‘Hollow win’ makes Poms even angrier with Bazball as ‘clueless’ Aussies exposed — UK View

England’s Boxing Day Test triumph may have ended one of their most painstaking Ashes droughts, but there is an overwhelming sensation of frustration towards Ben Stokes’ side among the English press as well as greats of the game.

The MCG pitch has been widely ridiculed for turning the fourth Test into a two-day lottery that resulted in 36 wickets falling in 142 overs, but on the English side of the fence there has also been a spotlight shone on their four-wicket victory being a symbol of their shortcomings this tour.

With the Ashes gone in 11 days, England’s bowlers finally came to play in Melbourne led by a first innings five-wicket haul from Johnny Mullagh medallist Josh Tongue and four wickets to a much-improved Brydon Carse in the second innings.

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They pitched the ball up and attacked the stumps to allow the sporting surface to do its thing, in stark contrast to their attack being too short and too wide in the second innings in Perth, and for most of Brisbane and Adelaide.

Meanwhile, Bazball arrived on the second afternoon with England’s batters almost swinging themselves off their feet at times as their ultra aggressive approach worked to run down the target of 175 at a run rate of 5.5 per over.

But for former England captains Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, their nation’s first win on Australian soil since 2011 was no more than sugar hit and does not paper over the cracks that formed across the first three Tests as well as the lead-in to this tour.

“I am delighted for Stokes, (Joe) Root and the supporters but it is a hollow victory because of what might have been,” Atherton said on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast.

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“It is almost like England are competitive now after playing some cricket, which is ridiculous.

“Australia have missed Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon for all or part of the series and have a batting line-up with flaws, so that is the frustration for England. A huge frustration.”

Hussain added: “If England play well in Sydney [in the final Test], as they did in Melbourne and at the end of Adelaide, then that frustrates me more.

“Imagine if they had prepared properly and done the basics in Perth, we could have been going to Sydney 2-2. If anything it shows they didn’t focus in before a ball was bowled.”

Much of the talk coming out of the Old Dart before the series began centred upon a belief that Australia were ripe for the picking this summer.

Stuart Broad infamously called the current crop the worst Australia team since 2010/11 – when England won 3-1 on these shores – and perhaps he was right as they were the first Australian team to lose a Test to England at home in almost 15 years.

Regardless, the bowler-friendly MCG surface exposed Australia’s frailties with the bat that have been a talking point for several years, but have been not proven too costly courtesy of their superb bowling attack and the brilliance of a few individuals with the willow.

“Some of us ex-player “has-beens” have been saying before and during this tour that the Aussie batting is ordinary, dependent on (Steve) Smith and (Travis) Head. That batting line-up in the second innings showed how poor some of them are,” England great Sir Geoffrey Boycott wrote in The Telegraph.

“I take nothing away from the quality of the England seamers but some of those dismissals were shockers.”

With no batter able to reach a half-century in Melbourne, Boycott believed that the batters needed to call on the techniques of a bygone era, when matches were played on uncovered wickets.

“It just goes to show how modern batsmen do not really have a clue how to defend on a seaming pitch,” Boycott wrote.

“Footwork is the key. Get right forward, as near to the pitch of the ball as you can, so that you minimise the distance between where the ball pitches and where you play it. The less distance the ball has to travel and the less movement before you meet it gives you a better chance of playing it in the middle of your bat. And do not push out with the bat way in front of your pad. Keep it close and just in front with your head over the ball.

“When the ball is short, move back covering your stumps, but let the ball come to you and play it close to your body, not away from the body.

“Too many modern guys go hard at the ball, but ideally you should wait and play as late as possible so that you can go with any swing or late movement.”

The likes of Jake Weatherald, Marnus Labuschagne and Cameron Green need runs in Sydney to keep the wolves at bay, but with Australia not scheduled to play another Test series until they face Bangladesh in the Top End in August, the future of Bazball is more pressing ahead of an English home summer against New Zealand and Pakistan.

It remains to be seen whether winning a Test, unlike the previous three touring parties to Australia, washes away the sins of this tour.

