Pitch battles, Mitchell Johnson’s numbers and Steve Harmison’s not so cunning p

Pitch battles, Mitchell Johnson’s numbers and Steve Harmison’s not so cunning plan
2 HOURS AGO JULY 21, 2015 7:21PM

Rounding up all the news, views and nonsense of this Ashes series ...
... including a debate over dead pitches that has taken on a life of its own, Mitchell Johnson very much winning the numbers game, Kevin Pietersen’s alternative Ashes diary, the UK view (which makes for fun reading) as well as Steve Harminson’s cunning plan for dealing with the Mitches ...

Imperfect pitch
So, two matches in to a three test series and the question has to be asked: was England’s master plan for these Ashes merely to serve up five docile, lifeless pitches and then hope that Alastair Cook won at least three of the five tosses? And, if so, what was the plan B? It’s hard to answer that second point now, because the Poms are virtually at the end of the alphabet in discussions on how to arrest a malaise that took just four days to take them from surprise package back to familiar shambles and further to a team in the midst of a crisis.
Australia found a way to make a dead pitch come alive despite England’s best efforts.

One with a top order that isn’t even spluttering, let alone firing, and is statistically worse than Bangladesh this calendar year. Yes, they really are that bad.
The reasons for England’s struggles are manifold, but, aside from the batting line up, the key focus of debate is over the pitches, so dead that the tracks in Cardiff and at Lord’s might as well as been read their last rites. The plan was simple: take the pace out of the wickets and so remove Australia’s bowling advantage, in particular pull the sharpened teeth of Mitchell Johnson. It worked in the first test, when England batted first and caught an undercooked touring party, including a few relatively new to English conditions and the Duke ball, on the hop.


Mitchell Johnson: 'We played the perfect Test match'

Once Australia got their eye in, and the sideways movement evident in Wales never materialised in London, Australia’s world class batsmen went to town; Johnson and the other Mitches, as well as Josh Hazlewood, showed that pace through the air can negate the pitch anyway; and England’s brittle defence crumbled.
In terms of battle tactics, the flat pitch approach has been about as effective as giving combat troops space hoppers instead of tanks. In trying to negate the threat of Johnson et al, they neutered their own bowlers. And didn’t even manage to subdue Australia’s pace as intended, anyway. Good job, fellas. Really, superb work. Expect the MBEs in the post.
The England batsmen convey the series situation perfectly through facial mime.

So who is to blame? England’s Australian coach, Trevor Bayliss, has called for true seaming pitches from here on in, and seems absolved of any guilt. Alastair Cook has been asked the question a lot this last few days, and has categorically denied he had a hand in it. The BBC’s Test Match Special team said they had ‘inside information’ that *someone* had requested the legal doctoring of wickets.
That someone, reports in the UK have suggested, is ECB Team Director Andrew Cook. The UK Telegraph quotes a county cricket source who said an email from Strauss had been circulated to the grounds, requesting “pitches that are slower rather than faster” although the ECB maintain they had called for nothing more sinister than traditional English test wickets (whatever that means anymore). If true, there is no wonder we’ve seen the tracks we have.
A polite request from the big boss — as he would know — is always likely to be followed as if the terms of a court ordered mandate, such is the need for grounds in the UK to stay on the Ashes rotation to keep the wolf from the door financially. Imagine the CEO of the company you work for casually suggesting employees might want to think about, maybe, dressing a bit more formally: you’d be suited and booted the very next day, wouldn’t you? Don’t lie, you bloody would.


Australia records crushing victory over England at Lord's
So what next? Edgbaston, venue for the third test, is traditionally spin friendly and almost always a result pitch. If that one’s flat we’ll know for sure the word was sent out from on high. But with the policy having failed so spectacularly this week, what price another email landing in the Edgbaston groundsman’s in-box and a very different track being prepared? That seems the only way to go for the reeling English if they are to have any hope of matching Australia now they are up and running. Other than, of course, digging out a double-headed coin and hoping Michael Clarke reverts to the mantra that tails never fails …

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Note to self — do absolutely nothing

Steve Harmison has a cunning plan for dealing with a revved up Mitchell Johnson. And it’s one so simple even Gary Ballance might be able to get his head round it. Well, Ian Bell at least, perhaps.
Steve Harmison was more adept than most at taking the pitch out of the equation.

“It gives me no great pleasure to say: I told you so after backing Mitchell Johnson to come good at Lord’s — but I did,” writes the man with the infamously wayward first ball action. “He is a serious bowler these days and not the pantomime figure that plenty still like to paint him as. So what do England’s batsmen do against him? My advice to most of them would be to do nothing.”
Genius.

The Root of good comedy
England didn’t have much to smile about during the second test. But Joe Root was unable to hide a chuckling smile when an attractive woman fell on her arse in the stands.


After Alastair Cook took a sharp one in the delicates at Cardiff, Root was the man on the scene leading the giggles there, too. Someone please get hold of a copy of the Barny Gumbal classic, ‘Man getting hit in the groin by football’ and send it to England’s only in-form (sort of) batsmen. He’s clearly such a fan of that particular comedy oeuvre he’ll be laughing his way through the third test, where England’s freshly rediscovered propensity towards slapstick should help keep the laugh count up, too.

