woes form part of the larger story of Lyon’s series, with 18 of his 21 wickets being left-handers.

For Ali, though, a miserable end. Lyon got Ali out more often than Ali got anyone out.

However unfair it may be, in the absence of Ben Stokes England desperately needed Ali to provide an all-round contribution. He ended the series averaging 115 with the ball and under 20 with the bat.

Pat delivers

A minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but it felt right that Pat Cummins eight wickets in this match propelled him to the top of the wicket-taking list.

While all four Aussies reaching 20 wickets summed up their all-round excellence, Cummins was so often the best of them and so often unlucky in the first three Tests where his returns did not match those of Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon.

Throw in the three 40s he contributed with the bat in those all-important first three Tests and you’ve got a heck of a contribution.

While Steve Smith’s Bradmanesque ridiculousness demanded the Player of the Series Award, and plenty more Australians had compelling cases, Cummins could lay strong claims to second place.

And not just for the quality of his all-round performances, but in getting himself through five Tests in seven weeks without any drop-off in pace or quality or intensity after an injury-wrecked career to date.

He’s a champion.

A fitting end

There have been about 50 examples of English ridiculousness that can be pointed out with the observation “Doesn’t that just sum up the series?”

It was perfectly fitting, then, that the series ended on another. James Anderson given out caught behind to a ball he missed and trying to review it despite the fact Mason Crane had just wasted England’s final review after punching a Cummins bouncer through to Tim Paine.

That Anderson, who must surely have some kind of record for being out in the middle for the most post-defeat handshakes in Test history, is the England player who least deserved to be left shaking his head and opposition hands only somehow made it all the more perfect.

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Sydney Five-fer: Day four

Gone in 35 balls

Without having done it, it really is hard to grasp the enormity of the task that faces an opening batsman forced run into a changing room, quickly strap the pads on and run back out to the middle having spent two days running around under a baking sun.

To make things worse, the bowlers you’re facing have just spent two days with their feet up doing nothing more strenuous than occasionally sauntering out to the balcony to applaud the latest batting milestone.

In such circumstances, it’s remarkable really that what happened to England’s openers today doesn’t happen more often. Both men gone inside the first six overs of the innings.

Mark Stoneman, whose output in this series diminished significantly after he was struck at Perth, trapped lbw by Mitchel Starc, and Alastair Cook bowled by a good one from Nathan Lyon.

England’s slim chances extinguished within 35 balls. The same number of wickets falling as England managed in a whole day of toil 24 hours earlier.

Cook’s wicket in particular was a prime example of what happens to a hot, tired brain in a hot, tired body. The ball before was almost identical. Cook propped forward and defended, smothering the spin.

For some reason, his brain told him to play back to the next one. It spun past him and flicked the outside of off stump. Lovely delivery, but not an unplayable one.

Vince and repeat

The end of the road, surely, for James Vince. It was remarkable that he got a second chance this winter, but he ends this series with an average of 22.7 – the lowest of any specialist batsman to play 10 or more Tests since his debut at the start of the 2016 summer.

Vince’s biggest problem is the predictability of it all. Twenty-two isn’t just his average; it feels like it’s every innings he’s ever played. Twenty-odd runs and then caught behind the wicket.

Six of his nine dismissals in this series were caught behind the wicket. One of the other three was a run out, one was bowled off the Grand Canyon in Perth and one was lbw when he edged it anyway.

After starting the series with 83, two and two, he ended it with scores of 15, 25, 55, 17, 25 and 18. A quarter of Vince’s Test innings have ended between 15 and 18.

His run out in the first innings at Brisbane for 83 remains perhaps the most important moment of the whole series. How different things could have been for team and player.

20:20 vision

All four main Australian bowlers have taken 20 wickets in this series. Nobody else has taken a single wicket for them. They haven’t needed to. With the exception of Jackson Bird’s powderpuff performance at Melbourne in place of Mitchell Starc, the other bowling has been a few overs here and there for Mitchell Marsh and the odd bit of comedy legspin from Steve Smith.

England had more individual wicket-takers in Australia’s 649-7d than Australia in the whole series.

The Aussie four all been excellent in their own, different ways. Starc has arguably been the least impressive yet, his stats and the Melbourne Test suggest, still the most important. Josh Hazlewood has hardly bowled a bad ball. Pat Cummins has terrified batsmen up and down the order.

Nathan Lyon has contained when the right-handers have been on strike and dominated whenever a left-hander has been in his sights.

The key thing is that there has been almost no respite for England’s batsmen. Even when they’ve made runs they’ve had to work so, so hard for them.

While England deal with this awesome foursome, Australia’s batsmen have really only had to worry about James Anderson.

