David Warner was surprised by England’s bowling plans for Day 1 of the second Test of the Ashes 2021-22. Having toiled hard to break the resilient Warner-Labuschagne stand, England asked their premier allrounder Ben Stokes to bowl a barrage of bouncers to the two batters with the pink ball under lights.
It took Warner, who made his second successive score of 90 odd in the series, by surprise as he wondered why England pulled their lengths back so much when everyone, including the Australians, expected them to pitch the pink Kookaburra up and look to extract movement.
Presumably, reverting to the bouncer barrage with six-three leg fields had a lot to do with England pacers’ inability to extract seam movement out of fuller lengths with the old Kookaburra. But it was still something that raised the eyebrows for Warner, who did get out to Stokes on 95, but only after he and Marnus Labuschagne had taken the England allrounder for 50 runs off his 13 overs.
“That’s a tactic they have obviously tried to put through to us. I don’t know why they were doing that. For us, you have to play each ball on its merits. Obviously here [the boundaries are] short square, so you have to back yourself to have a gameplan and stick to that.
They mix up their fields as well with different field placements and then from your perspective it’s about how you’re going to adapt to that situation.”
Warner was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
What doubled up the shock for Warner was the fact that even as the bouncer barrage didn’t quite work and he and Labuschagne started to overcome it, England didn’t change the ploy.
“You get into positions where you are almost in one-day mode as well. There are gaps in front of the wicket, [you play] a couple of flat-bat shots. Once you get one or two boundaries away and you start leaking, you have to change tactics.
But they didn’t do that. It worked into our plan a bit, and the ball gets softer,”
said the experienced left-hander.
Pulling their lengths back allowed England to keep more of a leash on run-scoring, but they failed to take more than two wickets. Australia eventually finished the day with 221/2, raising a question mark on England pacers. There were chances created, but it would be unfair to pinpoint too much at wicketkeeper Jos Buttler for his two drops when, for most of the day, England didn’t look like taking wickets at all.
This also put under the scanner England’s selection of four frontline seamers plus Stokes with suggestions that Joe Root & company could’ve included an out-and-out quick in Mark Wood or stick to spinner Jack Leach despite his struggles in Brisbane.
But England’s assistant coach Graham Thorpe came out in defence of the move, saying it was the case of England picking the strongest possible attack for the conditions. It seemed that England overplanned for the D/N Test, presuming there will be a lot of swing and seam on offer for Anderson, Broad, Woakes and Robinson to exploit, only to find it a big struggle with the old Kookaburra and miss the pace and incisive nature of Wood. But Thorpe said they stuck to their pre-decided plan.
“No, I think we picked the right team for this match. Actually, I thought that on another day, we could have grazed the edge more and it could have been different on day one,”
he said.
England will have to pull things back in their favour on Day 2 or they risk being put under immense pressure by Australia with the bat. No visiting team has managed to win or escape defeat in a D/N Test in Australia yet.
