Nasser Hussain: England's consolation win does matter, even as a reminder of what might have been
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Nasser Hussain
The ex-England captain also addresses rising concerns over two-day Tests and modern batting techniques, and the need not to over-compensate
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England came to Australia with what we thought were realistic hopes of regaining the Ashes so, however well they did to win in Melbourne, we cannot forget the series was over in 11 days’ cricket. That remains the bottom line.
But consolation wins do matter.
When I first walked into the MCG ahead of the Boxing Day Test, my mind went back to 1998 when, with Australia having already retained the urn and facing the same target of 175 as England did here, Dean Headley bowled us to a thrilling victory.
Equally, when I go to Sydney for the final Test, I will remember Michael Vaughan’s great knock at the start of 2003 and then Andrew Caddick taking seven wickets as we won a ‘dead rubber’ after Australia had already won the series.
So this win will mean something to England even though the Ashes are gone. It will mean something to players who have come in for criticism here and it will mean a lot to England supporters who have been through 15 years of pain watching Tests in Australia.
Andy Caddick celebrates his dismissal of Ricky Ponting, one of his seven wickets at Sydney in January 2003 (Nick Wilson/Getty Images)
This victory will be especially important to Ben Stokes and Joe Root, two of England’s great cricketers. For them to have ended their careers without a Test victory in Australia – and I don’t know if they will be back next time — would have been a great shame.
But it’s a double-edged sword. England only started to play the cricket we know they can halfway through the third Test in Adelaide, and that leaves me incredibly frustrated.
The view was expressed after the third Test defeat that victories for England in Melbourne and Sydney could save the jobs of coach Brendon McCullum and managing director Rob Key, and that everything would then be fine.
Actually, winning here makes it more disheartening in many ways for all the England supporters who have come to Australia throughout this tour, as well as for those at home, because it highlights the opportunities that have been squandered. Especially where England were at lunch on day two in the first Test in Perth.
From a lead of 99 with nine wickets in hand, they should have won that opening Test and been going to Sydney now with the series at 2-2 at least. So this four-wicket England win puts focus on the mistakes Key and McCullum have admitted to making in their preparations for this tour.
Rob Key and Brendon McCullum have admitted preparations for the Ashes did not bring the results they hoped (Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images)
In particular, it puts into question the mindset England had coming into this Ashes series.
We did an interview with Key for Sky before this Test, and I asked him whether he’d picked a side to fight the battles from the previous Ashes in Australia.
The issue was highlighted by a statistic doing the rounds at the start of the MCG match suggesting the pitches around the world, not just in Australia, that have seamed the most in recent years have been Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. In my era, it would have probably been three English grounds.
That shows the type of cricket that has been played here has been different to previous Ashes series, as we saw in this two-day Test. But England’s plan before the series was to hit Australia with nothing but extreme pace. It then took them until the fourth Test, submitting to the conditions, to pitch the ball up and be skilful.
This Melbourne pitch did make the game more of a lottery, bringing England into it, because there was no way you could run in and bowl the ball halfway down the track here. Their bowlers had to hit their lengths and the seam attacks came closer together.
England did get a lot of things right. Harry Brook, for instance, set the tone perfectly in the first innings by taking the attack to Australia.
Running down the pitch to Mitchell Starc’s first ball with England at eight for three was a brave thing to do after Key had talked before the match about dumb shots. But it was the right thing to do on this surface because of the amount of movement that was being produced. If you just tried to keep the ball out and stay there, you ended up with a 15-ball duck like Joe Root. But Brook got his tempo exactly right.
Then, once England were set 175 to win, there was only one way they were going to play and that meant Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley teeing off and being ultra-positive.
Jacob Bethell played an important part in that second innings. I don’t like to get too high or low on a young player when they first come into the side, but I liked how composed Bethell was on a really difficult pitch in front of more than 90,000 people.
Bethell just needs to play and, now he’s in the side, he needs to be given the same length of time as others have been given and play more red-ball cricket.
Jacob Bethell drives through the covers en route to 40 in England’s second innings in Melbourne (Graham Denholm – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
The problem with the left-field picks England have made is that these players are taken out of the system. Then you get to the crucial moments and they are unselectable.
Bethell came in against India for the final Test last summer having played barely any first-class cricket and looked all over the place at the Oval.
It’s the same with Shoaib Bashir. He can barely land the ball now because he hasn’t been playing and, however talented these lads are and however high their ceiling is, they need to play. You only reach that high ceiling by playing.
Bethell epitomises the decisions young players have to make these days. There is a lot of white-ball cricket ahead of him, starting with the tour of Sri Lanka and then the Twenty20 World Cup in February, but somehow he has to play more with the red ball.
When Vaughan made a big impression after coming into the England side on a minefield in Johannesburg in 1999-2000, he was then able to go off and work on his game with Yorkshire. There were no white-ball millions and Indian Premier League back then.
