English Report Card

(For the Aussie Report Card click here)

It is hard to say where it all went wrong for England.  They have been outplayed in every area of the game.  Their batsmen scored a thousand less runs than the Aussies (2158 vs 3189 including extras).  Their bowlers took 23 fewer wickets (77 vs 100 including runouts), and they only took 20 wickets in Sydney where the Aussies were practically giving them away to hasten the end of the series.  They dropped more catches and missed more stumpings, and these errors cost them more than the Aussies' errors cost them.  Even their captain lost four tosses out of five.  

The problem is not skill or experience.  England have shown over the last four or five years that they have the skill.  They even (briefly) reached number one in the world.  They were also by far the more experienced line up that started the 'Gabba test.  Nor was age a factor.  Australia had the oldest players, and the higher average age.  No, test cricket is played as much between the ears as in the middle, and one suspects that it is here that the problem lies.  Perhaps the team is jaded.  Having just won the Ashes in England, it may have been hard to try to climb that mountain again.  Perhaps the pressure of the dressingroom culture is wearing thin.  Exacting standards are much easier to handle when you are in the ascendancy, but can become a burden when things are not working out as you would like.  Perhaps the team believed the publicity that had people like Botham predicting a 5-0 scoreline for England, not against it: They just needed to turn up, watch Australia roll over and collect their trophy - but were shocked when it was their team on the back foot (both literally and figuratively).  From shock came panic which compounded the problem.

Swann Dive

It must have been a while since a concerted effort to hit a top class bowler out of an attack has been this successful.  There has been an unmistakable aggression from the Aussie batsmen as they have taken on Swann.  And now three tests later, he is not only out of the attack, he is out of cricket, announcing his immediate retirement in the middle of a series.  The Aussie team will be glad to see him go.  He is the sort of player that you don't like in the opposition- he was always finding ways into the game with bat, ball or fielding.  He had that slightly cocky air that Aussie love in their players and hate in the English.  There was good reason that he was one the three English players I nominated as my least favourite of the current crop - and it wasn't that he was a bad player.  It is hard to take 255 wickets at a tick under 30 if you are not good at bowling in some way.

His retirement means that his average stays under that 30 mark (8 more runs conceded would put him over).  Thirty is that arbitrary mark between good/useful bowlers on the one hand and very good/great bowlers on the other.  For some reason history seems to treat the bowlers with an average under thirty in a class better than those whose average is just above.  Let's hope that Swann didn't retire to protect  history's view of him.  

I'm also hoping that his departure is not related to Trott's.  Not that "stress related illness" is even on the cards, but in the aftermath of Trott's departure, the English management style came in for a heap of criticism.  Swann's performance in the last few games may have been indicative of a loss of enjoyment and passion for the game. If this disappeared because of the team management style, then England have a whole lot more trouble coming their way.  

More likely is the fact that Swann always planned to retire at the end of the series and has just brought it forward for some reason (his announcement seems to read that way). His performance this series may indicate that his elbow is troubling him again- though he makes no reference to this.  It might just be that he was worded up that his performances so far meant he was surplus to requirements (being dropped) for the remaining tests, and bringing forward his retirement makes it look better for him (unless you characterise his retirement as desertion).  Besides, announcing it now gives him the option of getting home for Christmas if he wants.  Perhaps he just wanted to give his replacement a couple more matches to get used to being the English spinner as he indicates in his statement.  After all, two more matches would have made so much difference to Warne's replacements...