How important are centuries in the Ashes?

Australia lost the 2015 Ashes despite scoring more centuries than England. It was a reverse of the overall score-line; 3-2. But is this such an anomaly? And what does it mean about Australia’s batting performance?

Firstly, losing despite scoring more centuries is not particularly anomalous.

Trawling through the archives up to and including the Invincibles’ tour of England in 1948, reveals that this is the seventh time the losing side have scored more centuries in the last 36 Ashes.

In the last 13 Ashes, it’s only the second. The other was in 2009, when England won 2-1 despite Australia incredibly scoring eight centuries to England’s two.

In the 2009 series, however, Australia scored five of their centuries in the two drawn Test matches, including four in their second innings at Cardiff when they amassed 674 but Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar hung on at the end Day 5.

Draws can obviously limit the impact of centuries on the series result if a team is on top but misses out on securing a victory. But there were no draws in the 2015 Ashes.

In the seven Ashes mentioned above, there is only one other instance with no draws (or less than two draws, even); in 1978-79 in Australia, when England won 5-1.

Australia scored four centuries in this series compared to England’s two. Two of these were scored in a second innings after being bowled out for 116, while another was in a first innings before being bowled out for 111. The other was scored in the only match Australia won.

Across their 12 innings in the 1978-79 series, Australia was bowled out for less than 200 eight times, as disastrous batting collapses lost Australia the Ashes.

Ring any bells?

What we can learn about Australia’s batting performance almost 40 years later is that Australia’s successful run-scoring has been entirely dependent on individual batsmen.

Steve Smith and Chris Rogers were the two highest run scorers of the series, with David Warner forth. But quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a few in-form batsmen when your team can get bowled out for 60 in the first innings.

England somehow won an Ashes series by only passing 400 once (albeit they declared on 391 with a wicket spare), while the longest they batted was 102.1 overs.

This was a victory by one centurion and small but consistent contributions across the board, as well as a slew of bowlers who had Australia’s batsmen in all sorts.

The painful rebuilding of Australia’s batting line-up was always expected after the 2006-07 Ashes, with the retirements of Justin Langer and Damien Martyn, and the decline of Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden – Michael Clarke, Smith, Rogers and Warner have simply delayed it.

Now there’s no more Clarke and no more Rogers. Perhaps the pain has just begun.