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Scott Boland

 

In his first Test Match, and at the age of 32, Scott Boland, bowling on his home ground,  returned the following figures:

 

4 overs  1 maiden 7 runs 6 wickets

 

That's 6 for 7, or in Ozzie 7 for 6. Astonishing, utterly astonishing.

Rightly, he was awarded MotM.

 

 

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Atherton, thankfully, takes no +ves from the debacle. 

 

 

THE ASHES | MIKE ATHERTON

The Ashes: Joe Root suffers most humiliating defeat as Australia beat England to retain the urn

Melbourne (day three of five): Australia have beaten England by an innings and 14 runs

Mike Atherton, Chief Cricket Correspondent,

Tuesday December 28 2021, 6.00am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ashes-joe-root-suffers-most-humiliating-defeat-as-australia-beat-england-to-retain-the-urn-6gsd7q5hg

 

Twelve days, that’s all. Twelve days — actually, 11 days and barely a session to be precise, and a little short of the scheduled halfway mark for the series — for the epiphany to land that a hopelessly underprepared and outclassed England will leave Australia empty-handed and humbled again, after two years of fighting talk. All that remains is to wonder how bad the beating will be and how far-reaching and ruinous the consequences.

After a tumultuous end to the second day’s play, the thought occurred that Australia might find it difficult to recreate the same intensity again, but if anything the events of the third morning were even more dramatic. It ended with the local lad, Scott Boland, only the second indigenous male cricketer to represent Australia, accepting the Johnny Mullagh medal for man of the match and a place in Ashes folklore with a set of, frankly, unbelievable bowling figures.

Wandering around the MCG at the close of play, with the match ball in his pocket, a stump in his hand and the cheers of the crowd echoing in his ears, Boland must have wondered whether it was all a dream. He took four wickets in the blink of an eye, to give him the joint fastest Ashes five-wicket haul in history and it was left to Cameron Green to dismantle James Anderson’s stumps and complete a victory that had never been in doubt after England’s underwhelming first innings.

 

After a relatively quiet start, as if everyone was still drinking in the events of the evening before, Mitchell Starc breached Ben Stokes’s defence with a fast break-back and 12 overs later the deed was done, the ground awake again and in full-throated voice. During the procession of wickets to follow, Jonny Bairstow was dropped in the gully, Australia’s only mistake in an otherwise scintillating display. As is often the case, the fielding was a marker of the difference between the teams, Australia bringing a sharpness and energy to their performance that England could not match.

Root was one of Boland’s six wickets — the figures of 4-1-7-6 are the kind that you’d see in a schoolboy match rather than an Ashes Test — and when he was seventh man out, edging to first slip, England’s captain took his leave of an extraordinary year. In it, he has scored 1,708 Test runs, more than anyone else in the history of English cricket, but presided over nine defeats, the most England have ever had inflicted upon them. This last was the most humiliating of them all.

 

Aiming a drive to mid-on, Root did not look behind him after edging the ball, just dropped his head in resignation and continued on his way. Australia’s slip cordon has been brilliantly predatory throughout the series, and this time it was David Warner who cradled the ball into his pouch, before throwing it to the skies to be engulfed by joyous team-mates. They wanted Root more than anyone and, if not quite broken, England’s captain had that haunted look at the end of the match.

Root refused to countenance questions about his position immediately afterwards, saying that there are still two Tests to go. In this, he is no doubt right to do so — an Ashes tour is no place to quit mid-series — although it won’t stop the questions being asked or his position being debated. He has now failed in his quest for the Ashes on three occasions, and has lost seven out of eight Tests in Australia, more than any other England captain. The bruising experience of four years ago has been followed by what feels like an even more disastrous tour.

Given that, it is hard to see that Root will want to carry on after the end of this series. If there is doubt surrounding that development it is only because of the paucity of alternatives. Whether England will want to burden Stokes, such a key all-rounder, with extra responsibility is uncertain. Stuart Broad and James Anderson are near the end of their time and no one else is sure of their place in the team. What a mess.

Root has now lost seven Tests in Australia, more than any England captain in history

 

Root may well feel he has nothing further to offer in any case: having tried to cajole a performance from his players earlier in the tour, he tried to strongarm them after Adelaide, but there was no response forthcoming. There comes a point where a captain simply feels he has nothing more to give or offer and that players would benefit from a change of voice as much as anything. He has probably reached that point.

Chris Silverwood is in an even weaker position than Root. Overpromoted and given enormous responsibility for selection and coaching across three formats, Silverwood has presided over one of the most error-strewn tours in recent memory. Barely anything has gone right; blunder after blunder has accentuated some in-built disadvantages. Ashley Giles wanted clear lines of accountability and those lines are clear enough, pointing only one way.

There is some mitigation to be had. The schedule never gave England a chance. Should they have been more demanding over where the tour started? Should they have refused to countenance starting at the Gabba, because of Queensland’s unreasonable quarantine demands? That and heavy, unseasonal rain led to a situation where Zak Crawley, for example, was asked to play in Melbourne having not had a competitive match for three months. Madness.

