The six missing men from England’s last Ashes victory

England have made six changes to their Ashes squad from last time they triumphed on home shores. Who are those six and where are they now?

Tim Bresnan
In his first six Ashes Test matches, Tim Bresnan avoided defeat. England’s last Ashes success at Durham was the last of the six.

You remember Bresnan? The Mr Reliable who justified his place with performances that caught the eye, but only that of the observant viewer?

In that Durham Test, he scored 57 runs and was dismissed once, after a vital second innings cameo that, from an Australian perspective, was annoying and costly.

He took three wickets at Durham, all of them members of Australia’s top six. The most important of these was David Warner, who suffered a Bresnan brute when he was looking well placed to guide Australia to a tough fourth-innings target.

I hope Bresnan received sustained applause when he finished his final over of the match, the 54th of the innings. If Bresnan never plays another Test, he will be remembered as someone who often deserved a solid hand of applause while the superlatives were justifiably kept for the bigger names, or while the best player in a poorer opposition side was gaining well earned sympathy for his wasted work.

Cricinfo‘s ball by ball commentary says this about Bresnan’s second last ball of the match:

“53.5 Bresnan to Harris, no run, another bouncer, Harris ducks, this is what taking seven wickets in an innings earns you, current Australian fast bowler, the right to face bouncers from the opposition after your batsmen have caved in, what a tragedy.”

After this match, injury kept Bresnan out of the English side until Perth in the return series. What made his selection seem desperate was the make-up of England’s touring squad. Chris Tremlett, Steven Finn and Boyd Rankin couldn’t get a match on Australia’s fastest pitch ahead of Bresnan and a fading Graeme Swann.

Bresnan couldn’t have done anything that would’ve changed the course of the Ashes, and was retained for Melbourne. On the second day, Bresnan put in a typical Bresnan performance. He did his role in a suffocating bowling performance. England was in front after day two for the first time.

On days three and four, they reverted back to self-asphyxiation. Bresnan was dismissed cheaply in England’s second innings, and hammered by Shane Watson in the fourth innings of the match. Dropped for the final Test, Bresnan played in both white-ball formats until the end of the 2014 World Twenty20.

He didn’t bowl well, though I hasten to add that he wasn’t at Jade Dernbach’s level. Since England’s loss to the Dutch in that tournament, he has played only one match. It came against Ireland earlier this year, with England’s cricketers returning from the tour of the West Indies.

His fellow seamers that day were Mark Wood, David Willey and Steven Finn, who all played in the recent ODI series against New Zealand. Bresnan is now in the invidious position of being considered as surplus. Currently, Yorkshire is reaping the benefits of Bresnan’s determination to make it back to international level. After all, he is only 30.

England has found Bresnan replaceable. Sure, I hear you say, but aren’t all cricketers replaceable? Well, England has found Swann much harder to replace. He was the bowler whose presence lessened the need for a fifth bowler, even as his elbow increasingly cried out for one.

Graeme Swann
Swann was the bane of Australia’s left-handers, especially Chris Rogers. At Durham, Rogers batted well. The DRS saved him in both innings from Stuart Broad and umpire Tony Hill’s erroneous decisions. He batted with sufficient authority against James Anderson and Bresnan.

When Rogers reached 96, Swann redoubled his efforts. Rogers had to ignore the chirping, he had to wipe away the sweat and he was muttering to himself. Rogers had to wait for 19 agonising balls, lose a batting partner. Rogers swept Swann to bring up his deserved century, but Swann wouldn’t be denied indefinitely.

On day three, Swann removed Rogers and Brad Haddin before the second new ball. This exposed a tail and not Australia’s normal tail, but an actual tail. Rather than James Pattinson or Ashton Agar, Jackson Bird walked out at No. 11.

In the second innings, Swann would again claim the wicket of Rogers, after a productive opening stand. Rogers’ replacement was Usman Khawaja, dismissed cheaply by Swann again. Khawaja, like Ravi Bopara in 2009, was dropped after the fourth Test.

For the fifth Test, England tried to combine focus on a 4-0 result with experimentation for the return Ashes series. The debuts of Simon Kerrigan and Chris Woakes were supposed to help lighten the burden on the main English bowlers.

The squeamish had to avert their gaze when Kerrigan was bowling. Suffering from a rash of nerves, Alastair Cook found more support for his premier off-spinner from the inclement weather and Jonathan Trott.

Woakes avoided catastrophe, but Stokes was preferred for the Australian tour. Having missed selection for Brisbane he was picked as the fifth bowler in Adelaide and was the third bowler by the Sydney Test. He scored England’s only hundred of the series.

Yet as Stokes was burning brighter, Swann was fading. He had bowled so much that he had lost a little, and the Australians could scent it. It wasn’t that Swann always bowled horribly in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Rogers still had headaches, and Swann removed Warner and Michael Clarke in Perth.

However, it was clear Swann’s body was no longer up to the challenges of Test cricket. When you’re in a situation like that, you need every chance to stick to be a useful bowler.

Matt Prior gave Warner two stumping let offs during his second innings hundred in Perth and while Swann did eventually get his man, the damage was done. Watson was given the platform on day four, and Swann had to be replaced in the attack by Joe Root for his own protection.

