Ashes Blueprint: what has to happen before Brisbane

With the start of the Ashes series just a touch over five weeks away, the fallout from the lost Border-Gavaskar series in India continues unabated.

I have to say, I find all of this talk about captaincy changes and mass team sackings all rather amusing. Interlinked with some reasonable suggestions and observations have been some comments so borderline hysterical you’d be excused for checking outside for a falling sky.

The losses in India were frustrating, no doubt at all, but I don’t think things are quite as bad as is being made out. The Ashes are still very winnable, and Australia can still go into the coming summer with high hopes.

So, if I were asked to put together a blueprint for winning back the Urn, as I was last week, I’d start with three simple steps, all of which have to happen before the First Test in Brisbane, otherwise the Ashes are already lost.

1. Stop the panic
Mass change to the Australian team for the First Test just isn’t needed, for starters. From the team that lost in Bangalore, there will be two changes anyway, with ‘keeper Brad Haddin coming back in for Tim Paine, we’re told, and debutante quick, Peter George, making way for a returning senior, likely Doug Bollinger, Ryan Harris, or Peter Siddle.

On top of these two obvious changes, a decent argument exists for making maybe one more adjustment, but any more than that starts changing the dynamic of the team significantly, and I’d imagine England would be licking their lips at the prospect of taking on a suddenly unsettled Australian team.

The talk of relieving Ricky Ponting of the captaincy is fanciful. Ponting is still one of the best batsmen in the top six, still scoring reasonably consistently (consistently in 70s, of late), and will still be in the side.

Sometime contributor for The Roar, Geoff Lawson, made the claim last week that Ponting should just concentrate on batting, and hand the captaincy over to Michael Clarke. I can’t see it happening for two simple reasons.

Firstly, if anyone needs to focus on their batting right now, it’s Clarke, who came back from India averaging less than 10. And secondly, it would be too big an ask of Clarke to mould the team into his own methods with Ponting still in the side.

Pakistan and England might take the field with two and three ex-captains at times, but it’s just not the done thing in Australia.

2. Get some runs on the board

Over the next month, the Test players will be making a rare, but long overdue return to their states. With all states playing up to three Sheffield Shield games before Brisbane, plus an Australia A-England XI match in Hobart, there is no end of opportunity for the Test players to rediscover any lost form, and likewise, for the fringe players to make last-ditch bids for selection.

Metaphorically and literally speaking, the runs and wickets need to be on the board in this period, particularly for the likes of Nathan Hauritz, Michael Hussey or Marcus North.

Hauritz has done himself no favours in this last Indian series, and can probably thank his lucky stars the Australian spin bowling depth is still looking rather thin. The heir apparent, Steven Smith, is in that kind of “no man’s land” where it’s still not obvious whether he can be selected as either a specialist batsman or front-line spinner just yet.

While ever this is the case, Hauritz has to be the man for Brisbane. That said, if ever there was a time for a young spinner to stand up, it’s over the next five weeks.

Hussey and North are the batsmen in the cross-hairs the most. Since the New Zealand series in March, both have compiled a similar run tally (442 and 421 runs respectively) and at a similar average (36.8 and 32.3).

Young NSW batsman Usman Khawaja, who toured with the Australian side this year, has already laid down a sizable gauntlet in the form of a match-winning double-hundred in Adelaide last week, and so now it’s up to Hussey and North to show the selectors that they’re not a spent force in the just yet.

For mine, North is still the most vulnerable. His century in the first innings in Bangalore was assumed to be career saving, but he undid all his good work with a soft dismissal in the second innings when Australia least needed it.

If you were picking one of the two to bat for your life, North’s roller coaster form offers no contest against Hussey’s record, and so North really needs a big month. Failing this, I think he can send his Baggy Green to the framers for Pool-room preparation.

3. Believe England aren’t that much better
This shouldn’t be difficult, because they’re not. Indian coach Gary Kirsten said at the completion of the Border-Gavaskar series that their plan was always to target perceived weaknesses in the Australian side, namely the middle order and Nathan Hauritz.

But England’s batting line-up is hardly impenetrable either, and the horribly out-of-sorts Kevin Pietersen’s mercy dash to South Africa in desperate search of runs has not gone that well. Paul Collingwood had a leanish English summer too, and even captain Andrew Strauss occupied the lower end of the batting averages.

Likewise, in Steve Finn, “the next Glenn McGrath”, the English press are telling us, the Poms themselves have a bowler untested in Ashes contests and Australian conditions, and will be coming into the series with a massive weight of expectation.

As the teams take the field in Brisbane on Day 1, there’s not going to be that much between them, so it’s up to Australia to make the most of local knowledge, and continue to maximise that advantage as the series goes on.

As a personal aside, this coming Ashes series marks something of a lifelong ambition for me, and I cannot wait to follow the series from Test to Test around the country, all the while bringing you my thoughts and observations on the series for The Roar.

It’s going to be great.