“What this result means for the future of managing director Rob Key and head coach Brendon McCullum is unclear. Neither man could have expected to survive a whitewash, especially after admitting they failed to prepare the side properly for the very specific conditions they faced in the first Test at Perth,” Lawrence Booth wrote in The Daily Mail.

“The stubborn loyalty to (Ollie) Pope is another black mark against the management, though for that Stokes must take his share of the blame.

“On the flipside, both (Zak) Crawley and (Brydon) Carse have pulled their weight after enduring difficult moments, while Stokes and McCullum deserve credit for keeping the show on the road after it threatened to veer into a ditch amid the Noosa scrutiny.

“The ECB may yet decide that, even if the damage is limited to 3–2 by the time England fly home, at least one head must roll. After all, whatever happens at the SCG, the urn will remain in Australian hands until 2027 at least. And a 4–1 defeat will invite fresh scrutiny.

“But if England can win a Test on a pitch worthy of the name, and match the achievement of the 2010-11 series when they won at Melbourne and Sydney, there will be a genuine case for sticking with the status quo and allowing the team to mature all the way through until 2027.

“Some Australians will argue this game was irrelevant. On the contrary, it could change everything.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s Barney Ronay also stressed that the success of Melbourne simply highlighted the English hierarchy’s failures.

“This was not a vindication of anything. But it was a note of grace, a tick in the box for all that. England’s approach to batting made perfect sense here. A successful chase and a four-wicket win was a reminder of the basic logic of playing this way on a pitch that just kept on seaming,” Ronay wrote.

“And right now there are two things worth saying about it. First, any England team winning a Test in Australia is a real thing. On day two here, England bowled Australia out for 132 a bowler down, then smashed an excellent attack around the park on a tough pitch. In doing so they completed a first Test win since Sydney in 2011. This has been a place of annihilation, collapse, trauma, careers in turnaround. Whatever the state of the series, this is a genuine achievement, and a tick for the regime.

“But let us be clear also: it is by no means a vindication of another losing tour, or of a failing executive tier. In fact, this is the opposite. What winning in Melbourne says is: here is what you could have had. Here is evidence that Australia were vulnerable, and for good reason too. They came into this game with three all-time bowlers missing. Mitch Starc has had to play every Test. The batting isn’t really there. This team was vulnerable.

“Yet England just weren’t ready to press their fingers into those tender points. They kicked off in Perth playing jet-lag cricket, eyes wide, still trying to work out what day it was. A properly prepped, balanced and weaponised team might be doing more than simply taking a dead rubber on a wonky pitch.

“Instead a talented, biddable, slightly raw group of players has been betrayed at times, by short cuts and poor planning. A backroom energy that was initially inspiring, and whose spirit flickered here again in that chase, hasn’t known how to transform an idea and a set of slogans into a winning machine. Or at least, not yet, anyway.”

After Adelaide, the death of Bazball was widely proclaimed.

ESPN Cricinfo’s Vithushan Ehantharajah wrote that the MCG could be the fitting farewell to the three and a half year Bazball era of English cricket.

“If anything, this felt like an apt closure for Bazball. It might have died, but the body was at risk of being pulled apart for the benefit of its detractors,” Ehantharajah wrote.

“They used to hide the body of martyrs, even chop them up and scatter the pieces to far flung reaches to ensure there was no one resting ground for followers to return to. Having picked apart bits of it across Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide, Melbourne and then Sydney were due their pounds of flesh.

“But now, the MCG has unwittingly become a resting place. A historic ground, a blue ribband event, desecrated by the rogue shots, the white tees, the silver chains, vapes and the McCullum “Bazbox” which was being taken into the away dressing room to crank up the tunes as Smith was giving his post-match press conference.

“You see the real reason for the dismembering was to ensure there was no spot for people to pay respects and, worst still, take inspiration and vow to go one better with those ideologies. And at the very least, future England teams, regardless of how they choose to play their cricket, will be bound to this colosseum as one a previous England violated just to feel something.

“Not a brilliant team. Certainly not a team with the brightest of futures at this juncture. But an imperfect team, on an imperfect pitch in an imperfect series, who were true to the imperfections that made them believe this Ashes would be different.”