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THE ASHES | GIDEON HAIGH

Finally – Ben Stokes shows some defiance and Jonny Bairstow provides a genuine Ashes moment

Gideon Haigh, Sydney

Friday January 07 2022, 8.30am, The Times

 

Call it a low bar. It says something of this Ashes tour that a day in which they failed to score for 11 overs while losing three wickets might conceivably have been England’s best of the summer. Against the pink backdrop was some red-blooded cricket, if also some ragged stuff, indicative of fatigue.

The outstanding part was provided by Jonny Bairstow, hardly a horses-for-courses selection given his average of 26 from a score of earlier Tests against Australia, and resuming after an indigestible lunch with England 36 for four but reaching a bonny hundred in the final over.

Forty-two years ago, Jonny’s dad David played in a famous one-day international when England were 61 for six chasing 164. “Come on, we can piss this,” he reputedly told his tail-end partner Graham Stevenson — and was proved right.

There was nothing much to piss here, but Jonny is as popular a cricketer as his father: as Pat Cummins prepared to close the day out with Bairstow on 99, the umpire Paul Reiffel patted him companionably on the shoulder. As Bairstow celebrated the cut that streaked to the boundary, face turning the same colour as his hair, Australians gave generous acknowledgment: this felt like a genuine Ashes moment rather than the pallid substitutes offered in the preceding three Tests, and even earlier in the day.

Bairstow celebrates his century and the crowd at the SCG rise to applaud him too

Bairstow celebrates his century and the crowd at the SCG rise to applaud him too

PA:PRESS ASSOCIATION

 

Before lunch England might have given a wet paper bag a run for its money, but they were no match for an Australian attack that pressed them ever more tightly, until runs had become not just infrequent but isolated almost to the point of illegality.

 

It was this, rather than any particular fire-cracking delivery, that scuttled England: Haseeb Hameed and Zak Crawley drove headlong at balls they should have defended, Joe Root skewered one he could have left and Dawid Malan must have sensed the attending leg slip but let his gloves be drawn into line anyway.

Strictly speaking it is only possible to have one nadir, but if multiple nadirs were conceivable this might have been the nadir of all Root’s nadirs this series, a pointless stroke that savoured of nothing but defeat, after which he could not even summon the energy to punch the back of his bat, as in Adelaide and Melbourne.

That said, this was fine bowling in helpful conditions. When he bowled a ball that shaped in to Stokes then seamed away to beat the outside edge, Scott Boland glanced up at the replay on the screen and permitted himself a smile — perhaps he was reminded of a ball of which he had previously only dreamt.

Stokes and Bairstow have a record partnership of 399, an average partnership of about 46, and at their best what looks like a natural simpatico. Stokes will for ever be associated with Headingley in 2019; less well remembered is that Bairstow, who made a brisk 36, was the catalyst, drawing Stokes out of a long introspection towards his match-winning momentum.

For all the permeability of Bairstow’s defence, there is also something about his vitality, the way he lowers his head as he sets off, determined to make two from one, three from two, that spurs a partner on. He pulled a six off Cameron Green that may well have been England’s shot of the tour.

 

Stokes, of course, is the personification of English defiance — the benevolent bodyguard, the sheltering oak. He stood up as rising deliveries struck his chest, arm, back shoulder, and previously damaged finger.

He felt the pain as he stretched the intercostal muscle that had caused his retirement from the attack on Thursday, occasionally staggering back like a gut-shot cowboy but always bouncing back up. Importantly he looked to have straightened his backlift, which in the first three Tests had trended towards gully.

Still, of the pair Bairstow had the more to prove, having not made a Test hundred in the Covid age, although with the advantage of a couple of white-ball centuries against Australia, not to mention a flattening pitch, a softening ball and the absence of Boland after a fall in his follow through.

 

For a moment or two either side of tea, in fact, the hosts looked a little non-plussed. Stokes clobbered Nathan Lyon over cover and Bairstow over cow corner. Cummins tried bouncers with three men back to Stokes. Steve Smith attempted a mercurial intervention, anticipating a paddle sweep from Bairstow and materialising at leg slip where the ball just eluded him — it recalled that photograph of Jack Gregory darting behind Bert Oldfield having spotted Arthur Mailey’s googly to Jack Hobbs.

