Aussie Report card

The Aussies have made a clean sweep: 5-0.  It was against the prevailing wisdom, and against the result of the last series only a few months earlier.  It was not just the wins, but the extent of the wins.  The closest match was won by 150 runs after the Aussies declared at the end of an over in which Bailey equalled the record for the most runs in an over (28).  Then there was the fact that, unlike the previous whitewash in 2006-2007, the Aussies were relatively inexperienced at test level, and England was the team with the proven champions in every department of the game.  It was an amazing series for the Aussies.  However there are still areas to work on as will be seen below:

Batting:

The batting was a mixed bag this series.  The team scored an impressive 10 centuries and 15 fifties, with only Lyon and Siddle failing to pass fifty in the series.  However  no one went past Clarke's 148 in Adelaide, and six of the centuries were in the second innings after England were already down.  The most troubling statistic is that of the 52 completed innings by the top six, 18 were at 10 runs or below, and 26 (or half of them) at 20 or below.  

Team Batting Grade: C+

Chris Rogers (5 Matches, 10 innings, 0 not out, 463 runs@46.3, 2 hundreds, 3 fifties: 4 Catches)

Finally he is starting to feel at home in the test arena.  After a slowish start, he ended the series with scores of 54, 61, 116, 11 and 119 to take him to the most runs of any batsman across the two series.  Rogers faced more balls more than any of the other Aussies with Warner's 703 balls second to his 945.  The openers did their job this series in blunting the attack, absorbing 1648 deliveries between them.  Both of Rogers' hundreds came in the second innings and he scored almost two thirds of his runs (307)  in the second innings.  He will want to convert some of his late form into first innings runs in South Africa.

Grade: B

David Warner (5M, 10I, 1NO, 523@58.11, 2x100, 2x50: 4 catches)

Showed a good start to the series when the Ashes were still in play, but tailed off in the last couple of matches as Rogers got going.  He displayed a bit more maturity with his batting than he has done any time previously (with the exception of Hobart a couple of years back).  He scored over two thirds of his runs in the second innings (360).  Like Rogers he will want some more runs in the first innings going forwards.

Grade: B+

Shane Watson (5M, 10I, 1NO, 345@38.33, 1x100, 2x50: 3 Catches) {4wickets@30.5}

Another frustrating series from Watson.  He scored a hundred in the second innings in Perth, but ended the series with only Bailey of the top seven averaging less.  This was one of his best series for a while but still averaged under forty.  The frustrating bit was that he looked as good as he has for a long time, but still didn't quite manage a very good series.  Hopefully this is the start of Watson the Improving.  His bowling was useful, with his knack for breaking partnerships and keeping it tight, though he was not needed that much.  

Grade: Batting: C, Bowling C+, Overall: C

Michael Clarke: (5M, 10I, 1NO, 363@40.33, 2x100, 0x50: 8 Catches) [5 Matches, 4 Tosses, 5 Wins]

Started the series with a bang scoring hundreds in Brisbane and Adelaide.  However, apart from these hundreds, Clarke failed to pass 24 in the rest of his innings.  However, he scored more than half his runs in the first innings, and over 300 runs while the Ashes were still up for grabs.  His captaincy was astute, and his team performed well above expectation. 

Grade: Batting: C+, Captaincy: A Overall: B

Steven Smith: (5M, 9I, 1NO, 327@40.87, 2x100, 0x50: 7 Catches) {1@58}

Smith started slowly, but picked up his game in Perth.  He scored two hundreds in impressive fashion - both of them in the first innings, and both when Australia were in trouble.  However his 31 in the first innings at the Gabba was his only other score over 20.  He scored 282 runs in the first innings across the series compared to only 45 in the second innings.  His bowling was barely called on, but he still contributed with a wicket.  He is also a fielding asset.  His first innings contributions get him a better grade than his totals might otherwise have warranted.  

