The Ashes- It Wasn't Supposed to be Like This.

Alone and no-one to rant to

It was supposed to be the winter that cricket finally came to Canada. I gleefully told and tweeted of the joys of my time-zone, with play starting at 7pm Toronto Time, setting me up perfectly for a winter of cricket. My enthusiasm for the game would prove infectious as England romped to yet another Ashes win. The ECB would welcome me off the plane at Gatwick airport with thanks and with job offers, as my PR campaign finally paid off. My friends and I would gather around the laptop and extol the virtues of this great game and this great England side, whilst I explained the intricacies of this wonderful sport.

Right now, seven days of play into the series, I don't even feel like watching it myself. Gutless batting and village green-standard fielding were supposedly a thing of the past. We'd done our time, crawled through mountains of shit, and ended up on the other side, all the while with Morgan Freeman narrating. This period of domination was, as some moronic blogger wrote during the summer, 'Catharsis Cricket'. 

The ramblings of a mad-man

It's still been entertaining, if you can be magnanimous enough to give Australia credit. I'm sure I will genuinely be able to in time, but for now, here's what I would say if I was actually magnanimous, and not writing through gritted teeth: seeing an angry fast bowler such as Mitchell Johnson run in and bowl at 94 miles per hour is undeniably a great spectacle. I'm just about too young to remember Ambrose, Walsh, Waqar and Wasim, and Brett Lee was fast, but never seemed scary. Johnson is undoubtedly scary.

However, to turn something from a great spectacle into great theatre, one needs dialogue, a response. Otherwise it just becomes a soliloquy, and these are rarely great without context. I've seen Hamlet. This is less like a gripping gladiator fight between two equals, and more like the scene in Reservoir Dogs when the bloke gets his ear cut off, absolutely powerless to resist. It's entertaining for all the wrong reasons. You're watching despite yourself. There's no fight. The best passage of play in this test match was Monty Panesar's brave resistance. If the rest of the team can follow Monty's lead, then this series might be something other than a procession.

I still believe that England, with every one (or at least a majority) of their players at the peak of their powers are a better side, man for man, than Australia. Other than Clarke and possibly Warner, there aren't any players that I'd have swapped before the start of the series. That is why explaining LBW and leg-side theory to Canadians is one thing, but comprehending this woeful England performance is rather a Sisyphean task. But, as an Englishman should, rather than backing away and showing that the task is not for this delicate stomach, I shall roll my sleeves up and try and explain away this dreadful nightmare.

1. The Rot. The questions came after New Zealand away, but we did not answer them, as we had Matt Prior. The questions came after Australia at home, but we did not answer them, as we had Ian Bell and James Anderson. The questions have come again in Brisbane and Adelaide, and the well of saviours has run dry.
   
   To not reach 400 in nineteen test match innings, since New Zealand back in March, is frankly abysmal. Matt Prior must be dropped, unless he gets runs in the second innings at Adelaide, and that frankly will not happen, based on recent evidence. I'm sick of questioning Kevin Pietersen's place in the team, as he's apparently undroppable, but slapping yet another 'flamingo' shot into the leg side was crass, irresponsible, and in the circumstances, unforgivable. Joe Root is apparently an old head on young shoulders, and yet his sweep across the line was the shot of someone nowhere near mature enough for test cricket. You can't have it both ways, and someone hopefully gave them a dressing down.
   
   Someone like Graham Gooch. Oh yes, our batting coach. Time to go, I'm afraid. The stats speak for themselves, and with several players regressing and several looking past it, it might be time for a complete shake-up of the set-up. Heavy Ashes defeats in the past have seen heads roll, and this one may well see Ashley Giles replace Andy Flower, and anybody, surely, replacing Gooch.
   
   Obviously, nobody wants to see a return to the revolving door selection policy of the 1990s and early 2000s, but right now, it seems that this England team, famous for its cliques, has gone too far the other way, and once that cosiness sets in, it's almost impossible to correct without an entire restructuring. I'm wary of using the phrase 'root-and-branch', but I doubt the ECB won't be so forthcoming.
   
2. Momentum. Here's a thought. Australia came away from the summer with greater momentum than England. Yes they hadn't won an Ashes test for seven matches. Yes they were thrashed at Lord's. Yes, they lost 3-0, but let's be honest: this result flattered England immensely. Many mocked Shane Warne in the commentary box and the Australians on the pitch for their belligerent optimism during the summer, in many instances claiming moral victories and improvements and criticising England for not being ruthless enough.
   
   England didn't dominate the summer series- they dominated at Lord's, and a few other days dotted about the calendar. In fairness to England, when they did have a good day, they were very, very good. In putting one heck of a positive spin on the series defeat and claiming some sort of victory at Manchester, Australia lessened any momentum that England had. Like I said above, I'm not even sure they had a great deal of momentum to begin with. Ian Bell may have done, but in hindsight, more questions (Cook, Prior, Trott, Joe Root- Lord's aside- opening) came out of the summer than answers. By Day 2 of Brisbane, any lingering memories of the summer had been well and truly wiped away.
   
3. The schedule: England's players and the PR team will tell us that they don't want to make excuses. The performances have been so abject that I'm not particularly inclined to take the blame off them. And yet an enormous part of me just wants to give the players a hug. Surely, surely Pietersen's and Root's shots were born out of mental fatigue. Cricket is not a game you can switch off from, and if Jonathan Trott's regrettable absence has proved one thing, it's that it's a game played largely in the mind. I'm desperately seeking mitigation, and that's the only thing I can think of.
   
   The ECB has flogged this team to the brink of breaking point, playing test match after test match, giving the people what they want- now it looks to have been at the expense of the team. It's akin to Simon Cowell parading One Direction around the world relentlessly. Sooner or later, Harry Styles will snap and the whole thing will collapse. Ideally, the England cricketers would have had a few months off, but this is the bed that the ECB and the cricketing calendar have made. The players, as ever, will bear the brunt, whilst the faceless suits in the corridors of power top up the ECB coffers. As it is, the decision to rest may be taken out of one or two players' hands, arriving in the form of the selection axe. 

I'm not claiming to be some great prophet. I predicted a 2-1 win for England. I certainly didn't see this defeat coming, and trust me, it will be a series defeat. There's been so much written about this failure that I doubt any of the above is particularly ground-breaking. Someone on Twitter remarked that Swann and Anderson looked tired even during the national anthem. You can almost see the weight of pressure on this side, and with Perth to come, for so many years the graveyard of English cricket, it shows no signs of abating. As far as this series goes, if someone offered me avoidance of a whitewash, I'd take it right now. All I can see from where I'm sitting is 5-0.