Jimmy, Jimmy

A final word on Anderson in this series. He has bowled his final Test spell in Australia – even the remarkable Anderson surely cannot put his body through this for another four years. Regaining the Ashes in 2019 and going past Glenn McGrath’s 563 are the realistic goals remaining for England’s champion swinger.

His new-ball spell today was typical of the man. There were 500 on the board. It was 40 degrees in the shade. There were two set batsmen at the crease He’s closer to his 36th birthday than his 35th. He’s bowled more overs in this series than any other fast bowler has sent down in one series since Shaun Pollock and Courtney Walsh in 2000/2001.

He bowled four flawless overs: 4-3-4-0. The four runs came from a Shaun Marsh edge that flew between Alastair Cook at first slip and Joe Root at second. The next two balls flashed past the outside edge. Twice Mitchell Marsh survived borderline lbw calls.

His overall figures in the innings were 1-56 from 34 overs.

Across the series he’s taken 17 wickets at 27.82 and a miserly economy rate of 2.11 per over.

The rest of England’s bowlers have taken 38 wickets at 64.79.

Super Marsh Bros

While the key to the day was always going to be Australia’s bowling, the Marsh Brothers continued their stunning series to set it up.

Shaun went on to 156, Mitchell to 101. Both were able to celebrate an Ashes century with their brother at the other end. Joe Root’s brother was in the stands with the Barmy Army. Australia winning in just every single department.

Both Marshes have been huge ticks for the selectors, belatedly delivering on their talent and going from the butt of jokes to Ashes heroes with four centuries between them in the series.

Shaun just looks like a top-quality batsman. It’s a mystery why it’s taken him so long to deliver this kind of consistency.

Mitchell is more muscular, harder-handed and less technically certain. When the wind is in his sails as it has been this last month he’s tough to stop. Certainly, he’s improved his defensive game. If his bowling can come on he could yet be the all-rounder Australia have sought to really balance their side perfectly.

They surely can’t always rely on a four-man attack to do the job so remarkably well as they have here.

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Sydney Five-fer: Day three

Rash decision

A bruising, damaging day in the dirt for England’s bowlers and fielders. The bald, hard truth was that England had a farce of an attack for this Test.

A pair of all-time greats but wholly inadequate support behind them.

Mason Crane’s selection both here and in this squad has been exposed as a grave, hubristic error.

He clearly has talent and bags of potential. But this is an Ashes tour and he is nowhere near being the second best spinner in England.

While some of the over-the-top commentary might make you forget, Crane’s figures here are 1-135 on what is now a helpful pitch.

It seems an eternity ago now, but last winter an English leg-spinner took 30 wickets at 35 in seven Tests.

It’s not just that Adil Rashid, for it was he, has been discarded as a red-ball cricketer; it’s that there’s been no decent explanation for this. It’s just been accepted.

Ignore the noise about Crane, who may one day be a great leg-spinner but is nowhere near yet. There should be questions in parliament about why he and not Rashid was in this squad.

Line call

Remarkably, Mason Crane joined Tom Curran on the list of England players to be denied their maiden Test wicket by a no-ball.

Had he kept something behind the line, a not-out decision against Usman Khawaja would have been overturned.

But the tightest of no-ball calls went against him.

And that means that the last four England players to be denied a Test wicket by a no-ball were all on debut and all searching for their very first wicket. Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Tom Curran, Mason Crane.

On review

That wasn’t the end of the DRS activity. Late in the day there was a genuinely bizarre incident when both the on-field and third umpires managed to get things disastrously wrong yet somehow lucked out to produce the correct result in the end.

Tom Curran managed to bowl one of the only balls of the day that moved off the straight for a seamer, missing Mitchell Marsh’s inside edge and thudding into the pads.

It looked to be heading down the legside, but up went the finger. Marsh reviewed and the third umpire, bafflingly, decided there was an inside edge. This was based on the tiniest squiggle on snicko and despite the total lack of corroborating evidence on Hot Spot and, most importantly, the very clear daylight between the bat and ball.

After the decision had already been overturned, the Hot Spot from the offside revealed that the snicko squiggle was caused by bat hitting pad.

Fortunately by then it had also been confirmed that the swinging delivery from Curran might just have hit a fifth stump.

The right decision eventually reached on the back of two very badly wrong ones. Tremendous.

Ruthlessness

Australia have been better than England in every area this series, with the possible exception of wicket-keeping which I guess has been a high-scoring draw.

But one of the most significant has been their absolute ruthlessness when on top. England have, for various reasons and in various ways, thrown away decent positions in every Test match in this series. Only once, when handing England the chance to bowl under the lights in Adelaide rather than enforce the follow-on, have Australia even threatened to allow a position of control to slip.

