Opinion: England must put horror shows behind and come out fighting on Boxing Day
At no time did England get a sniff of the possibility of a win. The best they could muster was eau de draw, and that wafted rapidly away into the fourth-morning Gabba breeze and thence into the final Adelaide night.
England benched their two most experienced bowlers, world-class performers on multiple stages, won the toss and lost a wicket first ball. Poor selection, followed by good luck, followed by Mitchell Starc disassembling the akimbo back lift of Rory Burns. Five days in conditions that age and wrinkle can give a balanced team, one selected with various skills of pace, seam and spin, the upper hand as the moisturiser evaporates from the surface.The Adelaide drop-in pitch spun on day three and bounced well on all five. It gave the quickest bowlers from both teams incentive to find the edges. The weather was true to type for an Adelaide summer. What a luxury to be able to field and bowl at night.
It is one thing to bring on tour a raft of batters who average under 40 in first-class cricket and hope they will develop new skills on bouncy practice pitches or in the nets. It is an entirely different thing to expect them to do it out in the middle of a Test match. There can hardly be a major sport in the world that so inadequately provides an environment to simulate match-day conditions than cricket.
To hear England coach Chris Silverwood say deadpan that, if he had his time again, he would pick the same playing XIs he selected in Brisbane and Adelaide is stupefying. In an attempt to justify poor thinking and feign credibility, he is deluding himself . Learning from mistakes is a life premise. The first step is to admit you have made one, or more. Madness, or a 5-0 series whipping, can follow by repeating the same thing over and over when it’s not working and expecting a different result.
Astute batters adjusted via the sighters and settled in to the high release point as he increased speed only gradually. Test cricket is not about warm-up balls and rarely gives success to frontline bowlers under 130km/h. That might have worked on seaming pitches in England, and it might work in county cricket, but that level of effort has a limited life span at Test level.
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