Spot the difference II

Root catches Rogers I - Benevolent Universe

 

Root catches Rogers II - Indifferent Universe

Everything was going so well, I had it all worked out. Forget the first innings, this is our first innings. We’ve got 60 in the bank, not 331 taken away. We’ve got a day 2 and 3 pitch, we’ll just pile on the hundreds like at Lords and make it one of those “only one innings required” games. Sorted. I was riveted by Rogers and Warner as they started off, or rather I was attempting to rivet them to the spot with my eyes. I was trying to do the “watch what is happening rather than what happens” thing, partly so I didn’t just cringe at the expected blow every ball. We had a lot of luck, which seemed only fair, and everything seemed to be going to my plan, then Chris Rogers got out. As the third umpire pondered a close no-ball at length (a “noey”, Heals called it the other day), surely a million silent petitions went up. “God, thanks for sending that poltergeist to Cook and Bell and for everything else, just give us this last one bit of luck and I promise we’ll take it from here and won’t ask for anything else ever.” God said “Okay, just this last one and then that’s it. I’m outtie.” And then that was it. The universe staged a mocking replay of Rogers getting out and in this game of “Spot the Difference” the difference was no more Mr Nice Universe.

Is England in fact another India for Australian cricket? It has long been standard wisdom that however all-conquering we are elsewhere, Indian pitches contain kryptonite that saps our powers and it is a completely different ball game. Australia and India seem to have a kind of truce. India lose here, shrug and say, “Yeah, but we’ll win at home and that’s all that matters”. We lose there and glumly say, “Yeah, but what can you do? Indian pitches.” Despite the fact that there has been a clear pattern of us winning the Ashes here but losing in England (apart from that time when we also lost here) for the last ten years, and despite the fact that swing was identified as a problem ten years ago, the main response seems to be to throw a couple of county cricketers at the batting order and hope for the best. Hopefully they do more than that, but when we head over to England the mood, from the outside at least, seems to ride on the spirit of the most recent victory at home instead of the most recent loss over there, in a way that never happens when we go to India.

I don’t see why any of this is the “nail in coffin” for Clarke. Sure, it’s another personal batting failure to take into consideration, but how is everyone else’s batting failure his fault? When there’s a bowling failure you can raise questions about captaining decisions like bowling rotations and field positions, but is he supposed to have some magic dust advice to blow into the ears of batsmen before they head out? Is he supposed to ride to the crease on a white horse and sweep our innings off its feet? It’s nice when that happens and people go fuzzy about “captain’s knocks”, but surely this is more of a coaching than a captaincy issue. Will we actually see Lehmann… squirm?

Conversely, how lucky is Duckface to be the putative leader of this team? Before this series someone from inside the English camp said that Cook had his problems but with the appropriate support structures around him he was just fine. Like a flat foot needs orthotics? It’s not exactly praise of the foot. Cook started to look nervous last night when a boundary brought the deficit down to a mere 275. “Why is the camera looking at me? Was that a danger sign? Am I supposed to be doing something?” It’s like he stands outside of himself and tries to arrange himself in captainy shapes and make captainy motions. He is immensely flattered and probably immensely relieved by this performance, surely no more success has ever come to a less convincing captain.

I’d rather see us all out for under 300 than see the English chase a humiliatingly low total. And I’m not sure what we could do at the Oval that would be any consolation. When was the last time we faced a dead rubber as the losing side of an Ashes series? I can feel a creeping gloom approaching, a rising damp. Is this what it feels like to be English?