Australia 273-8. Stumps.
It’s as if the last eighty one days had never happened. In a direct continuation of the last series, the same pattern persists: the Australian top order fold meekly, only for their late order to frustrate us.
Haddin and Johnson. Grrr. If you went straight to central casting and asked them to deliver two characters most likely to antagonise and annoy England supporters, you could hope for no better than this pair of professional irritants.
Haddin has always stuck in my craw. In truth, he is not a particularly good wicket keeper-batsman – too inconsistent and limited – but he has a nasty habit of finding an extra gear against us at exactly the wrong moment, as we very nearly found to our cost at Trent Bridge in July.
The galling thing about Mitch’s 64 is that his runs were worth double. Not only did his partnership with Haddin of 114 nearly double Australia’s score from a risible one to a workable, but being the confidence player he is, Mitch will be switched-on and purring when he bowls tomorrow.
Our struggles to close out an Australian innings have now been going on for too long. We were poor against their tail three years ago, worse last summer, and the way this series has started does not bode well.
What exactly is the problem? At root it seems to me that our bowlers abandon their strategies of containment and economy after the sixth wicket falls. Instead, they try too hard to produce wicket-taking balls to dismiss the tail-enders, and as a result, lose their lengths bad end up pitching too short.
Perhaps I’m being too churlish. As the saying goes, if we’d been offered this morning a close of play score of 273-8, after losing the toss, and at the Gabba of all places, we’d have gratefully accepted it. We are still well on top so far.
As promising as 132-6 sounds, that was probably an unrealistic score on such a good pitch as this. Inevitably, a partnership would form at some point – the pendulum would swing to the batting side and the balance of natural cricketing justice would be restored.
Most of today’s press will focus on Stuart Broad, whose five wickets – given the scrutiny he was under – was a very fine achievement. Whatever happens from here in thus match, at least our pace bowlers have started a series reasonably well, and you can’t always say that.
Speaking of Broad, congratulations too to the Brisbane Courier-Mail for their very effective publicity stunt, in which they’re refusing to name Broad in print. That’s right, they still can’t get over it.
But they didn’t take account of the English sense of humour, and we’re indebted to Jonathan Agnew for reporting on Twitter that some wag has sabotaged the Courier-Mail’s Wikipedia entry – which now reads that the newspaper’s editor is…a Mr Stuart Broad.
Maxie Allen