THE PHONY WAR
The Australian team made the process of levelling the series and mentally beating up the English look almost effortless. But Shane Warne, on commentary duty over in the UK, took things to another level up in the press box, so relaxed about the result he was literally horizontal on day four.

VIEW FROM OVER THERE
In the frenzied thrashing around post-Lord’s, English cricket commentators were left struggling to make their disquiet heard above their colleagues’ equally febrile gnashing of teeth. Geoffrey Boycott, however, turned in a Steve Smith-esque perforce of excellence in the field. The professional blowhard, of course, has spent years perfecting the art of sticking the boot in to the England cricket team, always claiming it gives him no pleasure but showing a consistent, gleeful enthusiasm for the task nonetheless. After the bloodbath of the second Ashes test he had plenty to get off his chest …


Ben Stokes caught short in embarrassing fashion
“Getting bowled out on this pitch in 37 overs was an embarrassment. We had no fight, our thinking was awful and we never adapted to the situation,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph, as Ben Stokes, Gary Ballance and Adam Lyth looked down at the floor and shuffle nervously …
“All we had to do was defend and get through the new ball, take the sting out of the Australian fast bowlers, and then bat on one of the best pitches I have ever seen to try to save a Test. There was no pace, no bounce and no spin in this surface. The sun was shining, and the least we should have done was bat until the middle of the last afternoon.”

Geoffrey Boycott and the art of team motivation go back a long, long way.

Stop laughing at the back there, he has more to say….
“Alastair Cook looked uncomfortable and wafted at a wide ball. Gary Ballance was so flat-footed I never felt comfortable all the time he was batting … Joe Root comes in with England in trouble, hooks his fifth ball, and gets hit on the head. I thought we were trying to save the game … Jos Buttler bats as if he does not know whether to stick or twist. Here is one of the most exciting stroke-playing talents in one-day cricket, and he suddenly cannot transfer it to a Test … We have problems in the opening position, Bell has been a problem for some time, we have no quality spinner and now Ballance looks ill-at-ease….”
And it wasn’t just the players who took a kicking, inanimate objects were also in Boycott’s firing line …. Both the pitch and spinning, or none-spinning, balls …
“Unless we take 20 wickets, how the hell are we going to win the Ashes? They took 20 wickets on a slow surface tailor-made to frustrate them. We took 10 wickets and conceded 820 runs. We are not going to beat Australia on flat, slow pitches. The ball has to be able to move sideways, because we are certainly not going to bowl them out with Moeen Ali and Root’s spin bowling. If you believe that then you are wrong in the head.”
Lovely stuff.

HOW SCARED ARE THE ENGLISH
Debate is raging in the UK right now over what changes need to be made to their line up to avoid a repeat of their mighty shellacking at Lord’s. That there is no consensus indicates that they are scratching around for solutions that possibly aren’t there to be found.
England’s brains trust ponder their options with sunny optimism.

And so Nasser Hussian, writing in the Daily Mail, is instructive. After running through the limited options he concluded that, in the end, the current line up should be sent out again and just, you know, play better or something. What’s that famous definition of insanity? ‘Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome’. They’re not just scared, they’re confused and beffudled, too. Splendid.
“Australia’s seamers took the Lord’s pitch out of the equation because they were faster, they bowled fuller and had a proper spinner rather than a batsman who bowls spin forced to learn his craft at the highest level,” wrote the former England captain.


Who will be selected for the the third test: Haddin or Nevill?
“I am all for entertaining cricket but this is a top quality attack and you can’t go fishing and prodding outside off-stump in the name of positivity. Keep the same personnel for the third Test but change the order and above all change the way they are handling the bowling.
“If they don’t get it right after three Tests then someone else can have a go.”
Verdict: 9/10 — About as scared as … that shark that had a little sniff around Mick Fanning and was sent away with a couple of shiners after the pro-surfer gave him a series of upper cuts and jabs. The big fish giving it all that, given a chastening hiding in its own back yard, where it is assumed to have all the advantages, and sent away nursing a hefty slap to the ego: sounds familiar, eh?

NUMBERS GAME
1
The number of wickets Mitchell Johnson needs to join the 300 club; and the number of runs he needs to reach 2,000 in his Test career.
Mitchell Johnson feels the love for the 299th time in his career.

A silver-lining, then, for the next top order England batsman to walk in to one of Mitch’s thunderbolts — they will be a front-of-stage player to a spot of cricketing history. We can neither confirm nor deny the rumour that Adam Lyth is already getting the commemorative T-shirt made up.

DIARY OF KEVIN PIETERSEN (AGED 34 AND THREE QUARTERS)
JULY 21

Well, that was all very predictable, eh? Even the Japanese tourists in the Miami hotel I watched the Lord’s test in could see that Gary Ballance and Ian Bell are out of their depth. They agreed that England would be better served with yours truly in the side. And they said as much, when I asked them. I think. Hard to tell as their English wasn’t great. Difficult for foreigners to master the Queens English to be fair. Trust me: been there, done that, bought the hair dye. Anyway, pretty sure they mentioned something about my match-winning knock at the Oval in 2005. Good bunch of lads. My new mate Haruto was jibbering about Marlins and Dolphins, at least, which I took as validation I’m still a big fish in the world game. But will Strauss and Cook listen? Not bloody likely.