Australia have retained the Ashes, what a surprise. Joe Root has come out and said he’s proud of the fighting spirit shown by England in the fourth Test. I’m not really sure if I was watching the same game as him, he must still be slightly delirious from the World Cup win. Where was the fighting spirit when he and Rory Burns got out on consecutive balls? And when he lost the plot in the field yet again, and had defensive field placement after defensive field placement? Best thing to do would be to say nothing, because the performance from the batsmen was embarrassing. The occasional 50 isn’t good enough when you are mentioned in the same sentence as Steve Smith from time to time. Root hasn’t even been fit to lace Marnus Labuschagne’s boots, and to be perfectly honest, I’d never heard of the Aussie number 3 before the Lord’s Test.
Root’s abysmal performances aren’t the only problem facing English Test Cricket currently either. As I’ve said many times, the selectors lack any imagination whatsoever. I bet they thought they were being oh so clever when they took out Woakes and threw in Overton. Ah yes, taking out a bowler who has done very little wrong and stick in a slightly worse one, that’ll fix the gaping hole in the batting line up. In fairness to Overton he played better than most of the batsmen with the bat, though that doesn’t take much when compared to rest of the tissue paper strength batting order.
There are plenty of batsmen in county cricket that deserve a shot playing for England over the likes of Joe Denly and Jason Roy. However, the selectors are too stubborn and unimaginative to change anything and expect a batsman averaging single figures to stand up to the likes of Stark, Cummins and Hazelwood. Yes, there would be some risk involved, but surely someone like Dom Sibley, Sam Northeast or Daniel Bell-Drummond couldn’t do any worse than Roy at least. It does make me wonder what the selectors are actually doing while they strut about in their suits during the matches, are they actually watching the game?
I have to say I do feel quite sorry for the bowlers, who really don’t deserve to have been let down quite as much as they have. Some of the bowling from Archer and Broad in the fourth Test was very good. Stuart Broad looks as good as he ever has, and it has got me thinking if getting Steve Smith out would’ve been easier with a bowling attack of Anderson, Broad and Archer. Even so, if Smith got 20 every innings, I still think Australia would have retained the Ashes. Any score seems too high to chase for this pathetic England batting line up. Even in the match without Smith, England barely scraped to victory thanks to that one in a million innings from Ben Stokes, and Root and co still did their best to throw it away then. You may as well reverse the batting order and have the bowlers open, as they are the only ones that seem to bat as well as, and often better, than they should.
Thanks to a complete refusal to change anything when changes were needed, Australia have retained the Ashes. We will now be subject to the standard childish gloating that you can come to expect from the Aussies. Steve Smith taking the mick out of Jack Leech’s glasses while celebrating in the middle of the team huddle, shows his complete lack of class. He unfortunately seems to have forgotten about how he cheated and cried on the TV not that long ago. This whole Ashes series couldn’t have gone much worse for England, and I can’t wait for the final Test to be over and done with.
Jon Parkin Sports 