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Once Australia left Edgbaston with their tails between their legs, the result of a sub-standard performance, they were always going to find the series difficult.
Before the Trent Bridge Test started, Michael Clarke’s side were at shorter odds than England – James Anderson’s absence was the cause of that, but the flaws displayed in Birmingham don’t cure themselves in a few days.
And once the teamsheets had been handed in, Mitchell Marsh made the scapegoat by Australian selectors, there was jumbled thinking to exacerbate the lack of technical nous.
Hampering your bowlers because the batsmen have underperformed – not the first time it has been done and unlikely to be the last – makes little sense, and the need to utilise Mitchell Johnson as a stock bowler will reap rewards on far fewer occasions than when he can be used to shock. Lord’s anybody?
That Australia lost the series was unexpected but given their form in foreign, or more specifically, foreign and alien conditions, that they were such overwhelming favourites to retain the urn was a fraction optimistic.
England, 2013 this is, India and the UAE provided a challenge that Australia were either unable or unwilling to counter, and given the mentality of cricketers from that side of the world it won’t have been the latter.
Perhaps this is the way of the international cricketing world these days. Scant preparation against opposition less than the required standard won’t do, and will never do, anybody any favours.
Stroll-in-the-park outings against a couple of sides from the second tier of the County Championship boosted the individual averages, but little more. If being battle-hardened ahead of a series opener was the aim then tough luck.
This isn’t the preserve of Australia. England visit the UAE in a couple of months and will go into a series in conditions they habitually struggle in on the back of a couple of half-baked friendly encounters.
Until this changes, and I’m not naïve enough to believe it will, then success abroad in Test cricket will be an anomaly and not an expectation.
Having said that, those who predicted such shortcomings from the tourists, if they actually had the gall to say it out loud, would’ve been laughed at. With a day to spare in Cardiff? Two-and-a-half in Birmingham? More than eight sessions in Nottingham?
But if you put an outgunned top six in front of an irrepressible seam attack – 2013-14 in complete reverse – then you get a mess. Even as conditions eased in the third and fourth Tests the Australian middle order still looked all at sea. Despite Michael Clarke and Adam Voges dripping with experience, it was a tour too far.
It isn’t the end of the world, even if some of the comments in the immediate aftermath would suggest it is. The bowling attack, once an all-rounder is put back into the mix, weren’t as bad as the results would hint at, and David Warner, Steve Smith and Peter Nevill aren’t going anywhere. But finding three top-order batsmen of the required quality? Good luck.
As for England, their performances must have amazed even the most one-eyed supporter. Joe Root has evolved into a batsman of rare ability. The pairing of James Anderson and Stuart Broad are world-class operators; even more so when conditions lean in their favour.
But the trio of Ben Stokes, Steven Finn and Mark Wood deserve a pat on the back. A team is generally only as good as their supporting cast, and while Stokes has hinted more than once at being the allrounder England have craved since Andrew Flintoff called it a day, and certainly after the retirement of Graeme Swann, both Finn and Wood exceeded expectations.
I bet the man himself didn’t even dream beforehand of the way he bowled at Edgbaston, a sign that ability doesn’t evaporate overnight, but can be recaptured if the recall arrives at the right moment.
On a collective scale, the decisions taken by the England powers that be; to remove Peter Moores as coach and replace him with Trevor Bayliss and to ignore the clamour for the return of Kevin Pietersen – a scenario that was never going to come to pass once his book had seen the light of day, justified or otherwise – have been vindicated.
For Australia, whose bed was laundered in a ‘this series matters ahead of any future planning’ style, the duvet, and nothing more than that, has fallen off.