Australia’s Ashes plan: pace, pace and more pace

In the recent past, there hasn’t been much thought about how Australia would capture 20 wickets in an Ashes Test. Throw Glenn McGrath the new ball and wait for the Pommy openers to start a steady procession back to the pavilion.

Then just as a pair of middle order batsmen looked to have become settled, the skipper could whistle to Shane Warne to trundle over from first slip to make further inroads.

It didn’t work every time but it sure felt like it did.

Sure, they often had a fine support cast but there was never any doubt about the main acts.

With McGrath and Warne in action, the last time Australia lost a live Ashes Test was back in 1997.

This will be the first Test series in England the Poms haven’t had to worry about either Warne or McGrath for 20 years.

You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from their batsmen.

So minus the fear factor of that tormenting duo, how does Australia plan to unhinge England with the ball?

Well, if there were any lingering doubts about their plans, they were answered at the naming of this week’s Ashes squad.

Pace, pace and more pace.

Well actually pace, swing and seam.

But you get the drift – definitely not much spin.

The ever-measured chief selector Andrew Hilditch, a lawyer by trade, outlined his thoughts and it looks like sole specialist tweaker Nathan Hauritz shouldn’t be getting his hopes up.

“The balance we want in the side is a spinner that can assert lots of pressure and maintain pressure for an attack which our key weapons probably are going to be our pace attack,” he said.

In layman’s terms, if he gets picked, Hauritz’s main priority is to keep it tighter than Warwick Capper’s shorts and let the quicks catch their breath.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting was, not surprisingly, much more to the point than Hilditch.

“I think South Africa showed it is not vital we go in with a specialist spinner,” he said.

Not so long ago, such comments from an Australian skipper would have been unthinkable.

But the national team has worked out a way to beat quality opponents in the post-Warne and Stuart MacGill era.

The surprise series triumph in South Africa heartened the selectors and Ponting enormously.

It showed the path to victory without a specialist spinner with a little help from part-timers Marcus North, Simon Katich and Michael Clarke.

And now with a quality pace quintet of Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle, Stuart Clark, Ben Hilfenhaus and Brett Lee at his disposal in England, it is going to take some convincing for Ponting to change tack.

There has been plenty of talk about the pitch for the first Test in Cardiff taking spin, with the possibility of England playing both Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar.

But Ponting wasn’t prepared to raise Hauritz’s expectations of playing at Sophia Gardens in July 8.

“We are a long way off, we are still six weeks away from the first Test match,” he said.

“A lot of things can change.

“You look at all the other venues, I think most of the other venues whenever you go on an Ashes tour everything is revolving around seamers and swing bowling.

“It is very rare that you go there with any sort of talk being about spin bowlers at all.”

But the debate on which quicks to pick is one that brings a smile to the skipper’s face.

Of the three or increasingly likely four-man pace battery to be picked, Mitchell Johnson appears the only certainty.

Siddle, Hilfenhaus, Lee and Clark all make good cases for inclusion.

Siddle can bowl with serious heat, is a genuine wicket-taker and has great stamina.

Hilfenhaus has been able to generate considerable amounts of swing with the ball in Australia so there is plenty of expectation on what he might do in England.

As for Lee, although his record in England isn’t great he has still collected more than 300 Test scalps and is at his freshest in a long time.

Not to mention Clark, who is the canny sort of bowler that does well in the Old Dart.

He not only has a fine record of 90 scalps in 22 Tests but plenty of experience of the conditions from his three stints in county cricket.

It all just makes Ponting a pretty happy camper.

“When we get over there the competition for spots is going to be red hot,” he said.

“The two tour matches we have leading in are going to be exciting, it is going to be good seeing these guys going hell for leather.”