Did England drop the ball in the Ashes by failing to appoint a fielding coach?
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:James Wallace
England have missed 11 chances across the Ashes which cost them a combined 383 runs, contributing heavily to their series loss in Australia
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Let’s get one thing straight. No one means to drop a catch.
sWhy would you? Spilling a chance is the single worst feeling you can have on a cricket pitch. Forget having your stumps poleaxed or being pummelled for a few sixes, there is nothing like the abject awfulness of dropping a catch.
Cricket writer and author Jon Hotten tapped into the bleakness of being a butterfingers in his book Bat, Ball and Field, describing the effect of a dropped catch as a “hollowing out of the spirit”. “It’s not like failure with the bat or the ball, which is more personal,” Hotten wrote. “It’s a failure that directly and immediately affects the bowler and the captain.
“It weakens you psychically, sometimes physically.”
You might be able to tell where this is headed.
England’s catching in this Ashes series has been markedly poor in comparison to that of Australia. Ben Stokes’ side have taken 47 of 58 chances in the series, dropping 11, according to the data analysts CricViz. That is a success rate of 81 per cent.
The hosts, in contrast, have taken 86 per cent of the opportunities offered up, catching 57 of their 66. About those nine ‘drops’… CricViz’s catch stats are skewed harshly towards the hosts as they contain a number of exceedingly tricky half-chances rather than the cast iron clangers that make up England’s list. A number of the UK and Australian highlights’ packages do not even contain the so-called Aussie drops, which says it all.
They weren’t clear-cut and they did not have any real effect on the narrative of the game, with England’s batting being too poor to capitalise and punish the ‘drops’. Joe Root, in Brisbane, is their only centurion on the tour so far.
The chances England have spilled throughout this series have cost them dearly. In fact, England’s catching has been a microcosm of the overall narrative of this Ashes in that they’ve had their moments but have failed to hold on, repeatedly, when it really mattered.
Brydon Carse picks himself up after dropping Josh Inglis in Brisbane (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
The positives first. Will Jacks soaring to pluck a Steve Smith pull out of the Brisbane night sky immediately springs to mind, as do fantastic low catches from Zak Crawley and Brydon Carse at Adelaide. But the drops… oh, the drops. They will burn longer in the memory.
That’s the thing with dropped catches, they gripe and nag long after the event. Their true cost can be abstract and painfully hard to pin down. That feeling when you have dropped a catch and the batter is still at the crease is particularly harrowing, every run a further incision on the fielder’s wounded pride and guilty conscience, and felt ever more keenly by the fielding side.
Simon Jones summed it up in his book, The Test, when describing his drop of Michael Kasprowicz with the Ashes on the line in the second Test at Edgbaston in 2005. Jones shelled a tricky but extremely takeable chance at deep third man on a gut-wrenchingly tense fourth morning. He thought he had blown his side’s chances.
“The other lads are already back in position, not looking at me,” he wrote. “I want to throw up. It is the worst feeling I’ve had on a cricket field. The England fans behind me are desolate. The Australians are dancing up and down and gesturing at me. ‘Cheers, Jones… that was f*****g useless, mate’. I try to get my head back into the game, but I can’t… I’ve just dropped this f*****g game.”
Jones was eventually reprieved. Kasprowicz was caught behind, England won the match by two runs and went on to reclaim the urn for the first time in 16 long years.
England’s Geraint Jones is lifted by his team-mate Kevin Pietersen as England celebrate the wicket of Michael Kasprowicz at Edgbaston in 2005 (Nick Potts – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
Chris Scott wasn’t so lucky. In 1994, Scott was Durham’s wicketkeeper when he dropped Warwickshire’s Brian Lara on 18. “I bet he’ll go on and get a hundred now,” is the (perhaps apocryphal) line Scott is said to have muttered in the moments afterwards.
Lara went on to score 501. Over 30 years later, it is still the highest score in first-class cricket.
In 2016, The Guardian asked Scott if people still mention that drop often. “Only every day of my life,” came his response.
The Athletic has done some number crunching on the cost of England’s drops in this series and, as one fact as to why the Ashes were surrendered across only 11 days of cricket, it’s fair to say it does not make for pretty reading.