 

Beyond questions of individual responsibility which cannot be avoided, it may be that this latest hammering brings pressure to bear upon systemic change. The hollowing out of English first-class cricket, pushed to the margins of the season and sacrificed at the altar of one-day cricket, has resulted in a domestic standard that is routinely revealed to be sub-standard when players come to this part of the world. Over five Tests, an Ashes series is partly a referendum on respective systems, and the result of this year’s is clear.

 

Those questions must be tackled, but the immediate worry is that the spectre of another whitewash looms. Such a thought occurred to very few when Tim Paine resigned tearfully from the captaincy before this series began. Not even Glenn McGrath was tempted down that route. Pat Cummins, who will never bowl better than he did in the second innings for no reward, has had a dream start as Australia’s captain and must now aim to join an elite group that have inflicted such pain.

An occurrence that happened only once in the 20th century, could now befall England three times in the space of a generation. Warwick Armstrong was the first Australia captain to manage a clean sweep in 1920-21; Ricky Ponting the second in 2006-07 and Michael Clarke the third in 2013-14. In between the last two occasions, came Andrew Strauss’s victorious tour in 2010-11, which stands as an ever more remarkable outlier. After a shattering morning in Melbourne, those memories of a tough and capable England team, well drilled and well led, seem more distant than ever.

 

 

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So, Scott Boland,  then....

 

 

THE ASHES | GIDEON HAIGH

The Ashes: Do not let feeble England detract from significance of Scott Boland’s Australia debut

Gideon Haigh, Melbourne

Tuesday December 28 2021, 6.30am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ashes-do-not-let-feeble-england-detract-from-significance-of-scott-bolands-australia-debut-9dr8bgjhp4

 

The Boxing Day Test is Australian cricket’s shop window. You can’t hide failure: it was Australia’s humiliation in 2010 that precipitated the epic navel gaze of the Argus Review. You can, though, advertise success: not all the elaborate plans, pathway programmes and public lectures about indigenous cricket will match for impact Scott Boland’s winning the Johnny Mullagh Medal in this Test.

Boxing Day 2021 marked 155 years since Mullagh top-scored for the Aboriginal XI of the Western District against the Melbourne Cricket Club on this ground, then unenclosed and almost rustic. A collection was taken up in his honour, and the game preluded the team’s storied full-scale tour of England 18 months later.

In 2018, on the sesquicentenary of that tour, Scott Boland and his brother Nick, having just learnt of their Western District indigenous ancestry via a Gulidjan grandfather, joined an Aboriginal XI tracing that pioneering team’s footsteps. Now here we are, the paths of Mullagh and Boland having converged over an arc of history even longer than the Ashes.

 

Figures of six for seven are an outlier. When a bowler with a first-class average of 26 is taking the fastest five-for in 140 years of Anglo-Australian competition, then it conveys something of the inequality of this contest, the demoralised state of England’s XI and the enfeebled state of English cricket. Even Pat Cummins could not keep the surprise from his voice. “We were really confident Scotty would do a great job,” he said. “Maybe not six for seven!”

But Boland himself is an outlier, only the second player of indigenous descent to represent Australia — a dispiriting dearth. And what to do? One can only deal with the circumstances as one finds them, and Boland did so peremptorily. He uprooted Haseeb Hameed with a fine ball and Jack Leach with a smart ball on Monday night, and Joe Root’s flying edge to slip was a consequence of the white-knuckled grip on England’s captain that Australia have exerted all summer.

 

As he claimed his sixth wicket, white-clad figures converged from everywhere to pile on in celebration. Boland is one of those figures identifiable to team-mates as a cricketer’s cricketer. He is 32, has risen from grass roots at Frankston and run in with Victoria for a decade, unheralded, unflagging and unyielding. He is a fast bowling tradie, handy and reliable. If he turned up on your door, you’d instinctively trust him with any sticky household maintenance.

Seven weeks ago, Boland represented Victoria against New South Wales. It was one of those relatively rare occasions when Victoria play at their traditional home, the MCG, rather than their adopted base, the Junction Oval.

 

These occasions can be a little soulless, a bit sterile. The crowds are usually meagre, their stray shouts echoing round the empty stands. The skies were overcast, and with Melbourne having barely shaken off its sixth lockdown the mood subdued.

Yet the occasion was auspicious also. The pitch, torpid for many years, bounced, and batters looked uneasy. And Boland bowled fast, snaffling eight wickets, making a resounding whack as he hit the keeper’s gloves, and losing nothing by comparison with his Test-playing team-mate James Pattinson.

Into the bargain, Pattinson had just announced his retirement from international cricket, despite being a year Boland’s junior. Boland is not quite the sight Pattinson was at his peak. He is not one of those spring-heeled, gym-toned athletes cricket seems to be cloning as if in a laboratory; he is in a more traditional mode, broad-shouldered and heavy-booted.

But if he had but known it, Boland had advanced effectively two steps in Australia’s long fast-bowling queue, where you can wait longer for a baggy green than even a Covid test in Sydney.