It was against the run of play when Stokes misjudged Lyon’s length and Cummins struck Bairstow a resounding blow on the right thumb which would have made hitchhiking difficult. But Mark Wood provided a lift, Jack Leach a final dink, and England lived to fight another day which at stages this summer has barely seemed possible.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/at-last-stokes-shows-some-defiance-and-bairstow-provides-a-genuine-ashes-moment-dgvrcb9tn

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On 06/01/2022 at 11:11, Uilleam said:

I could see Mr Pat Cummins roaring in tomorrow, and skittling the top order. 

OK, I got it wrong; but actually I didn't 🙂

 

Batsman   Runs Balls 4s 6s
Haseeb Hameed b Starc 6 26 1 0
Zak Crawley b Boland 18 55 2 0
Dawid Malan c Khawaja b Green 3 39 0 0
Joe Root c Smith b Boland 0 7 0 0

 

 

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Australia second innings
Batsman   Runs Balls 4s 6s
Marcus Harris c Sub b Leach 27 61 3 0
David Warner c Sub b Wood 3 18 0 0
Marnus Labuschagne c Sub b Wood 29 42 1 0
Steven Smith b Leach 23 31 2 1
Usman Khawaja Not Out 101 138 10 2
Cameron Green c Root b Leach 74 122 7 1
Alex Carey c Sub b Leach 0 1 0 0
Pat Cummins Yet to Bat 0 0 0 0
Mitchell Starc Yet to Bat 0 0 0 0
Nathan Lyon Yet to Bat 0 0 0 0
Scott Boland Yet to Bat 0 0 0 0
Extras 3lb 0 5w 8  
Total for 6 265 68.5 overs

 

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/cricket/match/2022-01-07/england-cricket-team

 

 

 

 

Bowler O M R W
James Anderson 12 1 34 0
Stuart Broad 11 3 31 0
Mark Wood 15 0 65 2
Jack Leach 21 1 84 4
Joe Root 7 0 35 0
Dawid Malan 2 0 13 0
Fall of wickets
Order Name Runs
1 David Warner 12
2 Marcus Harris 52
3 Marnus Labuschagne 68
4 Steven Smith 86
5 Cameron Green 265
6 Alex Carey 265
Edited by Uilleam
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ENGLAND SECOND INNINGS

Batsman   Runs Balls 4s 6s
Zak Crawley lbw b Green 77 100 13 0
Haseeb Hameed c Carey b Boland 9 58 0 0
Dawid Malan b Lyon 4 29 0 0
Joe Root c Carey b Boland 24 85 3 0
Ben Stokes c Smith b Lyon 60 123 10 1
Jonny Bairstow c Labuschagne b Boland 41 105 3 0
Jos Buttler lbw b Cummins 11 38 0 0
Mark Wood lbw b Cummins 0 2 0 0
Jack Leach c Warner b Smith 26 34 2 0
Stuart Broad Not Out 8 35 0 0
James Anderson Not Out 0 6 0 0
Extras 7lb 0 3nb 10  
Total
Bowler O M R W
Mitchell Starc 18 2 68 0
Pat Cummins 22 5 80 2
Scott Boland 24 11 30 3
Nathan Lyon 22 10 28 2
Cameron Green 10 1 38 1
Marnus Labuschagne 2 0 9 0
Steven Smith 4 1 10 1
Fall of wickets
Order Name Runs
1 Haseeb Hameed 46
2 Dawid Malan 74
3 Zak Crawley 96
4 Joe Root 156
5 Ben Stokes 193
6 Jos Buttler 218
7 Mark Wood 218
8 Jonny Bairstow 237
9

Jack Leach

 

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/cricket/match/2022-01-09/england-cricket-team

270

 

 

for 9 270

102.0 overs

 

 

 

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Well, at least it went the distance and to some extent it was a Test, even if the test was only to see if England could survive at the wicket for a day and avoid yet another defeat. The truth is it was possibly the poorest match so far in this series, with neither side bowling or batting particularly well and each trying to be less ineffective than the other. Avoiding defeat is inessential element of test cricket but I felt this one didn't so much end in a blaze of glory as limp over the line like the dead rubber it clearly was.

