Root’s England wilts in cricket’s harshest arena: the Ashes

Well, my hope that Joe Root would win an Ashes series in Australia like his fellow-Yorkshiremen, Len Hutton and Ray Illingworth, foundered a long time ago, as early as the Second Test indeed. 4-0 is undeniably a thumping. How did it come about?

The home side usually wins a Test series these days, unless it is manifestly weaker than the visitors. Australia regularly struggle away from home just as England do. The last time Australia won a series in England was in 2001. Second, the truth of an old adage was confirmed: bowlers win matches. Batsmen have to do their bit of course, but, unless the opposition make a rash declaration, you can win a match only if you take 20 wickets. Australia did this in four of the five Tests; England didn’t manage it once.

Another way of expressing the old adage is to turn it round, and say that the inability of your bowlers to take 20 wickets makes it likely that you will lose. Much will be made of England’s batting failures, but the fact is that this proved to be the weakest attack England have taken to Australia for a very long time. With the exception of James Anderson who, at the age of 35, bowled at least as well in Australia as he has ever done, the bowlers could neither take wickets nor exert control. In this last Test Anderson bowled 34 overs and conceded only 60 runs. Everyone else was going at 3 or 4 an over. It seemed that the Australian batsmen had been instructed: keep Anderson out and make hay at the other end.

Australia had of course the series’ outstanding batsman in their captain, Steve Smith. He hit big centuries while Joe Root hit half – centuries and got out in the 60s, 70s, 80s. So Smith’s reputation has soared, comparisons with Bradman being made, while Root’s has declined somewhat. Fair enough; that’s what the figures say. But one wonders: how would each have scored if he had faced his own attack?

Smith’s big hundreds weren’t the only measure of the ineptitude of the English bowling. The Marsh brothers each scored two centuries, and these are players who have been in and out of the Australian team for years. The same goes for Khawaja. All three looked better players and made more runs than they have ever done before. Better players or batsmen facing mediocre bowlers?

In contrast, England scored only three hundreds: Alastair Cook’s double and one each from from Dawid Malan and Jonny Bairstow. Poor batting or good bowling? I opt for the latter. Again much is made of Root’s repeated inability to convert half-centuries to centuries. This is reasonable criticism, though, again, the quality of the bowling should be taken into account. We are told that it’s big hundreds that win matches, and of course they often make the bowlers’ task of  winning easier. Nevertheless Ashes series have been won without them; there were only two English centuries in 1953, both at Lord’s –a drawn Test incidentally. Moreover, if five of your team make 70s or 80s, you will total at least 400.

Would Ben Stokes have made a difference? Here and there perhaps. Yet there’s little reason to think that he would have transformed England’s weak attack. In any case, however sad it may have been, the selectors were surely right to have omitted him from the party.

There will be the usual recriminations and calls for change, questions asked about why we don’t produce fast bowlers and good spinners. There will be talk of the devaluation of the first-class game and the county championship. That’s talk I engage in happily, deploring the ECB’s consignment of almost all championship games to the early weeks and then the fag-end of the season, complaining too about the refusal to let centrally-contracted players turn out for their counties, moaning about the dominance of T20 and 50-over cricket, and muttering about my Trueman and my Statham, my Laker and my Lock, my Hutton and my Compton long ago. But the truth is of course that it’s much the same everywhere, and Australian, Indian, Pakistani and South African Test cricketers play almost no other first-class cricket either – just Test matches and the white ball stuff.

So there’s no obvious answer. The best advice is to wait till Australia come here in a  couple of years, and the Home side will win again, their bowlers being suited to English conditions, and Australian batsmen, even Steve Smith, finding mastery of the conditions and the Dukes ball beyond them.