England face crisis on all fronts after thumping win for the Australians

That was a tremendous win for Australia. We should recognize their achievement before turning to England’s frailties. We should also acknowledge their captain Tim Paine’s good sense and generosity. Not every captain I can think of would have acknowledged the influence that the recurrence of Jimmy Anderson’s calf injury had on the match, and admitted that it boosted Australia’s confidence and deprived England of their most important bowler.

Of course it was Steve Smith’s match. He batted with wonderful skill and judgement. The comparison with Bradman doesn’t seem absurd. Certainly Joe Root is now faced with a version of the problem that confronted every England captain from Percy Chapman in 1930 to Norman Yardley in 1948. How do you get the blighter out? Only Douglas Jardine found an answer, but it was an answer that isn’t open to Root.

Smith’s batting overshadowed everything, but the contribution of other Australians shouldn’t be overlooked. First, there was that admirable cricketer Peter Siddle. He came out to bat with Australia’s first inning in ruins at 122/8. If he had been quickly dismissed, I think England would have won. Instead he batted for almost two hours, made 44 and enabled Smith to move from defence to attack. Then in England’s first innings Siddle bowled 27 overs for 54 runs. He put a brake on England’s progress and took the wickets of Root and Bairstow. Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon bowled beautifully in both innings; only Broad in Australia’s first innings matched them.

If the Smith-Siddle partnership was a turning point, another was England’s first innings collapse from 282/4 to 300/8. Woakes and Broad then batted sensibly, but England’s first innings lead was only 80. It should have been 180 at least. That shortfall of a hundred runs gave Australia the chance to win.

England’s last opportunity came when Australia were 75/3 in their second innings. Then Smith and the admirable young Travis Head put on 130 together, and with the chance of victory ebbing away, England crumbled. No bowler was able to exercise control. Moeen Ali has often been a good attacking off-spinner, rarely one to tie up an end. Stokes is a breaker of partnerships, not a stock bowler. So Australia were able to career along at a good pace. There has been some criticism of Root’s captaincy, but the old adage holds true: you can’t set a field for bad bowling.

England’s second innings was lamentable but not surprising. Ed Smith, our intellectual chief selector, had picked a team of white-ball batsmen mostly. Rory Burns had held the first innings together batting with exemplary patience, but he was soon out playing a defensive shot at a ball that was soaring high and wide of the stumps. One of his predecessors as an opener for Surrey and England, John Edrich, would have kept his bat well away from that ball. In extenuation one may say that Burns was surely mentally tired; he had been on the field every day of the match. Jason Roy played sensibly till he had a moment of madness. Joe Denly has done nothing to convince me he is a Test match batsman. Nor has the one-day and T20 genius Jos Buttler, though I’m sure Ed Smith will stick with him, and suspect he will have the occasional brilliant 60 or 70. Stokes got a good ball, but, as with Burns, it was one he didn’t need to play at.  He too was probably weary, having bowled forty overs in the match. Jonny Bairstow is horribly out of form and one can’t but think his technique has been corrupted by the adjustments that have made him such a brilliant one-day player. Moeen Ali is a lovely batsman when going well. Sadly he is going nowhere at present, except back to the pavilion. In both innings Chris Woakes looked the best-organized and most confident batsman in the team. Perhaps he should move up the order.

Joe Root worries me. It’s true he made 85 runs in the match out of England’s 520, but he never looked near his best. The cares of captaincy and the knowledge of how much England depend on him may be affecting him. This happens to most England captains, even to Len Hutton on his last tour of Australia – but he was thirty-eight then and his team did win The Ashes. I think however Root’s problems are technical; the one-day stance he has adopted, with feel planted wide apart and bat raised high, seems often to leave him unbalanced as he moves into line. Correcting faulty technique in the course of a congested season of Tests is difficult, but a session with Geoffrey Boycott might put him right. Sometimes it’s only a small adjustment that is needed. Keeping the bat grounded in his stance and curtailing the back-lift might help. Old coaches used to insist that the back-lift was part of the stroke. Gary Sobers would give a little pat with the bat as the bowler ran up and make no other movement till he saw where the ball was going.

Great players have usually adjusted their back-lift according to circumstances, often restricting it till their eye was in and they were settled. Lesser ones acknowledge their limitations and play accordingly. Nobody in this England team set himself to play the sort of innings that was needed on Monday, the sort of innings that Paul Collingwood played so often in similar circumstances: short back-lift, precise foot movement, head over the ball, concentration and determination not to be lured into playing balls you could safely leave. England have had many batsmen more naturally gifted than Collingwood, few in the last thirty years more capable of defiant defence.

What to do now? Jofra Archer went well in a practice match for Sussex second XI well and he will now play instead of Anderson who is unlikely to be fit before the fourth Test at Old Trafford. Otherwise it would be no great surprise if Ed Smith chose to leave things as they are; watchword “no panic”. For my part I would bring in Sam Curran for Joe Denly who doesn’t look a batsman likely to score a Test hundred. Nor, yet, does young Curran, but Denly made only 29 in two innings at Edgbaston and Curran has shown he can at least make half-centuries in Test matches. Moreover, given that Archer can’t be expected to bowl 20 overs in an innings and Stokes shouldn’t be asked to do that, Curran gives you another bowler, one with a knack of taking good wickets too. In any case there are lingering doubts about Archer’s fitness, and England can’t risk being one bowler short again. Admittedly Curran is yet another all-rounder, and an attacking one – rather than a specialist batsman, but with no County Championship matches due to be played till the fourth day of the Lord’s Test, there is no specialist batsman in form and clamouring to be picked. So I would tell Jos Buttler that he has to take the responsibility of batting at 4 and play Woakes at 5. He has after all scored a Test hundred at Lord’s. It’s still a frail-looking batting line-up, but what’s the alternative?

Then it seems that Moeen Ali needs a break and a chance to recover form with both bat and ball; Worcestershire have a Championship match beginning on the 18th. So Jack Leach should replace him, also because Steve Smith has in the past proved more vulnerable to orthodox left-arm slow bowlers than to off-spinners. Which brings one back to the Bradman question: how do you get the man out?

Well, perhaps Joe Root & Co should study the videos of the three Tests Smith played in South Africa before the fall-out of the sandpaper escapade interrupted his career. Six innings, 142 runs, with only one 50. He was out three times to pace (Morkel and Rabada) and three times to slow–left-handers, Maharaj getting him twice, the occasional bowler Dean Elgar once. On this evidence the selection of Archer and Leach seems imperative.

Mind you Australia might still win even if Smith is shackled. They have more batsmen capable of scoring Test hundreds, a rich choice of fast bowlers, and the better spinner, whomever England pick. Nathan Lyon isn’t a Murali or Jim Laker, but he is in Graeme Swann’s class – and Swann won a few Tests for England.