Grade: B  

George Bailey (5M, 8I, 1NO, 183@26.14, 0x100, 1x50: 10 Catches)

He has benefited from the fact that the Aussies were winning, and so were able to pick and stick.  However he has by far the lowest totals of the top seven, and is the only one not to score a hundred.  Furthermore, well over half his runs (119) were scored in the second innings in spite of the fact he only batted in three of them.  His highlight was one over where he tore apart Anderson in a spectacular way.  However he will be lucky to keep his spot in South Africa.  His fielding, especially his close catching, has been his main contribution this series.  

Grade: D

Brad Haddin (5M, 8I, 0NO, 493@61.62, 1x100, 5x50: 22 Catches)

For my money Haddin was the player of the series, though it was close with Johnson.  He set up every win by rescuing Australia in the first innings of each test match and giving the bowlers something to work with. For this reason he is being classed as a batsman rather than a separate category of wicket keeper.   More than three quarters of his runs (307) came in the first innings.  He had another great series behind the stumps, taking some blinders, and generally being reliable.  

Grade: Batting A+  Keeping: A  Overall: A+

Bowling

The bowling was really what won the series.  The team took all 100 wickets on offer - a feat that is apparently unique in the history of the game.  They bowled to plan and with great discipline.  The times when England's batsmen were on top were few and brief.  Furthermore the bowlers operated as a team.  Harris did not take a wicket in two innings, and Siddle missed out in the last innings of the series, but otherwise the four main bowlers each took a wicket or more in each innings of the series.  Lyon and Johnson took at least one wicket every innings - and were regularly bowling in tandem when England collapsed.  Watson and Smith were required for less than 60 overs between them, but picked up 5 wickets and generally kept the pressure on.  

Team Bowling Grade: A

Mitchell Johnson {37W@13.97} (5M 8I, 2NO, 165@27.5, 1x50: 4 Catches)
Named man of the series, and though I would have just given it to Haddin, he deserved it.  He bowled with pace, hostility and the most amazing of all, accuracy.  It yielded 37 wickets, often in bursts with Lyon.  More than that his bowling seemed to put England into a bit of shell shock from which they never fully recovered.  His batting, especially in the first innings at the Gabba, was also important.
Grade: A+

Ryan Harris {22@19.31} (5M 6I 1NO, 117@23.4, 1x50: 4 Catches)
A class act.  One of the best bowlers going around, and has finally been able to string together a full series.  He is quick and accurate, and moves the ball just enough to cause trouble.  The perfect foil for Johnson.  His enthusiastic batting (his strike rate was the highest in the team) was also worth watching at times.
Grade: A

Peter Siddle {16@24.12} (5M 7I 1NO, 38@6.33: 0 Catches)
A quiet series compared to the other bowlers, and also with the bat.  However he often took an important wicket to break a partnership, and his bowling to Pietersen was an important contribution to the team.  He had the best economy rate of all the bowlers - keeping the pressure on.
Grade: A-

Nathan Lyon {19@29.36} (5M 6I 6NO, 60runs no average: 5 catches)
Easily the best performed spinner in the series.  He took a large percentage of top order wickets (11 batsmen, 3 wicketkeeper batsmen), and was the bowler at the other end when Johnson ripped through the English on several occasions.  He was also a reliable fielder, and the undismissable batsman.
Grade: A

Big Mitch's henchmen

I made a comment in an earlier blog post that the difference between the sides was Mitchell Johnson.  In many ways I stand by that comment.  His batting in the first innings in Brisbane was a key, almost as much as his bowling in the first three innings of the series.  However he did not win the Ashes alone.  He had help.  In particular he had two henchmen that have helped him change the fortunes of Australia.