At Brisbane in the second Test, wicketkeeper Jamie Smith dropped Travis Head in Australia’s first innings on the second day. Head was on three and it was a regulation chance behind the stumps. The Aussie crowd then jeered Smith every time he held onto a catch for the next two days. Repeatedly mocked by the best part of 42,000 people, Smith looked a wounded man for a long time in the aftermath. You could argue he still does.
As his namesakes nearly sang, some dropped catches are bigger than others. Head went on to make 33 in an opening stand of 77.
Jofra Archer holds his head in his hands after Jamie Smith drops Travis Head in Brisbane (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
The Brisbane drops kept coming.
Like a batting collapse or wayward bowling performance, once the dropping rot starts, it can be hard to stop. Later on day two, Alex Carey was dropped on nought by Ben Duckett and, again, on 25 when Root couldn’t quite cling on to a tough catch at slip that should have been Smith’s. The keeper didn’t move, the earlier drop of Head no doubt playing a part in his split-second indecision.
Carey was dismissed by Gus Atkinson the following day, but by then, he had made 63.
Brydon Carse also shelled Michael Neser at cover when the latter was on six. Neser nicked behind to Ben Stokes the following day for 16.
England's missed chances in the Ashes
Test match
Innings
Batter
Fielder
Bowler
Circumstances
Score at time
Score at dismissal
Runs cost
Brisbane
First
Travis Head
Jamie Smith
Jofra Archer
Nick behind
3
33
30
Brisbane
First
Alex Carey
Ben Duckett
Brydon Carse
Looped to gully
0
63
63
Brisbane
First
Josh Inglis
Ben Duckett
Ben Stokes
Sliced to gully
21
23
2
Brisbane
First
Michael Neser
Brydon Carse
Jofra Archer
Slapped to extra cover
6
16
10
Brisbane
First
Alex Carey
Joe Root
Gus Atkinson
Edged past first slip
25
63
Included above
Brisbane
First
Mitchell Starc
Jofra Archer
Brydon Carse
Archer misjudged
27
77
50
Adelaide
First
Usman Khawaja
Harry Brook
Josh Tongue
Nick to slip
5
82
77
Adelaide
First
Alex Carey
Brydon Carse
Jofra Archer
Flogged to cover
52
106
54
Adelaide
Second
Travis Head
Harry Brook
Jofra Archer
Guided to gully
99
170
71
Melbourne
Second
Scott Boland
Jacob Bethell
Gus Atkinson
Nicked to fifth slip
0
6
6
Melbourne
Second
Travis Head
Will Jacks
Josh Tongue
Cut to point
26
46
20
We interrupt this butterfingered bulletin to say that, of course, it isn’t quite as clear-cut as all this suggests. There is a butterfly effect at play here whereby one set of circumstances sets off another and takes the game down a different path.
We may be entering the realm of whataboutery, of ifs, buts and maybes. But as we’ll see, it seems fair to suggest that England’s spillages in Brisbane and Adelaide significantly affected their chances of victory and definitely contributed towards them losing both matches.
Back to Brisbane and when is a catch not a catch? Mitchell Starc was on 27 when he plinked a pull shot off Brydon Carse in the air to mid-off. Archer was on his heels and reacted late, the ball plopping into the turf in front of him in something of a non-effort.
This is not to single out Archer, who has a genuine shout for being England’s best player in the series despite playing in only three Tests. But it was hard not to think that, had the catch been offered up to Australia, they may well have taken it. Starc was eventually out for 77 runs, having batted England into the dirt. The (potential) drop cost 50 runs.
So England’s dropped catches cost them 155 runs in Brisbane. That’s 155 more runs they had to make to wipe out their third innings deficit. They eventually set Australia 65 to win.
If they had held their catches, that target could have been somewhere in the region of 220 and Australia’s run chase would have been a lot less clear-cut.
A pink-ball Test under floodlights brings its own challenges in terms of picking up the ball, with England’s preparations amounting to two sessions in the twilight. “We worked as hard as we could,” offered Root to journalists at the end of day two at the Gabba. “We did a huge amount of catching (practice) and making sure we utilised those two sessions under lights well.
“Sometimes the catches just don’t stick. You’ve got to keep applying yourself and wanting the ball so you’re ready when that next opportunity comes. That’s one of the nuances of the game and this pink-ball Test match.”
