Ashes blog: England have work to do after Aussies square Ashes series in Perth

The worrying thing about England’s performance in Perth was that they failed to deliver with both bat and ball. I found it very frustrating to watch England’s bowling during this match because they bowled without intelligence, and that is unforgivable for an international attack. In the first innings, England’s bowlers dismissed the Aussie top 5 for just 69 runs, and then set about the rest of the innings with a gung-ho mentality which allowed Hussey, Haddin and Johnson to smack bad balls all around the park and take Australia to a score of 268 when in reality, they shouldn’t have got any more than around 160. If England had been clever, they would have focused on bowling consistently with good lines and lengths, building sustained periods of pressure which would have resulted in Australian wickets.

In the second innings every England bowler was guilty of bowling too short. The fast bowlers obviously turned up and saw a pitch with pace and bounce in it and thought that gave them a licence to pepper the Aussies with short pitched bowling. In fact, what this allowed the Aussie batsmen to do is to get onto the back foot and help themselves to easy runs. If you watched the way that the Aussies bowled, they pitched the ball up and got it to bounce off a fuller length. This meant that the England batsmen were not sure whether to play off the front or back foot, and it was this hesitancy which led to two England middle order collapses in this test match.

It was worrying to see England’s middle order collapse twice in the same game, and I think that perhaps one change in personnel should be made for the next test. For me, Eoin Morgan should come into the side to replace Paul Collingwood, who has really struggled for runs in every game in this series. I think that if Morgan came in he could bat at number 6, Ian Bell could push up the order to number 4 which would leave Kevin Pietersen to bat at number 5, a position that I think he is much better suited to. Morgan is an innovative, exciting player who undoubtedly has the talent to play test match cricket at the highest level, and I feel that now would be a good time to bring him into the England side.

Having said all of this, I still believe that England will win this Ashes series as Australia have deep problems within their team. If the Aussies think that their worries are over then they are very much mistaken, as practically half their team are out of form (Hughes, Ponting, Clarke, Siddle and Hilfenhaus) and they still have a lot of work to do to win this series. Nevertheless, an Australian victory in Perth has set this series up for a nail biting finale in the New Year, with both sides now believing that they have what it takes to win the Ashes.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.