One of the eye-catching stats in this series is the fact that England have actually scored their runs quicker than Australia. But it’s Australia’s careful, considered, relentless accumulation that has carried the day.

Today Australia scored 286-2. Only towards the very end of the day when Mitchell Marsh took Moeen Ali apart did Australia deviate from the masterplan.

England have had neither the skill nor discipline to match it.

Lies, damned lies and…

As of right now, Steve Smith is not top of the Australian batting averages for this series. That accolade now belongs to Mitchell Marsh.

Now as well as Marsh the Younger has played, this just seems like mathematics is broken.

Here’s hoping Mitchell has the common decency to get out at some point tomorrow and restore the natural order of things.

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Sydney Five-fer: Day two

Usmania

On the site of the most heralded 37 ever made in Test cricket, Usman Khawaja finally came good against England.

His poor record against the old enemy is a baffling blip on a career that otherwise makes perfect sense. He struggles against teams with world-class spinners, but world-class seamers hold no fears for him. He made plenty of runs against South Africa and Pakistan in the last Australian summer.

England, though, have always seemed to find a way. Even when he’s got in they’ve managed to see him off. In three previous half-centuries against England he’d never made it to 55.

Here, though, he ended a “what if?” kind of series with something really substantial. It looked on the cards from the word go. His footwork was crisper. His intent clearer. Everything was more positive.

He reminds me a lot of Ian Bell, a supremely talented batsman who even in the middle of a Test match could often look like he was just having a net rather than showing any awareness of a match situation.

Khawaja today was straight into his work, though. England have, seven years after they first encountered him, finally seen his true talent.

Short stuff

Australia’s insistence on bowling nothing but bouncers at Stuart Broad has actually played him back into some kind of batting form.

Pat Cummins bowled beautifully throughout the innings, apart from when Broad was in his sights when he lost the plot. Yes, you’re going to bowl short balls at Broad. He doesn’t really like them.

But more often than not it’s the full ball that gets him out when he’s camped on the back foot almost pre-empting another bouncer.

Once he knows, as he did here, that it’s just going to be bouncer after bouncer, he simply sets himself to have a swing at it. He can still get out doing this and often does. But he’s also a man with a Test best score of 169. He’s a strong bloke with a good eye more than capable of clearing deep fielders.

It was odd that Mitchell Starc didn’t bowl at the tail today. He seems to get it, and obviously possesses a fearsome yorker. We have to assume it was a lingering fitness concern over his damaged heel, but it was strange he didn’t at least have a word in his fellow fast bowlers’ ears.

England were able to turn 251-6 into 346 all out with their longest tail of the series. It still looks sure to prove an inadequate total, but it was more than it should’ve been.

Crane and able

With Khawaja making good on the promise of that 37 all those years ago, promising signs for Mason Crane who bowled surely the best received spell of 0-58 in Test history.

As with Australians and Khawaja back in the early days of 2011, England need to find hope from somewhere. A young leg-spinner bowling acceptably well in his first stab at Test cricket fit the ball perfectly.

He did bowl okay, if not quite as well as some of the glowing commentary tributes suggested, and it was encouraging that Root was willing and able to trust him with a long spell in the evening session.

There was a fair amount of filth – there was a zero in the maiden column as well as the wicket one - but that’s an occupational hazard with almost all leg-spinners, not just 20-year-old ones. There was also spin. And drift, and near misses and a sense that this is a bowler with a future.

And it all started with 17-0-58-0.

Steve Smith things

After Steve Smith’s Perth double-century Pat Cummins tweeted about “Steve Smith doing Steve Smith things”.

It seems a pretty decent epithet for the whole series. Today was just another day of Steve Smith things. A ridiculous catch to dismiss Dawid Malan. A straightforward one to dismiss Stuart Broad. Another 84 koalas safely housed.

His unbeaten 44 today was a long way from his most convincing work of the series, but it took him past 6000 Test runs in just his 111th Test innings. The only man to get there quicker is You Know Who in a frankly silly 68 innings. Sir Garfield Sobers, most people’s pick for second greatest cricketer of all time also did it in 111. This is the company Smith keeps.

And the good news now is that Bradman isn’t around to screw up Smith’s chances at the next landmarks. It’s all Steve Smith things from here on out. He’s got another 19 innings to get to 7000 Test runs. It would be a surprise if it takes more than half that.

There’s a catch

Two of the most astonishing dropped catches you’ll ever see occurred in the space of two overs during what was really a very silly morning session of bouncers and swishing and Bob Hawke downing beers.

