(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.
