Ashes Poetry

At the time it hurt. If you support England you don’t like to see any English batting collapse, and not two in percussive innings, interspersed with bowling pretty well as bad. With a week or more to think about it – it still hurts!

It wasn’t quite as bad as the fifth day collapse Tuesday 6th December 2007, Adelaide Oval. That hurts, eighteen months later. The worst performance I’ve ever watched from any England team in any sport anywhere, ever. England self-destructed, end of. See http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/06/30/adelaide-requiem-for-duff-batting/  and apply the ire to last week at Headingley.

If you saw that result with Zimbawe, Bangladesh, West Indies, New Zealand inked in as the losing team perhaps you’d have thought ‘par for the course. England’ll do better.’ However, overall it was the worst England cricket performance this century, possibly the last and hopefully forever. Australia took four more wickets than the middle order contributed runs. (Broad and Swann’s spirited end-game slog was icing on a half-baked cake of dross.) No need to go into a comparative calculus of crap, the question is why. Forget fire-alarms, no Freddie, Prior’s warm-up injury, Sidebottom’s sidelining, winning a toss to lose, that just a collective bad hair day. We weren’t howitzered because Jimmy’s gell didn’t.

Unlike Adelaide where England outplayed Australia unto the final day, at Headingley the green baggies were at the top of their game, England rock bottom. It was The Cars that Ate Paris where a big-boy’s big V8 pick-up scythes a kiddie’s tricycle. There is something impossibly majestic about an Australian team hell-bent on destruction, so micrometered, slide-ruled and jewelled, Harrison’s cricketing chronometer, they couldn’t stop if they tried. A road-train juggernaut on the Ghan trail, the Gods lizard from under its blazing thunder praying shonky stutters just to survive. The Neilometer purrs. Were I an Aussie, I’d have thought heaven had come early.

At Headingley 2009 they emulated the 1948 Invincibles – against a run-of-the-mill club side.  Clark came back to bowl a stunner, Siddle found the right length and length (in the first innings he bowled one, just one ball down the leg side.) and Johnson was again the bowler who was ruling the world after Christmas, more relaxed, delivery stride marginally shorter or easier, from which all falls into place, the javelin arm a little higher and more accurate – see http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/08/19/mitchell-johnson/. Oh yes, Hilfenhaus was his usual reliable self. All the edges carried and all the carries stuck, North’s to take Strauss was in Mark Waugh territory, or Phil Sharpe. Simple enough to make runs with caution and aggression alloyed together after that. Hard to think how Australia could have bowled, batted or fielded much better, so even if England had shown some application they’d still been up against it at the crease.

The big difference came in batting. Seven centuries to one says something. Australian players get into line. Watson, a make-shift opener, gets into line, that’s why he’s replaced Phillip Hughes, the one batter who doesn’t. And because Aussie batters get into line, Aussie bowlers have to bowl a tight line too or just get smacked. (It’s a batsmen’s game – don’t make easy for them) How many of the England players get into line, so that back foot, front foot, hands, elbows and head are but a single transect? One. Andrew Flintoff, and perhaps Swan since he can’t get out of line of the short stuff. This is basic technique, the feu of Sir Geoffrey Boycott, and taught at ECB Level One. So why don’t ECB contracted players not do the basic basics? It drives Andy Flower nuts, not least because as he admitted straight afterwards on TMS he had to watch exactly the same thing last year at Headingley against the South Africans.

Perhaps that’s it. Headingley. The ball moves, just a little bit, but not that quick off the wicket. If you don’t get into line that little bit of movement means an edge, a miss rather than something not quite middled. Equally if you’re used to bowling to players who don’t get into line you don’t try to be that accurate, you don’t need to be, they’ll do it for it. Length and line at Headingley with a little bit of movement start to merge into one. The curious thing isn’t that the Australians exploited English conditions to the manor born, perhaps not surprising since they are and practice being #1 test team in the world playing #5. The weird and worrying facet is England batted and bowled at Headingley as though they’d never seen a ball move there in all their born days.

Oval ain’t Headingley….