Some might nominate Michael Clarke who has scored a heap and captained really well.  However he has been the only batsman consistently scoring runs this year, so Clarke scoring runs doesn't really change the team.  Several of the other batsmen have (finally) scored runs, but most of them have been second innings runs (Warner, Watson) after the English had been beaten up by the bowlers in the first innings and the pressure was largely off.  Similar things could be said for the run glut at Perth (Smith - though his was a good innings, Watson).  However Haddin, the first of the henchmen, has come to the rescue of the team in each of the first innings of the series.  Plus he has been in very good form with the gloves.  Without him Johnson would not have had decent totals to bowl at. Even if he still blew England away, the batsmen would not have had the freedom to bat the same way as their lead would not have been as convincing.

In a similar way Johnson had help with the bowling.  Four times in the series there have been a clatter of English wickets: Brisbane first innings was 5/4 in 4 overs, and the second innings was 4/9 in 4 overs; in Adelaide's first innings it was 5/18 in 5 overs; and in the second innings in Perth it was 4/17 in 6 overs.  It is these quick bursts more than anything that sunk England's hopes this series. Most people remember the first common factor: Johnson- twelve of his 23 wickets came in these bursts.  What seems to be forgotten is that the bowler at the other end each time was Nathan Lyon.  His ten wickets this series have included 7 wickets from the batsmen, and Prior twice.  Five of these wickets plus that of Swann came during these destructive partnerships with Johnson.  Big Mitch may have scared the English, but he had help knocking them over.

Don't be fooled

The Aussies are 2-0 up, and in the box seat to regain the Ashes.  England have been pulled apart for a combined loss of 599 runs.  Given that Perth has been Mitchell Johnson's favourite ground over the years, it is not inconceivable that the urn could return to Australia in the next week.  It is not impossible, however unlikely, that 5-0 could be the score line at the end of the summer. But don't be fooled.  The gap between the teams is not as great as it looks at the moment.  It is only a few months, ago, with largely the same teams, that the English demolished Australia 3-0.  The difference then was one player: Bell.  Without his three centuries, and calming influence on the English middle order, the result could, probably would, have been different.  Overall the teams were fairly well matched apart from his influence.  Of course the weather helped, with the two matches that Australia dominated being heavily affected by rain (that England almost won one of them was more to do with Clarke declaring early because of the threat of rain than England's  efforts in the game).

This time around, in spite of the huge margins, the difference is again one player: Mitchell Johnson.  Australia may still have won in Brisbane without Mitchell, but not as comprehensively.  There is also the possibility that without Johnson, the first innings score would have been much lower, and all the pressure on the Aussies, which may have reversed the result.  Almost certainly Adelaide would not have been the same without him.  His burst of 5 for not much turned a test that was likely to be a draw into a test in which a win was possible. The psychological damage of that spell and the other bowlers did the rest.

Johnson's dominance in the first three innings of the series has made the difference between the sides look huge.  However, like Bell's dominance in England, it exaggerates the difference between the sides.  If Johnson were to return to his inconsistent past during the match in Perth, suddenly the teams don't seem so far apart.  The English batsmen will suddenly look ten time better than they have thus far, and the fact that Rogers, Watson, Smith and Bailey have not been overly convincing in the first two tests will look a lot more relevant.

The Aussies are on top, and their supporters should enjoy that, but don't be fooled: the gap between the teams is not as big as it seems right now.

Rogers and Clarke

Clarke and Khawaja were all over the headlines after yesterday's play, but the man of the day for me was Rogers.  A highlight reel of his innings shows great shot after great shot.  More than that, I believe it was Rogers that was responsible for the good position that the Aussies were in at the end of the day.  It was his stroke play that gave them a good opening partnership (Watson only scored 19 after all).  It was he that kept the scoring going while Clarke was struggling early on, and took the pressure off his captain so that Clarke could settle in.  I have written before about the pressure on Clarke as the only performing batsman, and to have Rogers take control as he did allowed Clarke to work through the pressure.  It is just a shame that Rogers couldn't find the extra sixteen runs to get a century.