First Cummins dropped Tom Curran, who made an enterprising 39, at mid-on off Nathan Lyon. Cummins had been going through some warm-ups and stretches ahead of his first bowling spell of the day and was perhaps caught slightly napping.

Sure enough he bowled the very next over looking to make amends. A short ball was swatted up in the air by Moeen Ali, only for Josh Hazlewood to drop an even easier chance.

Asked for an explanation after play, a grinning Cummins mused: "Sometimes the easiest ones are the hardest."

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Sydney Five-fer: Day one

Peak Test Cricket

For three hours, it was tight and tense, the two teams impossible to split.

For another two hours and 55 minutes, Joe Root and Dawid Malan carefully, watchfully, patiently manoeuvred England into a position of strength.

In the space of eight balls and nine minutes, that work was all undone to leave Australia firmly in control at the end of day one.

The nine minutes and eight balls would have only a fraction of their power without the five hours and 55 minutes, and the 482 balls, that preceded them.

And that’s another reminder as to why Test cricket is so good, so difficult, so rewarding and so cruel.

Peak Cricket

A day that ended with such high drama began with milling about and drizzle and hessian covers and decisions on when everyone should have some sandwiches.

Now nobody can help the fact it rained – although has the time come to seriously consider the merits of playing cricket in a country like Australia with such unreliable summer weather?

And you need to have the toss. And there needs to be some time after the toss before play can begin. It’s all very inconvenient.

But after watching it rain for an hour and a half, we then waited another hour before play started. This hour incorporated the lunch ‘break’, the toss and the bizarre spectacle of the national anthems taking place before the players were on the field.

Having had a 40-minute break after no cricket at all, we then had two exhausting three-hour sessions separated by just a 20-minute hiatus for a cup of tea. What a sport.

Peak Root

While Steve Smith helps himself to a century (at least) seemingly every time he picks up a bat, Joe Root just can’t get there.

A fourth half-century of the series, one at every ground bar Perth, but that conversion rate just gets worse and worse.

It will be little consolation that this was his best and most fluent innings of the series. Not least because the dismissal was arguably the softest and its effects were amplified by its proximity to the close and the subsequent loss of Jonny Bairstow.

Once a player criticised for masking runs of failures with the odd big score, Root has now become the world’s most consistent batsman. His 49th 50-plus score in his 65th Test took him, for instance, ahead of Andrew Strauss who played 100. Strauss, though, scored 21 hundreds. Root remains stuck on 13.

Root has passed 50 at least once in 16 of his last 18 Tests, which is genuinely remarkable. But he has only three centuries in that run. Now, ‘only’ three centuries in 18 Tests wouldn’t be a vast problem for a normal player. But Root is not an ordinary player. And he is creating so many chances.

Nineteen scores above 50 (and a 49 for good measure) in 18 Tests must surely rank among the most consistent, impressive yet unfulfilling and infuriating 15 months any player has ever put together.

Peak Sydney Selection

By the time an England Ashes tour party reaches Sydney, things have usually gone quite badly wrong.

Ashes gone, squad decimated, recriminations under way, scapegoats being identified.

This year has been no exception. It says much about 2006/7 and 2013/14 that this isn’t as bad as those, but it’s still pretty bad.

England’s selection for this game was less about picking the best XI than picking the only XI. The injury to Chris Woakes was exactly the sort of thing that befalls England touring parties around this time of an Ashes tour.

Having decided they probably needed to leave out Moeen Ali, they suddenly find themselves with no option but to pick him. Picking a fourth seamer instead of Moeen would, with Woakes out, have left Tom Curran at number seven. Not an option.

So Moeen Ali plays. And Mason Crane plays. And Tom Curran plays.

On what looks another flat batting wicket England’s attack is two veterans who deserve better, a debutant leg-spinner, a third seamer making his second appearance and an off-spinner bereft of form and confidence.

James Anderson and Stuart Broad face a lot of hard yakka at some point over the next four days.

Peak Vince

Another James Vince classic to add to the collection. Some lovely shots, especially the cover-drive. Looking very solid, very fluent.

And then it’s over.

There was a slight variation on the theme of Vince nicking off for an attractive 20-odd today; he nicked off on the back foot rather than that beautiful yet accursed cover-drive.

It’s all so, so frustrating. The ball from Pat Cummins, in the first over after a drinks break, was there to be hit. It was short, it was wide.

But Vince didn’t do his work. The feet didn’t move, the hands were flung lazily towards the ball. The edge was found and off Vince goes.

It’s not the first time, but it may be the last. He’ll probably, though not certainly, get another chance in the second innings here but right now his place for the New Zealand tour has to be under serious threat.

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