Matt Prior
After Perth, the English selectors were forced to drop Matt Prior for his own protection. Having produced a series-saving effort at Auckland, he suffered a run of poor scores in the Ashes series in England.

In the second innings at Durham, he fell for a golden duck courtesy of a Ryan Harris rip-snorter. However, epithets such as ‘safe’ and ‘solid’ still applied to his wicket-keeping. He took five catches at Durham, including a leg-side catch off Broad and covered much ground to dismiss Rogers off Swann. In Australia, his wicket-keeping went apart like a rocket that hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle.

So it was that Johnny Bairstow received his chance in Melbourne and Sydney. His fallibilities with the bat and the gloves meant that Prior was rushed back in at the first opportunity, against Sri Lanka at Lord’s at the start of the next English summer. Other candidates such as James Foster and Chris Read weren’t seen as better options, while Jos Buttler wasn’t considered ready for Test level.

England commanded that Test. They were driving the boat, while Sri Lanka was clinging desperately to the side. England should have won that Test but just as they tried to give themselves more time to win the match, a Sri Lankan player would step up to halt progress and keep Sri Lanka’s head above water.

Eventually, England had a day to bowl Sri Lanka out. At tea, the match looked as if it was going to be a draw. James Anderson gave the hosts a sniff with the dismissal of Kumar Sangakkara, and eventually No. 11 Nuwan Pradeep had to bat out five balls from Stuart Broad to save the match.

Pradeep, a tailender from an earlier age. Pradeep, the rabbit. He missed, edged and reviewed through the five balls, mere inches from failure. But all it says in Wisden is ‘match drawn’. It was the closest Prior would come to another Test victory after Durham, even including England’s near-heist in the last Test of the 2013 Ashes.

Sri Lanka’s escape stung, especially when they won at Headingley to take the two-match series 1-0. Prior’s game fell down the same slippery slope over the next three Tests as it had done before, due to a chronic ankle injury, and Buttler slipped seamlessly into the breach.

Even though Prior’s career couldn’t be forgotten, he could be replaced without too much trouble.

Kevin Pietersen
Not so Kevin Pietersen, however. I’m not sure one dreadfully mishandled axing has ever been the cause of so much keyboard bashing (and just to be clear, much of that was deserved). In retrospect, it’s almost surprising his choice of bedside lamp went without any known public critics.

His bowling spell at the SCG was the only on-field action he undertook in Australia in which someone else (Cook) received criticism from all and sundry.

Pietersen’s last Test hundred came at Old Trafford, the Test immediately preceding Durham. It saved England from having to follow-on, and he was particularly hard on the recalled Nathan Lyon. Lyon had his revenge against a surprisingly more circumspect Pietersen at Durham, removing him in both innings for 26 and 44.

With the exception of his blistering half century at the Oval, Pietersen struggled to find the balance between defence and attack for the rest of the year. He wasn’t the only one struggling in a side that had developed a Mitchell Johnson allergy, but he has been on the sidelines ever since.

In the context of playing cricket for England, anyway. In terms of public debate that’s a different matter, with polarising positions aplenty and voices of reason few and far between. There’s something about Pietersen that has caused the ECB to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot.

Jonathan Trott
I have a confession to make. While I don’t ever wish for an English victory, I felt happy for Jonathan Trott when he was part of a victorious side in Grenada earlier this year. That, along with the warm applause after his final Test knock in the next match at Bridgetown, was a more appropriate way to bow out.

While his selection as Alastair Cook’s partner was not universally applauded, it was justified. Trott had made plenty of runs in county cricket, and England had to know where he was at before the Ashes.

At Durham, Trott made 49 and 23. Most unusually, his strike rate was around 80 in both innings. He even bowled three overs. Everyone knows what happened in Australia, and it isn’t necessary to go over it here. As for the rest of squad left in Australia after Trott’s absence, watching them in training sessions and matches was an instructive exercise. The machine was broken but no one knew any other way, so they kept pressing the same button over and over and over again.

Johnny Bairstow
Have you ever seen anyone summoning spirit by consuming two alcoholic beverages, before standing up with determination? In the second innings at Durham, that was Johnny Bairstow against Nathan Lyon when he hit him back over his head for two consecutive boundaries.

It wasn’t carefree cricket, it was courageous cricket. In the first innings, Bairstow had needed 77 balls for a scratchy 14 before Lyon put him out of his misery. In the second, Lyon would eventually remove him again for 28. Bairstow wouldn’t reappear until Boxing Day.

During that time, the English side had gone from a cohesive unit to a rabble. A rabble that were fielding poorly, with a misfiring Prior. Bairstow had to play as the wicket-keeper and while there were periods where he kept well, every dropped catch rammed home the folly in not bringing a specialist keeper as a back-up.

Australia again exploited the flaws in his batting technique. However, his spirit at Durham showed he’s got the character for the top level and he did a very good job when filling in for Jos Buttler during the ODI series against New Zealand.

So, those are the six men missing from England’s side from their last Ashes triumph at Durham in 2013. The wood that, if not dead, has needed to be at least temporarily replaced.

Judging by the words aimed at Shane Watson by a certain rookie English bowler, the replacement Wood contains bark. As for bite, well, we can only wait and see.