Boy, is it ever going to script. The second Test went exactly as foreseen. Australia’s pace attack did a creditable job, though they missed the variety of Mitchell Starc. The spinners were decent between them but the batting was awful.
Good technique is essential in England. It overrides talent or a good eye. When the ball is moving, only good technique gets you through.
Australia has none of it. Shane Watson has the biggest front pad in world cricket. It’s like bowling at five stumps blocked by an elephant. He should not be opening, but could be in the team as an all rounder coming in at number six.
The flaws in Phil Hughes’ and Steve Smith’ techniques leave them perpetually vulnerable. Cowan is not glamorous but he must brought back in. He plays straight and with soft hands. He’ll do better. Khawaja has the makings of a good number five or six.
Clearly there is also a poison still at work within the team. Today’s scandal come via Alan Jones who last week put Shane Watson on pedestal and blasted Michael Clarke:
Watson, Jones instructed, is “an extraordinary human being . . . a simple boy from Ipswich” and “a man’s man”. “We have talked about every aspect of the game,” Jones rhapsodised. (If only he’d explained to Watto that DRS doesn’t stand for D—head Reward System.)
Clarke, on the other hand, is a “no-hoper” who, by implication, is not worth “two bob” and whose behaviour is “treacherous”. And Pup wasn’t alone on the skewer. Cricket Australia’s administrators are “the blazer brigade” – especially Pat Howard who, according to Alan, is “hated by everybody in cricket”.
Darren Lehman is not going to fix this. It will take a sharp group psychologist and ruthlessness to do so. My guess is that there at least one personality disorder loose in the group. We may have some decent players, enough to jag a Test, but without any team spirit there’ll be none.
The collapse in Australian morale is increasingly obvious. The more we lose the worse this is going to get. There’ll me more blame and greater division. It’s already coming from the sidelines:
David Warner has distanced himself from an abusive tweet in which his brother described Shane Watson as a selfish pretender.
“Earlier this week, my brother Steven Warner published a tweet about Shane Watson,” Warner said in a statement circulated by Cricket Australia. “Like everyone, he is entitled to his opinions but I want to state categorically that I do not endorse his comments and fully support Shane and all my teammates.”
Steven Warner had previously denied that he was responsible for the offending tweet from his account that described Shane Watson as selfish during the Lord’s Test.
As the rot sets in you can see the English are cock-a-hoop. When Shane Watson was out again LBW in the first innings, Kevin Pieterson dared him to refer it and the English slips cordon were in stitches when he did so. The young English players are absorbing this sense of superiority over the opposition and are beginning to play with arrogance.
This is precisely the dynamic that delivered Ashes dominance to Australia over the past decade or more, but in reverse. England is building a dynasty.
We’re on a slippery slope now. I don’t see the personnel to pull us out of it. In fact, I can’t recall an Australian team in such total disarray. Not even in the dark days of World Series Cricket.
10-nil beckons!
