by Arthur Crabtree » Sat Aug 02, 2014 5:08 pm
What to do with the England win in the Ashes? 3-0 is a hell of a thumping. Home expectations were unrealistically high, so modestly were the Australians rated. It's possible that anything other than a home whitewash would seem a disappointment for many. Australia turned up with fortunes at low tide. And they were beaten at Trent Bridge, then trounced at Lord's. Thereafter they gave as good as they got, which may have offered a pointer to the events of the winter.
England prevailed with the flaws on show that would eventually lead to defeat. Swann started the series well, but gradually lost the dizzying rotations that facilitated his drift and dip. Anderson won the game for England at Trent Bridge, at the cost of his gathering exhaustion. And that was becoming a familiar story. The batters accumulated slowly and the mindset remained defensive. With the top three unreliable, the stroke players were always under pressure. The attack was till bowling dry, still joining dots. What had won games for England once was no longer working. For all of the good things in the series, an enduring image is of the batters failing to score runs off Shane Watson, bowling at a fifth stump.
There were good things. Bell was superb with the bat and no one could claim he was sheltering under the boughs of others; he was the main man. The bowlers never gave up on horrible pitches which were designed to help Swann, but probably shortened his career. As the series progressed, the Sky spinometer gave numbers to his waning powers. The Ashes ended with the depressing spectacle at the Oval, of Australia bowling their overs slowly to wreck the decent intension of Clarke's manufactured finish. We were watching a farce in the fading light.
The whitewash in the return series, and the giving up of the Ashes was a continuation a the decline evident in the home win, and more broadly, since Dubai. Australia had become a more united team under Lehmann and with a rejuvenated Mitch Johnson, they turned the contest into five WACA Tests. The Poms were either bounced out, or swung out with full reverse swinging balls. The batters couldn't get runs on the board, with only Stokes scoring a hundred in the series. There was no scoreboard pressure. When the pressure in the system falls the motor or the heart has to work harder, until it fails and the body collapses. Swann, Anderson and Broad had been the heart of the team, but by Melbourne, they had no more. Swann retired, Broad and Anderson, who had been injured throughout, were, for now, finished. England had been bullied with the bat and the ball, and in verbal exchanges. Australia didn't much like the England players and were savouring the joys of schadenfreude. It was a humiliation. And as a capitulation to pace, it made a matching set with their torture by spin in UAE. Two of their three worst batting performances ever, only two years apart.
I always say that everybody's right.