Australian all let us rejoice at England’s misery.
For we are up by three.
With bowlers’ toil and batters on the boil
Our home is girt by the victories.
Well, so to speak.
The funny part about Stuart Broad’s pre-series prediction that this was the worst Australian side in 15 years is that he is probably right.
But it means little.
This is an Australian team which went into the Ashes without Josh Hazlewood and did not have captain Pat Cummins or Steve Smith in each of the opening three matches.
They pitched in a couple of debutants in Jake Weatherald and Brendan Doggett, who are finding their feet at this level, and recalled a 35-year-old who had not played Test cricket for three years in Michael Neser, who ended up bagging a five-wicket haul at the Gabba.
The Aussies carried Usman Khawaja and Nathan Lyon in the opening Test when neither veteran contributed much of anything.
And here we are, three Tests – or 11 days of playing time – into the series and the Aussies have retained the Ashes with a 3-0 flogging and Cummins has the luxury of opting to put his feet up for the next match or two to rest his dodgy back.
Broad may have been right in his assessment that this Australian side did not stack up favourably when compared to the 2013-14 side which had Mitchell Johnson striking fear into the hearts of batter, the 2017-18 version in which Smith racked up 687 runs at a Bradmanesque 137.4 or the side from four years ago which vanquished the Poms 4-0.
But here we are heading into the Boxing Day Test in a familiar situation – the Poms have been flogged by the colonials and the series result is dead and buried heading into the final two matches at the MCG and SCG.
On top of all that, the most galling aspect of this Ashes mismatch for England should be that this touring team is the best to arrive Down Under since Andrew Strauss’ squad conquered the Aussies 3-1 back in 2010-11.
Talent is not the issue with this team, it never has been.
Preparation, tactics and game awareness have brought Ben Stokes’ team undone.
England showed on day one of the series in Perth that they could, should, would have been a chance to wrest the urn back from Antipodean clutches.
Alex Carey reacts after Harry Brook was bowled by Nathan Lyon. (AP Photo/James Elsby)
They had match-winning potency in their batting, firepower in their pace bowling and a captain who would work himself to the brink of exhaustion with bat and ball to wipe the smile off the Australian dials.
Unfortunately for them, they did not have the preparation, humility or the tactical acumen to achieve the rare feat of taking down the Aussies on their own turf.
They had fallen victim to the Achilles heel which has prevented many a sporting team from living up to its potential – they believed the hype.
This England side was fawned over by their sycophantic media for reinvigorating Test cricket.
They were invincible, in their own eyes, even though they had failed to win in their own backyard against Australia two years ago and their dalliances with India had ended in a flogging at the subcontinent and a stalemate on UK shores.
Stokes is a complicated figure. On the field, he embodies the Australian style of play by giving every scintilla of effort in every aspect of play to get his team over the line.
But when it comes to questions about the Bazball cult, built on a deck of cards from Brendon McCullum’s attack at all costs mantra, he comes across as the most arrogant England skipper since Douglas Jardine nearly brought about a split in the Commonwealth nearly a century ago.
When asked by a reporter following the third Test defeat in Adelaide where this Australian team ranks from all the baggy green foes he has faced since his maiden tour in 2013, he replied: “They’ve been better than us.”
The reporter, quite reasonably, asked him to clarify by comparing the Australian teams to each other going back to 2013, so he followed up with “They’ve been better than us.”
Australia’s players celebrate after winning the third Ashes Test. (AP Photo/James Elsby)
Compared to the no-hoper squads which were on a hiding to nothing on the past two Ashes tours and the ageing squad which was past its prime in 2013-14, this England team should have taken this series deeper than three games.
If everything went their way and they played smart, they had the potential to win it all.
Despite several factors going in their favour, including the absences of Hazlewood, Cummins and Smith, these geese have laid a golden egg.
They have not learned from past mistakes or adapted on the run.
In every Test they have been in a position of being positioned to win the match if they played with clarity and purpose.
But they have been muddle-headed and directionless.
In Perth, they dominated day one and then threw the match away with reckless batting the following day.
After a cruisy build-up to the rematch at the Gabba, a drought-breaking century to Joe Root gave them a sniff but wayward bowling and tactical ineptitude brought about a second straight eight-wicket thumping.
In Adelaide, they had moments where the Aussies were looking over their shoulders but reckless batting at crucial moments served up the result to Cummins’ crew.
Late on day four, all Harry Brook needed to do was negotiate his way to stumps but, emboldened with Bazball fervour, he came to the conclusion that an extravagant reverse sweep to the first ball he faced from a new Nathan Lyon spell would be the right way to go.
He lost his leg stump, England lost Ben Stokes and Zak Crawley a short time later and all momentum that they could have carried into the final day.
And even then, after Jamie Smith had given the Poms a fighting chance with a half-century as they tried to mow down the world record victory target of 435, he decided that hitting Mitchell Starc for successive boundaries was not enough.
Pat Cummins celebrates the wicket of England’s Jamie Smith. (AP Photo/James Elsby)
He should try to send the next delivery (of the second new ball from the leading wicket-taker for the series) into orbit and succeeded only in presenting Cummins with a catch at mid-on.
Stokes somehow summed up Smith’s indefensible actions thusly: “When you’re chasing a total down, you still have to find yourself ways to be able to score runs and put things into your favour as much as you possibly can.
“That particular shot that Smudge (Smith) got out to was a very, very big strength of his. Sometimes you do get out to your strengths.
“But everything he did building up to his dismissal, I thought was outstanding. He read the situation beautifully, played it accordingly and then when he felt it was time to put something back onto the Australian bowling attack, it just didn’t come off.
“So that’s cricket, sometimes it doesn’t work and it’s pretty devastating.”
There, right there, is an encapsulation of why England have failed and why they will continue to fail if they think their all-guns-blazing approach is anyththing more than a fad.
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