 

I do hope England don't big this up as some kind of achievement. That would be an enormous error. In an Ashes Series where they've been routinely humiliated, to mistake dogged resistance for genuine progress will only cement their mediocrity.

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England squeaks the draw

 

THE ASHES | MIKE ATHERTON

The Ashes: England summon newfound resilience to avoid whitewash

Sydney (final day of five): Australia drew with England

new

Mike Atherton, Chief Cricket Correspondent

Sunday January 09 2022, 9.45am, The Times

 

Australia’s fielders surrounded the bat in search of the crucial wickets

Australia’s fielders surrounded the bat in search of the crucial wickets

JASON O'BRIEN/PA WIRE

 

It looked like it was to be the defining image from the match and the series. Mark Wood, hitherto unbroken in spirit, had been sent to his hands and knees, head bowed and seemingly beaten at last, with Australians swarming all around in celebration. After a searing in-swinging yorker from Pat Cummins had damn nearly blown his foot off, Wood limped off. There was still over an hour to play and, three wickets remaining, another defeat looked inevitable.

Somehow, in an epic last hour that will be long remembered by those who witnessed it, England hung on for the draw. It was a dramatic scene at the last, with the light so gloomy that the umpires had told Cummins he could not use his quick bowlers to finish the job off; with 12,000 supporters urging Australia on, and with James Anderson joining Stuart Broad in the middle for the final two overs of the game. On the sidelines, Ben Stokes pulled his sweater over his eyes. He couldn’t bear to watch.

Stokes had played his part earlier, making his second half-century of the match, doggedly and in pain from his injured side. As had Jonny Bairstow who had batted for more than two and a half hours with his damaged thumb, whose face was smeared with sweat and whose sweater was caked in mud after an earlier, desperate dive into the crease. He should have been run out then, on two, and was dropped on 28 at slip. These moments were costly for Australia, as was the shower around lunchtime that stole seven overs from the contest.

 

Earlier than that, young Zak Crawley had set the day off with a sparkling half-century, full of thunderous drives and pulls, but that seemed a long time ago as, with 13 balls to go, Jack Leach pushed forward to Steve Smith’s leg spin and edged to slip. Leach had played with great determination for 15 overs but now it was down to Broad and Anderson, two ageing champions, to salvage England’s pride, with the potential for a whitewash hanging on the outcome.

Broad settled himself for a set from Nathan Lyon, who had earlier deceived Dawid Malan and found some sharp spin to break Stokes’s resistance. He likes left-handers. Broad pushed a giant stride down the pitch to every ball, and, drama queen that he is, did a touch of gardening on the pitch to ramp up the tension. The crowd jeered and booed him like a pantomime villain. Broad, you sensed, loved it. Maybe the touch of drizzle meant that the ball was hurrying from the surface, but Lyon could find no purchase. Broad survived.

 

Anderson, whose fate in life seems to revolve around situations like this and who must have sensed that he would be called on again, calmly settled himself. Smith, who had earlier encouraged Cummins to place a silly point for Bairstow to Scott Boland, a piece of inspiration that had produced an immediate dividend, went in search of a piece of Ashes history of his own, with ball this time, not bat. Anderson resisted the urge to play his famous reverse sweep. He survived.

So the whitewash will be avoided, which is a small mercy to take from a horrible tour. Few observers who have followed the England cricket team over the past two years expected anything other than defeat, for sure. A combination of the historical difficulties of winning here — Len Hutton once said England teams had to be 25 per cent better to win in Australia — the batting frailties, in particular, and the strength of Australia’s pace attack offered a sobering assessment before a ball had been bowled.

 

Yet it was hoped that England might throw a few punches, metaphorically speaking, that they could play with spirit and courage and find a way of taking the game to Australia from time to time. Only in Sydney, four matches into the series, has that happened, which is the real indictment of this team and its leadership: they have made a good Australia team look much better than they are.

Here, at last, on the ground that England have historically played their best cricket, the action was competitive, not least when Bairstow and Stokes were in combination in both innings, when Crawley took the game to Australia’s new-ball bowlers in the second, when Broad marked his comeback with a five-wicket haul, when Wood hurled himself into the fray, and again through the fifth afternoon, when a real determination was evident to avoid defeat. Eventually, these passages added up to enough.