It took a further arbitrary shortening of that queue for Boland to learn on Christmas Eve that he was to make his Test debut as, effectively, the reserve of a reserve of a reserve, Josh Hazlewood, Jhye Richardson and Michael Neser all failing to come up for selection.

There was a sense of homecoming all the same, reinforced by Aunty Joy Wandin Murphy in her welcome to country on the first day, when she acknowledged the presence in the Australian XI of Boland as a Gulidjan man from round Colac. Two and a half days on, and Boland was accepting the Mullagh Medal from Belinda Duarte, a descendant of Mullagh’s colleague Yanggendyinanyuk (Dick-a-Dick), who also testified to the inspirational qualities of the bowler’s feat. “You cannot be what you cannot see,” she said succinctly.

 

It needed something to rescue this day from a sense of disappointment that a Boxing Day Test against England, in a way the definitive version of cricket’s long form, had concluded in 1,084 deliveries — the shortest match hosted by Australia in 70 years. Only two teams in Test cricket have won by an innings with a first-innings lead of fewer than 82 runs. Such statistics are gruesome, but perhaps it can be allowed that, on this occasion, the history eclipses them.

 

• Gideon Haigh is a cricket writer and columnist for The Australian

 

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3 hours ago, compo said:

Only covid can save the whitewash 🏏

I fear that you are right. 

This ENG side looks broken, broken in spirit, and broken as a team. 

It will get a sympathetic reception in Sydney (if spectators are permitted to attend). 

 

It has offered very poor fare, and the paying customer should feel short-changed. What price a 4th day ticket for the next matches?

Even the Aussies are disappointed at ENG's capitulaltion. 

 

 

The final 'Test' is in Tasmania, van Diemen's Land, which might give some of them the shakes, but which will give the ECB an opportunity to maroon a few of the more egregious underperformers. 

 

 

 

.

 

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Sleepers Awake!!
Sir Geoffrey has spoken!!

 

 

THE ASHES

The Ashes: Joe Root should step down as England captain after dreadful series, says Geoffrey Boycott

new

Wednesday December 29 2021, 8.30am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ashes-joe-root-should-step-down-as-england-captain-after-dreadful-series-says-geoffrey-boycott-tfqw77b5c

 

The former England batsman Geoffrey Boycott believes Joe Root should step down as captain when the humiliating Ashes series ends.

England were bowled out for 68 — their lowest total on Australian soil since 1904 — as the hosts won the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne by an innings and 14 runs to take a decisive 3-0 series lead.

 

The result capped a dreadful run of results for the Test team under Root, who have become the first England side to lose nine matches in a year. When asked about his future as Test captain after the crushing defeat, Root refused to be drawn on whether he would continue after the series.

But Boycott, writing in the Daily Telegraph, has seen enough and said: “Joe’s captaincy lacks imagination. His team selection and decision-making has been staggeringly off the mark. At the end of this series the question should be asked: would England benefit from a change of captain?

“That’s not me trying to be hurtful to Joe or just being controversial. We all love Joe. It is impossible not to like him, but before the squad left the UK Joe said players and captains are defined by Ashes series, particularly in Australia.

“So far this series we have been dreadful and if Joe believes what he has been saying then it is time for someone else to be given the opportunity to try and galvanise the players. Captains accept the accolades when their team wins so they have to accept some blame or criticism when they lose.”

 

Root’s return with the bat in 2021 contrasts starkly to that of his record as captain. The 30-year-old became just the third player in history to break 1,700 Test runs in a calendar year after Sir Viv Richards and the record holder Mohammad Yousuf.

Boycott added: “Many of us are tired of these interviews where Joe says England will learn from a bad day or Joe says he expects a response after a poor performance. We have had enough of this rubbish. Stop treating us ex-players and cricket supporters as idiots.

“I don’t mind him living in cuckoo land but stop trying to kid us. If he really believes what he says then maybe it is time he gave up the captaincy of the England cricket team.

“The facts are staring us all in the face, except Joe doesn’t want to see it. England can’t bat. Our bowling is ordinary. The catching, particularly by the wicket keeper Buttler, has been poor.

“And let’s be honest — we haven’t just lost, we have been smashed.”

The former captain Ian Botham described England’s performance as embarrassing and called for Root and Chris Silverwood, the head coach, to make changes for the final two Test matches.

“I’m a little embarrassed, to be honest,” Botham said on Channel 7. “To lose the Ashes in 12 days . . . I just think that England have lost their way. The performance today summed it up. You’ve got enough time to get a couple of players in from the Lions tour because we need to freshen it up, at the moment it’s stagnating.

 

“It’s been a walk in the park for the Australians. It burns me to say that but they have completely outplayed England. Three or four of the England players can say ‘I gave it a go’ . . . I think people at home will be worried. It won’t do a great deal for ticket sales for the [English] summer.

“They will be saying now: ‘Ok, you’ve gone there, it’s been disastrous. You have a period of time now to sort this out.’ If you want do experiment with a couple of players, the series has gone, you might as well blood them. There’s a long way to go for England before they are competitive against this Australian team.”

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