If he had been fit and in charge for this momentous series, his players would not have suffered such a collective failure of nerve.
While blame must be attached to Duncan Fletcher, the coach, for mistakes in planning and tactics, the mood of the team comes primarily from the captain. That is how Fletcher has arranged it: he describes himself as consultant to the skipper’s chief executive.
It is possibly a treasonable offence to suggest that someone might do the job better than the nation’s lion, Andrew Flintoff, but because he has a superhuman capacity for absorbing pressure, it may be that he failed to appreciate quite how this series was playing on the minds of his players, only three of whom had previously appeared in Ashes Tests in Australia.
Flintoff need only look at what has happened to Kevin Pietersen, whose good judgment has deserted him as the kitchen got hotter. Yesterday he was lucky to get away with a rash stroke against Brett Lee before he fell victim to another aberration from Billy Bowden, the man Martin Crowe once dubbed Bozo the Clown.
Vaughan’s instincts would have told him of his team’s anxieties. Indeed, his instincts did tell him this. That is why he is in Brisbane now. He has been careful not to tread on Flintoff’s toes and has kept out of the way of the team while coming and going from the nets and working on his comeback from knee surgery.
Advertisement
But he has felt the need to be here, rather than in Perth, where the rest of England’s reserve players are, for a reason. He wanted to be on hand, just in case help was needed. “I’ll be there,” he told me a few weeks ago, “in case anyone wants to chat over a coffee.”
Their tongues may have been tied before the game, but his players may soon be beating a path to his door.
The England management’s line is that Vaughan will not play in this series, while indicating that the position is open to change.
What this team has so swiftly surrendered is not just an opening victory but all sense of the strategy that delivered England the Ashes last year. Then, they were aggressive in everything they did after overcoming a fitful start at Lord’s — although even there they hit Australia hard in the first session, ripping out five wickets and leaving their dressing room resembling a casualty ward.
Where is the aggression this time? While Australia’s focus, as always, was on seizing the initiative in the first session on the first day, England were unable to execute whatever plans they had. When their mental stamina dipped during the home season, they assured us that everything would be all right, that they were aiming to peak for the Ashes, and would be able to.
Advertisement
If they reckon they have scaled peaks these past few days, they must think they have come to Holland.
Flintoff has bowled with hostility, and Ian Bell’s bat was stout in defence, but England’s approach has been extraordinarily timid in so many ways.
Whichever spinner they had fielded at the Gabba would not have greatly affected the outcome, but preferring Ashley Giles to Monty Panesar sent out the wrong signal: that they were not going to attack. It was to be steady as she goes. If Fletcher’s fingerprints were on the move, then surely Flintoff should have spoken against it. That this decision was taken at all is one telling thing; the timing of it is another. Right up until a week before the first Test, Panesar appeared to be favourite to play in Brisbane; Fletcher even admitted that when the team left home, Panesar was pencilled into the Test XI.
This was one late change — so late that Giles missed the final warm-up in Adelaide and has admitted to playing a Test in “match-learning mode”.
But there were others. Eleven days before the series began, it was announced, after a long meeting between Fletcher and Flintoff, that James Anderson had usurped Sajid Mahmood as the third seamer and Geraint Jones would return in place of the unfortunate Chris Read as wicketkeeper.
Advertisement
Neither of these decisions was necessarily wrong, although Mahmood’s superior batting skills could have been used to support his case, just as Giles’s batting credentials won him the nod over Panesar. However, it smacked of too much uncertainty too late in the day. Where there was decisiveness in England, this time strategy has appeared negotiable and unstable.
England’s eye is on the long game. They see five Tests in 45 days and know they will be tired men by the end, but this policy has cut things awfully fine at the start with a half-baked run-in, and they have paid the price.
Two years ago England got away with it in South Africa, but it was more by luck than judgment. They were trounced by South Africa A in their last match before the Tests. Fortunately, in the opening match, South Africa picked the wrong side and England won.
If Vaughan had been captain here, things would have been done rather differently. Harmison, who was given a rocket by Vaughan during last year’s Oval Test when he needed fire-and-brimstone from his fast bowler on the third afternoon, would not have enjoyed the licence he has.
Pulling out of the Adelaide warm-up and then playing in the Test ought not to have been an option. If necessary, Harmison could have been named to play in Adelaide and then sent for his back scan. If it had revealed something, he might not have taken the field, but it was a risk worth taking. If given the all-clear (as he was) he would have got the bowling he needed and might not have felt so intimidated by what was expected of him in helpful conditions.
Advertisement
After a chastening second day in Brisbane, Flintoff turned up at the evening press conference and defended his players to the hilt, but somebody has to speak plainly to Harmison. In the past these words would have come from Vaughan or Cooley, the England bowling coach who is now working in the enemy camp. Who is going to do this now? Who is going to turn things around?