At least the first game was kind of funny.
England’s eight-wicket defeat in the pink-ball Ashes Test in Brisbane was as disappointing as it was emphatic, as boring as it was inevitable. While they pushed it to the final session of day four, rather than crumbling into pieces in two days like in Perth, England looked dead and buried for the last five or six sessions of the match.
As with Perth, England actually had the better of day one. Joe Root finally scored his first Test century in Australia and thanks to an entertaining knock from Jofra Archer, the tourists put on a reasonable total of 334.
But Australia’s response was impressive. Led by 72 from new opener Jake Weatherald, they made England suffer. The bowling was lacklustre – the zip and threat from day one in Perth seems to have already faded – but the chances were there, and five of them went down on a demoralising second day.
Already behind, England’s best hope was to see off the Aussie tail early on the third afternoon. No such luck. Mitchell Starc struck 77, well supported by a gritty 21 from Scott Boland – whose Test batting average has risen to 9 – as Australia sucked the jeopardy from the game with a mammoth total of 511.
Boland’s 72-ball stay should have taught the English batters a lesson or two about grinding out a score on what turned out to be a pitch with very few demons. Instead, most of the side threw their wickets away in the face of a 177-run first-innings deficit.
Ben Stokes at least showed admirable restraint in his 152-ball half-century, in the only real show of defiance: there was a certain irony in that, given the attacking philosophy he has implemented as captain was in part responsible for the wastefulness of his batters.
In the end, just avoiding an innings defeat felt like a miracle. Will Jacks dug in for 41 at number eight, but that needed to be 141 to give England any chance. Australia hauled in their eventual target of 65 in ten overs, and that was that.
In the misery surrounding England’s collapse, it’s easy to forget the joyous scenes on day one, when Root breached his final frontier with a century in Australia. That was a good day – but it won’t matter to him anymore. The Aussies can technically still say he has never scored a red-ball hundred down under: if England are to rescue this series, you’d guess he’ll need at least two or three.
Another who came out of the game with credit was Zak Crawley. His fluent 76 set the tone in the first innings, while he navigated a tough opening period for 44 in the second. But both knocks ended prematurely, and both times a little more introspection would have extended his stay. As Travis Head proved in Perth, England’s issue isn’t scoring too quickly – it’s trying too hard to.
As with last week, I’m going to ignore Mitchell Starc. Player of the match again, this time with 77 runs to go with his eight wickets: at this point, it’s just not really fair.
With Pat Cummins a near-certainty for the third Test, and Nathan Lyon due to return to the side after his surprise omission, there’s actually a fair chance that 35-year-old Michael Neser will never play for Australia again. So it was quite nice, amongst the English gloom, that he managed to cap the occasion with a five-for.
Given how threatening Neser looked, it’s funny that England will be sad to see him go. By all measures, they have been up against an under-strength Australian side, and by all measures they have failed. After just six days, a series which has been built up to for four years already looks over.