Crawley played superbly for his 77 in the morning. At one stage he had scored 77 out of 91 runs, so confident and assertive was he (and so limited was his partner Haseeb Hameed). While his first-class returns are modest, he has presence at the crease and is capable of putting bowlers under pressure when they stray in line and length. If he can tighten up a fraction, hold his left side for longer (to prevent the bat coming across the ball), he has a future. He should be persevered with.

Since a modestly promising start in Brisbane, Hameed has drowned in his own insecurities and caution. As in the first innings, he failed to profit from a dropped catch by Alex Carey and will not survive this Test. At the other end, it was a totally different story as Crawley set about Australia’s quicker bowlers with intent. With his tall reach and power on the drive, he forced bowlers from their comfort zone and then profited when they pushed back in length.

The ball rang true off Crawley’s bat and his fifty came up in 69 balls, with eight crisp boundaries. With Cameron Green’s introduction, Crawley had clipped and pulled a brace of fours to the leg-side, and so it said something of the all-rounder’s game sense that he produced a pin-point yorker, winning a leg-before decision that Crawley tried and failed to overturn. When Malan was bowled by Lyon, cutting a ball that was too full to cut, England lunched precariously, three down.

 

But in the afternoon, only one more wicket fell, as the middle order bedded in. Joe Root it was, undone by a combination of excellent, persistent bowling and smart captaincy. With the old ball offering a hint of reverse swing, Cummins set two straight mid-wickets for Boland, who, for two overs, targeted Root’s stumps and the knee roll of his pad. Then, he switched: extra man on the off side, extra slip, wider line, and it took one ball to find the outside edge. Boland’s start in Test cricket has been extraordinary.

Bairstow and Stokes combined then for over an hour, backs to the wall this time in contrast to their first innings counter-attack. When he finally poked Lyon to slip, Stokes lifted his bat in agonised frustration, as if he wanted to bring it down on the nearest obstacle in rage, but then gently let it come to rest onto his helmet. There were 27 overs remaining as Jos Buttler walked to the crease.

Buttler ate up ten of them, bravely with the pain he was feeling from his fractured finger, which will see him return to the UK on Monday. The second new ball arrived and Cummins summoned it and his own final reserves of energy, producing an inswinger to Buttler that deceived the umpire but not the DRS review. Then, two balls later, he floored Wood with a thunderbolt of a yorker. Wood went to his knees. Australia, at that point, must have thought they had done enough. For once, it was not to be.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ashes-england-summon-newfound-resilience-to-avoid-whitewash-7jqw8rj9s

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shes: Australian hunger and English desperation bring dead Test to life

Gideon Haigh

Sunday January 09 2022, 9.00am, The Times

This summer, Australia want it all. They have the Ashes. They have the kudos. They’re not satisfied. Strictly speaking, this was a dead Test, but as it entered its last hour it looked vitally alive. And at 6.50pm, with the floodlights ablaze and ten Australians so close to James Anderson that N95s would be been justified, it might have been the closing scenes of a vintage Ashes from yesteryear.

In the end, the caution of Pat Cummins’ declaration on Saturday may have cost his team a series whitewash, but there was a streak of ruthlessness here too.

 

Australians expect an opponent to earn victory. England were left this last day with nothing but safety to play for. Even if they drew, their side of the Ashes ledger would remain at zero. They were warring for neutrality.

More properly, of course, Australia paid for six dropped catches across the Test — had Marcus Harris at short leg held Ben Stokes (16) before lunch, the game would probably have been done with an hour to spare.

 

There were, to be fair, some signs of weariness in Australia’s efforts in Sydney. Their cricket lacked the unwavering precision of the first three Tests. Their outstanding player, Usman Khawaja, was their freshest: when he ran up to Steve Smith with a brainstorm in the last over, one half expected him to seize the ball and do the job himself.

Australia’s pacemen may also have been a little short in England’s second innings, in search of the uneven bounce this pitch promised but did not quite deliver. But with the second new ball they roused themselves. In a stunning over, Cummins pinned Jos Buttler with an inducker and prostrated Mark Wood with a yorker, the Australians celebrating the reviews as though their captain had just nodded in a World Cup goal. When Jonny Bairstow nicked on to his pads, the team mobbed Marnus Labuschagne at silly point and would not let him go.