Bethell’s progress stalled when he didn’t come back early from the IPL last summer to carry on where he had left off in Test cricket in New Zealand, and the same thing is in danger of happening every year. How much red-ball cricket will he get in to make sure he is ready to face New Zealand in Test cricket next June?
He and the ECB have to get a difficult balancing act right because his white-ball cricket is also important and, as Key has said, England are criticised when they do not pay enough attention to preparing for white-ball tournaments.
Ben Stokes departs down the tunnel at the MCG (Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images)
He has always been a captain who has shown a lot of emotional intelligence, and here he wrapped his arms around his team. Stokes has been where Duckett found himself and his press conference before the game in Melbourne was spot on.
Having said after defeat in Brisbane that England had to toughen up and his dressing room was no place for weak men, now he made sure all his concerns were about looking after his team and individuals within it. Do that and teams tend to stick together.
We have seen on previous Ashes tours how things can go from bad to worse and teams can disintegrate in Australia. Alastair Cook’s side was one of the best England have had and it was absolutely dismantled in Australia in 2013-14.
Team spirit is something that is easily managed when you are winning, but when you are three down in Australia and stories about off-field behaviour are breaking, that’s when you need your leaders to stand up. Stokes did just that.
It could have been easy for this England team to disintegrate, too. For cliques to start to emerge, for players to start looking after their own backs, to think ‘I’ll be alright Jack’ and start to throw their hat in the ring to impress the next coach and captain.
Instead, England stuck together and put in a performance, and that is what team spirit is about. Unity is tested most when everything is going pear-shaped, so fair play to Stokes for keeping everyone together. Fair play, too, to the bowling attack for getting the right lengths and lines and to the batters for finding the right tempo.
Stokes flung his support behind his beleaguered players, and it paid off (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
How significant this win will be to the future development of this England side will only become clear over time, but the ultimate judgment of this England regime should come not after the final Test next week but after that T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.
After what has happened here and the mistakes made, that World Cup becomes all the more important. McCullum and Key need to have a good tournament.
England’s white-ball cricket has dropped off significantly since Jos Buttler’s side won the T20 World Cup in Melbourne in 2022. The reason some of their best Test players were sent to New Zealand ahead of this tour is that there are concerns over whether they will even qualify automatically for the next 50-over World Cup.
As I said in my last column, I would not touch Stokes as Test captain and I would get him in after this tour if I were the ECB and ask his opinion on where England go next.
I would ask him what he thinks has gone wrong and where he is at with McCullum and Key. Only then should the big decisions on the future direction of England be made. But, before then, England have to do everything in their power to back this victory up, end the series on a high and finish 3-2.
Two-day Tests are damaging, but Sydney should not over-compensate
We have enough cricket played in fast-forward. On top of all the T20 being played, we now have the Hundred and even T10 tournaments. It’s lovely and it’s your pudding, but we still need a main course — and two-day Test matches do not satisfy your appetite.
Cricket needs a game that builds slowly. All five of England’s Tests against India last summer went to a fifth day and provided an exhilarating watch ending in a tied series.
The Boxing Day Test is an iconic event. There would have been people, not just from England, but all over Victoria and Australia who had purchased tickets for days three and four as a special treat and have been left hugely disappointed, not to mention the financial cost for the game running into millions of dollars.
The number of two-day Tests over the last few years is a concern for the health of Test cricket and a reflection not only on pitches but also on modern techniques.
Yes, the ball did a lot in Melbourne — not only seam movement, but bounce off the divots on the second day — but the two-day finish highlighted a lot of the technical deficiencies in red-ball batting around the world.
The Boxing Day Test was played in fast-forward (Martin Keep/AFP via Getty Images)
If you prioritise T20 cricket, where all the money is, then players focus on their white-ball skills and techniques are eroded over time. Players are ultra-positive because they don’t have the defence to cope with surfaces like the one in Melbourne.
I still look back on the two-day Test I played in, against West Indies at Headingley in 2000, and think, ‘Wow, did that really happen?’. That was the first to be done in two days since 1946. Now we have had two in this series alone.
That is bad for the Ashes, and Sydney will be under pressure to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the final Test. But what cannot happen now is for there to be an overreaction. Test cricket is always better when the ball slightly dominates bat, and the worst thing would be for the SCG pitch to be too flat and we end up with a game where 600 plays 500. Modern sporting tastes would not accept that.
I would rather have two exciting days than five dull ones, but what we really need is a happy medium where around 300 is a par score in the first innings.
Groundsmen are like players and officials. Mistakes can happen. Pitch preparation is not an exact science, and Page got it wrong this time.
Equally, the SCG curator would be getting it wrong if this series ends with a five-day bore draw.