Clarke will be proud of his innings, largely because it was a fight early on, and he still made it to the hundred.  The best bit was that it was against Swann that he started to find his stride.  Swann provided plenty of balls that tempted Clarke to get his feet moving.  By the time the seamers came back, Clarke was looking good.

I guess I can't write about yesterday without commenting on the DRS and Khawaja.  It was a bad decision by the umpire.  A worse one by the 3rd umpire who could watch it over and over and still got it wrong.  I am not sure how either of them have him out.  However, for those calling for the end of the DRS, a reminder that without it, Khawaja would still have been out.  I think that the problem with DRS is more the people operating it.  On the whole they are good umpires- even if they are having a bad series.  However they are trained, and have years of experience as centre umpires.  They are not technology specialists.  They may not get the impact of the telephoto lens etc.  The other problem is that the third umpire is restricted to answering direct questions by the on field umpire, and can't suggest the sorts of issues that might be pertinent.  Enough on that for now.

One final comment.  Watson didn't go out lbw this time, but he still managed to waste a start.  I think they replaced the wrong player to get Warner back in the team.  Oh well.  Then again he might score a ton in the second innings, or take five for not much and win the match.  We can only hope.

Where to from Here? (Part 2)

In my last post, I discussed the need for stable selection in the batting.  Now it is the bowlers turn.  While they have outperformed the batsmen significantly, the selection policies around the bowlers has been poor as well.

As an example, the way that Nathan Lyon has been treated over the last six months or so has been appalling.  He has entered the last two series as Australia's leading spinner.  In India he was dropped for Maxwell, a glorified part-timer.  Yes, technically Doherty was the key spinner in the team, but the reason he was there was that they wanted Maxwell as an all-rounder.  And they did not want two off spinners, so Doherty came in as a left arm spinner, and Lyon got dumped.  Doherty is a reasonable short form bowler, but not really a test level player.  Maxwell is a batsman that bowls a bit.  The experiment failed, and Lyon returned and took nine wickets in the final match of the India series.  He was once again the number one spinner.  Except that he was dropped for the next test for an virtually unknown nineteen year old, after a third spinner, Fawad Ahmed was tipped to take his spot.

Lyon's main fault is that he will never be a Warne or McGill, nor even a Swann.  What is true is that he is a solid performer, but not a world beater.  He hasn't won Australia many matches, however a record of 79 wickets in 22 matches suggests that he is quite useful.

Where to from here? (Part 1)

In my last cricket post I suggested that the problems with Australia's batting were as much systemic as anything else.  This means that the solutions are not easy and will take time.  But what does that mean for the team right now?  What should Lehmann, and the rest of the leadership do now?

Firstly, and I can't believe I am saying this, but we need to realise that the current Ashes are not everything -after all we have a series against the world's best coming up next year.  Not that we give up.  We should fight out this series and the next.  However, we have spent the last couple years putting band aids on our problems, and taking risks especially in selection to try to pull off an amazing win.  This goes way beyond the batting, and it hasn't worked.  Now we need to take a longer term view - realising that it may cost us matches in the short term.  However, if we used the same sort of short term thinking we have in the recent past, we will need to settle in for a long time in the middle of the pack, maybe even lower.

Short of wholesale systemic change, the main area we need to change the way we work is in selection.  Our selection policy is all over the place at the moment.  Two of the eleven picked for the first test were not even in the 16 player squad.  They effectively leap frogged at least seven players to get into the team.  It is this sort of panic selection that exacerbates the problems the team is having.

In this post we will look at the selection of the batsmen, who form our biggest problem.  In the next post we will look at the bowlers, who have performed reasonably well in spite of some poor selection decisions.

Lords:post mortem

What a devastating performance.  Not England's, but the Aussies.  On a ground where not that long ago, we had not lost for over 70 years we folded like a pack of cards. Not once, but twice.

