0England losing momentum?

So, as the final test heads towards a rain soaked draw the pun­dits are search­ing for some­thing to chat­ter about. They finally seem to have got bored of tak­ing pops at the DRS sys­tem, and it isn’t crick­et to kick a team whilst they’re down (i.e. Aus­tralia) so inev­it­ably the atten­tion has turned to Eng­land. It seems that win­ning the series 3–0 (as will doubt­less be con­firmed in around 30 hours time) and win­ning 3 ashes series on the trot is a sign that Eng­land are “los­ing momentum”. What nonsense.

The primary reas­on for all the neg­at­iv­ity is the pace of England’s scor­ing in the 5^th test — at an “unac­cept­able” 2 per over. Pre­dict­ably the pun­dits haven’t actu­ally said what Eng­land should be doing!  Per­haps we should be aim­ing for 3.5 runs per over and end­ing up all out with time for the Aus­sies to win, although it would seem to me that really would be hand­ing the momentum to Aus­tralia. On the con­trary — Eng­land are doing exactly what many of the pun­dits have been call­ing for them to do for ages — play­ing the pitch, con­di­tions and bowl­ing that is presen­ted to them. When the poor ball came it was dis­patched. What the pun­dits aren’t being hon­est enough to say clearly is that Eng­land are play­ing for a draw. Why would they do that?  Well, per­haps because on a slow pitch, with lots of rain fore­cast, and with the oppos­i­tion hav­ing nearly 500 on the board after 2 days, win­ning is van­ish­ingly likely.Could Eng­land have won?Assuming the fore­cast is cor­rect and most of today will be lost to rain, how might Eng­land have won the match?  Let’s very optim­ist­ic­ally assume we could bowl the Aus­trali­ans out in 2 ses­sions. Assum­ing the Aus­sies scored at 3 an over they would be expec­ted to make 180 in those 2 ses­sions. Add that to their first innings of 492 gives a total for Eng­land to get of 672. Nev­er­mind that Eng­land haven’t reached 400 yet in this series — how long would be needed to get 672 at a very gen­er­ous 4 runs per over?  The answer — 168 overs. So, that would be the 18 overs from day 2, all 90 overs yes­ter­day, 30 overs today (the best we can hope for accord­ing to the weath­er) and 30 overs tomorrow.So, if you believe the Eng­land could bat over 4 days, for 168 overs, at 4 runs per over, and then bowl Aus­tralia out for 180 in 60 overs, you can con­clude Eng­land had a chance of win­ning. Oth­er­wise (like me) you can con­fid­ently con­clude Eng­land did­n’t have enough time in the match to secure vic­tory and that the most sens­ible thing to do was to pre­vent Aus­tralia tak­ing any­thing away from the series, and to take the oppor­tun­ity for the Eng­land bats­men to try to bat them­selves into some form.
An addi­tion­al bonus for Eng­land is that after 1 decent innings togeth­er Aus­tralia now feel like they have a settled bat­ting line up:  a line up that does­n’t con­vince me at all. Steve Smith isn’t good enough to get into any good test side. Shane Wat­son has once again delivered when it does­n’t mat­ter and con­tin­ues to look very vul­ner­able to LBW.  Michael Clarke is still a class bats­man but Eng­land have got his num­ber — he struggles against Stu­art Broad and the short ball in par­tic­u­lar and he has­n’t even had a chance to face Trem­lett who is likely to fea­ture in the return series. Rogers is a decent play­er but I can­’t see him mak­ing many “game chan­ging” scores which leaves the incid­ent prone Warner who is again a decent bats­man but thanks to his style he tends to give chances. Rogers & Warner does­n’t exactly have the same ring as Hay­den & Langer does itWhen all is said and done this Eng­land side have beaten bet­ter Aus­trali­an teams already and have bats­men due back into form. Eng­land are rightly send­ing a mes­sage to Aus­tralia — give us half a chance and we’ll beat you. Play really well and we’re strong enough to hold you off. Go home with noth­ing from this series and look for­ward to see­ing us again in 3 months.