I cannot believe that before this series started I picked Australia to win 2-1. If I had seen how Australia bat against the moving ball I would have put money on England.
They are so bad it is unbelievable. They do not learn. When I went to Australia to play I knew it would be on hard bouncy pitches so I practised in the nets to replicate the challenge. I had people bowling off 20 yards, banging it in hard with a Chingford ball that zipped through and bounced.
Australia should have done homework on the lateral movement you get in England from good seam bowlers such as Stuart Broad and James Anderson.
It is not as if Australia do not know that it will seam and swing in England. Bob Massie bowled us out at Lord’s in 1972 with 16 wickets. That fella Terry Alderman took buckets full of wickets here down the years. Glenn McGrath was lethal with the Duke ball on English pitches, so they should have known what to expect and prepared for it.
You cannot just turn up in England and expect pitches to be exactly like Australia, hope the sun is going to shine at 90 degrees and you will bat under blue skies. That does not happen.
There are times in England when you have to graft and work hard for your runs. You do not have long periods where you can cream the ball to all parts. I have no sympathy for them. They came here gloating after beating us 5-0. They derided England and some of their players slagged us off whenever they could in the newspapers.
But the last laugh is on them. They have been so poor in batting that maybe we should play four or five of our second-teamers at the Oval so we can give them some experience and see how they go against this second-class Australian team. Obviously England will not do that, but this lot are so bad I think we would still win if they did.
Just look at how they have performed away from the flat pitch of Lord’s.
ScoreBoard
Australia (1st Innings) 60
England (1st Innings) 391/9 decl (Root 130, Bairstow 74; Starc 6-111)
Australia 2nd Innings (overnight: 241-7): Voges not out 51, Starc c Bell b Stokes 0, Hazlewood b Wood 0, Lyon b Wood 4, Extras (b20, lb16, w1, nb3) 40, Total (all out, 72.4 overs) 253.
Fall of wickets: 1-113, 2-130, 3-136, 4-136, 5-174, 6-224, 7-236, 8-242, 9-243.
Bowling: Broad 16-5-36-1; Wood 17.4-3-69-3; Finn 12-4-42-0; Stokes 21-8-36-6; Ali 6-0-34-0.
Australia’s most prolific batsman over the last 12 months, Steve Smith, has played like a novice. He is a flat-track bully on easy batting pitches but in six innings on the three Test-match pitches where the ball has moved laterally he has had a bad technique and he has shown poor shot selection and an inability to graft or work for runs. In those six innings he has scored 92 runs. Pathetic.
His second-innings dismissal here was unbelievably stupid. As vice-captain and the next leader, what sort of message does that send to your team-mates?
Michael Clarke has moved down to No 5 because of a lack of runs and the fact that the short ball is playing tricks with his mind. There is no doubt that the shot he played to get out in the second innings was because he just had a bouncer the ball before and had played it badly.
Then we have Shaun Marsh. He made a mistake going hard at the ball in the first innings. That is human. It happens. But to make the same mistake going hard at the ball in the second innings is brainless. He has played 15 Test matches, had 28 innings and scored eight ducks. No wonder. Playing like that shows that he is not smart or a good learner.
But Australia’s terrible cricket should not take away from the performances of Broad and Ben Stokes. Broad has bowled fantastically well. Before lunch David Warner played and missed four balls in an over that could have brought Broad four wickets.
The way he is bowling at the moment reminds me of Brian Statham. Brian used to continually ask questions around off stump, but probably bowled a bit quicker than Stuart. Brian did not try to swing the ball. He bowled seam-up and if it swung it was just by pure chance.
Every batsman knows that when you face a tall man with a high action you will have problems playing him if he bowls it around off stump at pace. It just needs a little lateral movement with a bit of bounce and you are in trouble.
If Broad keeps bowling this well he will take 500 Test wickets – he is only 29. But if England want to be the best Test-match team in the world they have to think seriously of taking Broad and Anderson out of one-day cricket. They did not play earlier in the summer against New Zealand. Look how fresh and good they have been ever since.