It was not that England's bowling was brilliant.  It was good, but not spectacular.  Most of the time, the Aussies bowled as well or better.  Nor was it that the English batsmen were so good- they were three down for thirty or less twice in the match.  Yes Root and Bell in particular scored heavily, and some of Root's shots were pure poetry (you know, like those songs that sound really good until you listen to the words and realise that they go against everything you hold dear), but on the whole it was patient, sensible batting.  Good, not brilliant.  No the real difference in this match has been the quality of the Australian batting: abysmal.  Once again the top order failed, and even though Clarke and Khawaja steadied for a while, the overall picture was not that different to the one I painted a couple of days ago (here).  As I said yesterday, the Aussies need to learn patient, sensible batting.  Go for good, not brilliant- at this stage, I am not sure any of our top order can get near brilliant (Clarke has the ability, but not the support he needs at this stage).  Clarke and Khawaja tried, as did the tail, but overall it was a failure by the batsmen.

Having said that, it was the bowlers (and captain) that provided the first of the two key moments that turned the test match from a competition to a cake walk.  Having England nine down for a reasonable score in the first innings,  and all that elusive momentum going our way, we changed the way we bowled to the last pair. Rather than line and length and patience which had chipped away at the rest of the team, we tried to make things happen.  Swann and Broad hit out and scored a quick and reasonably sizeable partnership.  All the momentum had swung the other way.

Watson and Rogers steadied the ship though, and saw Australia to the cusp of lunch without loss.  Rogers, realising the break was almost there, tried to slow down the game.  Unfortunately, he was not successful in preventing another over.  In that over, Watson played all around the ball, reviewed the plumb lbw and the rot started.  The momentum that Swann and Broad had established was renewed and Australia never really recovered.  Siddle's three quick wickets at the end of that second day dampened it a bit, but the damage had already been done.

The worst of this defeat is that England have not played that well, and yet beat us by almost 350.  The performance that England put up would not beat South Africa.  It may even have struggled against an improving India.  But Australia's devastating performance with the bat made sure that it was more than adequate to finish us off.

In the next couple of (cricket) posts, I will outline the key problem, and what I think needs to be done to deal with it.

Oh dear!

What can you say after a performance like that.  The Aussies fell apart Keystone cop style.  Watson started well, before failing to go on with it yet again.  Worse he was dismissed predictably with an lbw while falling across his stumps.  Worst of all he reviewed the decision, costing Australia Rogers wicket because Rogers was to hesitant to use up the last review.  Watson is fast proving that even as an opener, test cricket is more than he can handle.  Unfortunately, we don't have anyone better who is still available. 

The rest of the innings is, as they say history (or should that be misery).  Outside of the opening partnership, the best partnership of the innings was between the number 10 and 11.  The only bright spot in the day was the Aussie bowling which took 6/103 across the day.  Harris fully deserved his name on the honour boards.  His batsmen let him down.

The problem is that this is far too regular.  The 128 on day two joins  scores of 164, 131, 163, 136 and the infamous 47 in the 46 innings since Clarke officially took over as Captain.  This does not include the many times the tail has got the Aussies out of trouble, including from 9/117 just a week ago.  In fact, on 17 occasions in the past 46 innings, the first five partnerships have failed to get the Aussies to 150.  That is significantly more than one in three.  Removing the innings where we chased 19 in the fourth innings (and lost a wicket by the way), we lose an average of 4.53 wickets in reaching (or failing to reach) 150.  That is in spite of two occasions when the openers have put on 150+.  

The average for the first five wickets during Clarke's tenure is an almost acceptable 204.87, but this is hugely inflated by the series against India in Australia when Clarke, Hussey and Ponting cashed in and the top order averaged 329 (including one innings we declared at 4/659).  Without that series it drops to an average of 185.77 across 39 innings.  If we only look at the post-Hussey era, it drops to a very alarming 134.64 in 11 innings.  The first five wickets have only passed 200 twice in that time.  

To be competitive the Aussies need to find several batsmen who can bat and bat long consistently.  Otherwise the England domination of the Ashes will continue for as long as the last Aussie one.