2No Star Shines Bright for Either Side

So the Ashes are now at end with Eng­land the vic­tors and Aus­tralia put back in their place. A 3–2 sco­reline flat­ters the green bag­gied ones a little but in truth the last test was a dead rub­ber for Eng­land. They were nev­er going to play to the same level on intens­ity as when they were try­ing to claim the little urn back from our Anti­podean cousins.

Through­out the series I’ve been try­ing to think of a com­bined elev­en across the two sides. And a star play­er. But in truth I think there’s a lot of, at best, good play­ers between the two sides who have played in the series and very few have per­formed to a good standard.

For Eng­land Joe Root con­tin­ued to impress and was the only pos­sible choice for man of the series (with the pos­sible excep­tion of Stu­art Broad). Moeen Ali (he should bat high­er – pos­sibly as open­er) also impressed with the wil­low if not neces­sar­ily the leath­er. Broad and Ander­son bowled well, some­times bril­liantly. Wood and Stokes con­tin­ue to prom­ise much. It’s good to see Steven Finn back although if everyone’s fit then he loses out. Tim Bresnan seems to have simply been ban­ished back to York­shire. Jos But­tler had a very poor series with the bat but is very com­pet­ent the oth­er side of the stumps. Ques­tions will be asked how­ever, giv­en Jonny Bair­stow is also per­fectly com­pet­ent with the gloves. Ian Bell has surely used up the last of his nine lives – he just can’t be relied upon when it mat­ters – and it remains to be seen if Adam Lyth will play test crick­et again. So many times he toiled for 10-odd runs only to find him­self trekking back to the pavil­ion. Cook also bat­ted pretty well and cap­tained well too (I will excuse his shock­er at the Oval).

No one really stands out for Aus­tralia at all. Steve Smith got runs but on Aus­sie friendly pitches and Peter Siddle should have played every game. What the vis­it­ors were think­ing not play­ing him from the start I will nev­er know. The open­ers also hit a few runs and Dav­id Warner finally got rid of that ridicu­lous mous­tache. A lot of this line up won’t be seen on these shores again.

Games were lost because of poor play on both sides rather than excel­lence from either Aus­tralia or England.

Going for­ward Eng­land can obvi­ously take the plaudits for the vic­tory and the con­fid­ence going for­ward but that must not cov­er up the cracks. Ali is a use­ful back up spin­ner – but isn’t going to reg­u­larly win matches. The middle order is too prone to col­lapse like Eng­land sides of old and it’s a little wor­ry­ing to see. The ques­tion of who part­ners Cook at the top of the order remains unanswered.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Aus­tralia do with so many test careers now at an end or about to be.

Got some thoughts of your own? Indulge yourself below by commenting! If you would like to subscribe please use the subscribe link on the menu at the top right. You can also share this with your friends by using the social links below. Cheers.