Revealed - how to stump Australia
It is extremely unlikely that Duncan Fletcher spends his lonely evenings in Australia in weary contemplation of the works of Robert Burns, but he would probably agree that the best-laid schemes of mice and men and England cricket coaches can go sadly wrong.
There were all kinds of issues underlying England’s Ashes triumph last year, such as Glenn McGrath twisting an ankle treading on a stray ball at Edgbaston and Shane Warne dropping Kevin Pietersen at the Brit Oval, but the real key to their success was the fact that they had plans for every Australia batsman and the bowlers to carry them out.
As Fletcher said at the time: “At the start of the series we sat down and came up with our plan, but you then need the bowlers to carry it out. In Test cricket, if a batsman has a weakness you cannot just bowl a ball or two and expect to get them out. It takes discipline. These guys can put the ball in the areas we ask them to over a long period of time.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve psyched out their batsmen. They are probably surprised that we have been able to come at them with pace. I have always said that you must have pace. You must be bowling 85mph or quicker. Fortunately, we have individuals who can do that. And they are not straight up and down, either. They do something with it.”
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All those ingredients came together within the first hour of the first Test at Lord’s when Stephen Harmison struck Justin Langer painfully on the arm, dented the grille of Matthew Hayden’s helmet and gashed Ricky Ponting’s cheek to put down a marker for the rest of the summer.
England lost that match, but from then on they hardly gave the Australia batsmen any respite. Hayden, who had gone into the series averaging 53.46, was close to being dropped from the team after finding his favourite shots down the ground stifled by the positioning of three men on the drive and having his weakness square of the wicket exposed.
Langer fought it out better than most, but did not recover from his early battering from Harmison, with the result that he was frequently tucked up and unable to free his arms to flay the ball through the off side.
Ponting’s reputation, as Australia’s best batsman since Don Bradman, seemed only to inspire Andrew Flintoff, who had him caught behind for nought off the fifth ball of a magnificent over at Edgbaston, and Simon Jones, who flogged extra bounce out of the Old Trafford pitch to get him out in the first innings.
Damien Martyn’s great strength is square on the off side, so England frustrated him by packing that area of the field, with the result that he had a miserable series. Michael Clarke, on the other hand, prefers the leg side and England countered that with one or, sometimes, two men on the drive. He was also susceptible to the slower ball, which got him out twice.
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And then there was Adam Gilchrist, who arrived in England with a Test batting average of 55.64. In five Tests, he managed only 181 runs at an average of 22.62. The swashbuckling left-hander could not handle the England bowlers attacking him from round the wicket and it looked as though he had not corrected the weakness when Matthew Hoggard had him leg-before in the first Test at the Gabba.
They will have made their plans for all the other batsmen just as meticulously, but they were singularly unable to carry them out from the moment Harmison let slip that infamous opening ball to Langer that finished in the hands of Flintoff at second slip.
Hoggard could not get the Kookaburra ball to swing like he does the Duke in England, Flintoff revived memories of 2005, with some snorting balls, but could not sustain the assault because he is feeling his way back from an ankle injury and James Anderson had neither the hostility nor the consistency to fill the void left by the injured Jones.
The outcome was an Australia first-innings total of 602 for nine declared and there will be more of the same unless England can execute their plans more efficiently in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.