 

Jack Leach pushed Mitchell Starc cautiously down the ground soon after, and the bowler himself set off in pursuit, as swiftly as tired legs would carry him. When Stuart Broad nudged into the covers, Labuschagne pursued it in his helmet, slid, pivoted and threw flat to the bowler’s end though two had been safely completed.

There was honour for England in the last day too, albeit with some familiar weaknesses. Haseeb Hameed perished after an hour and half of strokeless defiance. He received 84 balls in the Test, was dismissed by two, dropped from two, scored from eight, was beaten by eight.

In hindsight, Haseeb’s tour has turned on that leg-side strangle in the second innings at Brisbane, which nipped a promising innings in the bud — his tour has tailed away since. The chest guard resembling a telephone book stuffed down his shirt; the sleeveless sweater that hangs on him like a store dummy; the pad straps that seem to wind twice around his legs: all complete the image of a cricketer not quite substantial enough for his role.

Zak Crawley, however, impressed, both in the full face of his vertical defensive bat and the alacrity of his attack: something about his willingness to pull was reminiscent of Michael Vaughan’s fine summer here in 2002-3.

Australia may over the next few years see a bit of that bat twiddle, a kind of musketeer’s flourish, if England are prepared to keep faith him. Cameron Green, however, prevailed in the battle of the tallest, his yorker demonstrating how far down it can be for lofty men.

With lunch came a swathe of rain, the ground staff performing their now-familiar outsized origami. It did not cost the Australians many overs, but they did lose some momentum. Mid-afternoon offered the fascinating spectacle of Stokes combining with his beleaguered captain and close friend Root, whom he has been tipped to succeed but disavowed any wish to: the man who wouldn’t be king alongside the uneasy crown-wearing head.

 

If wishes were horses, the pair would have led a thundering victory charge, resurrecting Root’s leadership. At length, however, Root nicked off, adjourning for a penitent net session at the back of the Bradman Stand. Stokes, now with Bairstow for company, reached fifty with the barest acknowledgement. And with eight overs til the new ball, Stokes’s concentration wavered slightly.

He came down at Nathan Lyon and miscued over the top. Next ball he hung back, and the ball turned sharply to take the edge — a collector’s piece of off spin to a left-hander. For all the excellence of Starc and Cummins, not to mention the meteoric rises of Scott Boland and Green, Lyon has been this series’ top wicket-taker, with 16 at 23.5.

It made for the exciting final scenes, the slight Australian disappointment, the minor English satisfaction, if also the sense that 3-0 is barely distinguishable from 4-0, and that the teams in comparison remain roughly as they were.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ashes-australian-hunger-and-english-desperation-bring-dead-test-to-life-2ndq2v79z

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46 minutes ago, Bill said:

Well, at least it went the distance and to some extent it was a Test, even if the test was only to see if England could survive at the wicket for a day and avoid yet another defeat. The truth is it was possibly the poorest match so far in this series, with neither side bowling or batting particularly well and each trying to be less ineffective than the other. Avoiding defeat is inessential element of test cricket but I felt this one didn't so much end in a blaze of glory as limp over the line like the dead rubber it clearly was.

 

I do hope England don't big this up as some kind of achievement. That would be an enormous error. In an Ashes Series where they've been routinely humiliated, to mistake dogged resistance for genuine progress will only cement their mediocrity.

I doubt that will happen as not even a scrappy draw where the Aussies declared in both innings can paper over the top order cracks in the England side. 

 

Places 1-4 need serious looking at, as does a world post Anderson, though i do think Broad has another season or two in him. 

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3 hours ago, ChelseaBoy said:

Places 1-4 need serious looking at, as does a world post Anderson, though i do think Broad has another season or two in him. 

The required surgery includes.....

A new opening partnership that can cope at test level.

There's an opening for a decent wicket keeper.

Leach simply doesn't offer a good enough spin option.

Two new pace bowlers have to be found and they can't wait until Broad and Anderson are finished.

 

All that and there isn't the slightest sign of succession planning.

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