Jofra Archer saw four catches dropped off his bowling, but might have taken one himself offered by Mitchell Starc (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Australia’s catching, in contrast, has bordered on the magnificent. They’ve taken the basics and hung on to the half-chances.
Marnus Labuschagne and Smith have both pulled off lightning, reflex diving catches and at clutch times, too. Smith held a cortex-boggling catch off Neser that ended the burgeoning backs-to-the-wall partnership of 96 put on by Stokes and Jacks in Brisbane. England’s lead stood at 46 when Jacks nicked thinly past Carey, stood up to the stumps, but Smith leapt to his left at first slip and held the ball in his grasp a matter of millimetres off the turf.
Smith’s ‘worldie’ catch sparked England’s collapse, with their lower order falling in quick succession. England were all out just a few overs later and Australia’s target was only 65 runs.
Will Jacks watches Steve Smith dive low to his left to catch him one-handed (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
With Smith missing the Adelaide Test with vertigo, Labuschagne even outdid him in his absence, pulling off a diving catch low to his left at second slip to get rid of Ollie Pope in England’s second innings that Waugh described as “as good a slip catch as you can take”.
James Anderson, on the Tailenders podcast, said it was “the best catch I’ve ever seen”.
Yet that brilliance merely served to expose England’s shortcomings in Adelaide, too, in a game the tourists simply had to win. Instead, theirs was a similarly sorrowful tale.
Harry Brook dropped Usman Khawaja on five, who then went on to make 82. Carey was dropped by Carse on 52 and went on to make 106. Those two drops effectively cost England a combined 131 runs.
Brook then dropped Head on 99 in the second innings and the moustachioed opener blazed his way to 170, a cost of 71 runs. After a spirited fourth innings chase, England lost the match by 82 runs.
Usman Khawaja is dropped by a diving Harry Brook when on five in the third Test in Adelaide. He went on to score 82 (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Throw in a difficult chance given by Scott Boland to Jacob Bethell in the last over of the first day in Melbourne — admittedly a Test match England ended up winning — and Jacks’ one-handed miss at point, offered up by Head the next day, and the visitors’ sloppiness in the field has cost them 383 runs over the series to date.
To put that figure into context, the highest England run scorer across the four Tests is Zak Crawley, with 256.
So why is this happening?
Unlike Australia, who have a specialist fielding coach in Andre Borovec, England have been without someone in an equivalent role in this series, with the coaches Brendon McCullum and Marcus Trescothick, or squad members, running fielding and catching drills in training.
Paul Collingwood has not been with the setup since the start of the summer. Carl Hopkinson was deemed to be surplus to requirements after the white-ball series against West Indies last winter, having not been involved in the Test setup since the 2023 home Ashes.
Then England fielding coach Carl Hopkinson during a net session at Mangaung Oval, South Africa, in January 2023 (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
This streamlining was part of McCullum’s decision to strip the support staff back — ostensibly to encourage the players to think for themselves — but that increasingly looks like another error from the England head coach and management that needs to be addressed in this tour’s inevitable post-mortem. That decision may have been at the detriment of denying them the training they needed to keep them sharp in the field.
The only new role McCullum has instigated is that of a mental skills coach, a position filled by Gilbert Enoka who had previously worked with the All Blacks rugby union team. Enoka was with the England setup in Australia but, more recently, has been in contact remotely.
“You can bring in lots of different people,” Rob Key, England’s managing director for men’s cricket, told reporters ahead of the Melbourne Test. “When we started I looked at the (team) huddle first day at Lord’s and there were 38 people in there. I’m in meetings talking about needing more resource and you look around and there’s 38 people in the huddle. It’s not an easy argument to make.
“Actually what we wanted to do was take all the different noises (away) … We wanted to strip all of it back and wanted the messaging to come from just a few people. Now, as you go through, I don’t think the argument is to bring in loads of specialist coaches. It’s about having the people there who can really impact and shortcut the process to ensure players can make decisions better than they have.
“There’s probably a few spots where we’re weak in terms of our setup at the moment, where we’ve stripped it back too much, and there’s probably a few places we need to start bringing in some of that resource again.”
The old adage goes that catches win matches. Australia have been living proof of that. But, on the flip side, dropped catches cost matches.
England have been out-caught and caught out. They have that hollow feeling.
