Australia will not be perturbed if England come out all guns blazing at Lord’s. Even if they don’t fall on their own swords, a swashbuckling England performance will ultimately play into Pat Cummins’s hands
Australia skipper Pat Cummins celebrates after hitting the winning runs on Day Five of first Ashes Test at Edgbaston last week. Pic/Getty Images
If allowed to run away with its own puffed-up self importance, Bazball is likely to be a case of hubris that refuses to acknowledge its own mistakes. It is possible of course that England are smart enough to pull a double-bluff move and con Australia into thinking that Lord’s is going to be Bazball on steroids but in the absence of such guile, the arrogance of “going even harder” will likely play right into Australian hands.
It is rare indeed when Australia are the team showing circumspection, on and off the field. As the Brits are fond of saying, it’s a rum business when Aussies are turning the other cheek and playing the victim card but in this case, England are doing all the trash-talking from a position of weakness, one-nil down and needing to do more than just draw the series to regain the Ashes.
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Australia will not be perturbed if England come out all guns blazing at Lord’s. Even if they don’t fall on their own swords, a swashbuckling England performance will ultimately play into Pat Cummins’s hands. If the English rhetoric is to be taken seriously, that the loss at Edgbaston actually felt like an England victory, it will comfort Australia no end. It means that England lack the nous to take the positives out of a lost Test and will continue to fall into a trap of their own making. When five of the Australian top six score just 212 runs at an average of 26.5 and you still lose the Test, it makes a mockery of the claims that England are competitive.
It’s not inconceivable that one of these batsmen on his own will come close to making 212 at some point this summer.
Let’s look at two possible scenarios, leaving aside a thumping Australian victory which will crush England’s spirits. If England come out and win by being even more aggressive than at Edgbaston, including foolhardy declarations, it will merely embolden them to keep going even harder in the subsequent Tests. And at some point, the wheels will fall off in spectacular fashion. If England lose again but do so bravely, or convince themselves that an Edgbaston-like loss is almost a moral victory, all that does is blind them to reining it back and playing clever cricket. Meanwhile, Australia will methodically pile up huge totals and bait England to commit suicide. Again. And again.
It’s not that Bazball doesn’t make Australia nervous. Used sensibly, it is the best chance yet that England have to beat Australia, especially with a bowling attack as toothless as England’s on flat pitches. There were a few times in Birmingham when Australia were on the ropes and were ripe for the plucking but the blind commitment to a battle plan that had little scope for flexibility cost England dearly.
Having got Australia on the back foot, if England had just eased off the throttle for an hour either side of lunch on Day Four, the game could have been theirs for the taking.
To persist with the motoring analogy, just because the average speed around a racetrack is 250 kmh, it doesn’t mean that it’s mandatory to take every corner at that speed.
England had grand designs of scoring at close to five RPO, but they lost sight of the fact that it is averaged over an entire innings and there will be times when it is necessary, nay wise, to rein in the horses when the field has been set deep.
Joe Root charging at Nathan Lyon with men in the deep was unnecessary—with his silken hands, four RPO was easy enough with singles until Cummins had no choice but to bring in a few of his sweepers.
That’s the cue to go hard again! Likewise, the obsession with the reverse sweep when there’s a fielder posted on the deep point boundary. It’s a wonderful shot to break up the field, to break up a spinner’s plans, but if a single is your best upside, why not find a safer single and wait for Cummins to bring that fielder up again. Then the broom can be employed again with devastating effect. Cat and mouse, risk versus reward. If England can find that happy medium between taking the initiative and occasionally biding their time, Bazball becomes a genuine threat to Australia’s one-speed game plan.
British history is littered with romantic but ultimately foolhardy battles that ended in bloodbaths. The Battle of Isandlwana was one famous example of British generals refusing to adapt their plans to counter the Zulu offensive. If England blindly follow Stokes and McCullum into headlong battle, never pausing to take stock, with apologies to the famous poet Lord Tennyson, it might be a case of Charge of The Light (headed) Brigade…
Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Michael Jeh is a Brisbane-based former first-class cricketer. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
Mayank Shekhar’s MS Word will be back next week
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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