“Administrators prefer white ball rather than red ball”, says Michael Atherton after the second Ashes test to Sky Sports referring to the batting skills presented by England.
Before the tour began, Chris Silverwood, England’s head-coach, told the media that this side is the most prepared for this tour. But it has turned out to be a huge failure. England batters have only managed to score a total of 872 runs in four innings. Meanwhile, the Australian side has scored 898 runs, only in first innings of the first two test matches. Moreover, Joe Root, the captain, and Dawid Malan has scored bulk of the runs for their side, a total of 363 runs.
Root of England’s batting problems started way back than the ongoing Ashes. Michael Vaughan, former captain of the England side, mentioned that already in the summer that England are going to struggle with their batting in the Australian conditions.
Wrong priority
Michael Atherton agrees with Vaughan, “performances have been poor, and they have been poor for a quite some time”, says Michael Atherton to Sky Sports Cricket.
“There are fundamental issues which are having an impact on England’s batting. First one is that the majority of the good months in the summer are given to the white ball tournaments, such as Blast and Hundred. Administrators prefer white ball rather than red ball.”
The pitches are very poor during the start and end of the season, says Atherton. According to him, playing on bad pitches, the batters are not improving their skills which are required to face bowlers like Starc, Cummins, Hazlewood, Lyon etc.
”Right now, England does not know their best starting XI”
Rob Key about England’s selection problems.
Do not produce quality spinners
Rob Key, former England opener, addresses the same problem with this English side. “Batting is hard at the moment in English cricket”. The stats from 2021 clarify that the batters have been going through a lean patch. Only exception is Joe Root who has managed to score over 1,600 runs this year. Next on the list is Rory Burns with 530 runs, more than 1,000 runs behind.
Rob Key adds to their batting dilemma, “English conditions do not reward spinners, neither they favour fast bowlers, and it certainly does not reward top order batsmen. If you get down deep into it, there are so many issues which we must sort out with our domestic game first.”
Key gets backing from his colleague Michael Atherton.
“I don’t think our domestic game is setup to produce top order batsmen and spinners, in particular. It is no coincidence that these are the two areas we are struggling with.”
Unaware of their best XI
Another aspect of the poor performance in the Ashes series is the selection. According to Nasser Hussain, former England captain, they rely heavily on stats. “If the analysist explains that finger spin has not done well at a certain ground, they do not play any spinner. If the pitch says play one spinner, then play one, do not just throw the towel and say we give up on finger spin”.
For the second test, England came out without any specialist spinner in the side, even though Adelaide pitch looked dry and offered spin. It ended up Root, Malan, and Robinson bowling spin. “Right now, England does not know their best starting XI”, says Rob Key.
Foto: ©ICC Business Corporation FZ LLC 2020
