The Second Test of this year’s men’s Ashes series will begin tomorrow at Lord’s Cricket Ground to great anticipation. Australia will arrive at St. John’s Wood on Wednesday morning with a one-nil lead in the series, earned through a famous two-wicket victory in Birmingham seven days ago.
For England, the week that was has been another fairly relaxed one. They took a five-day break immediately after the conclusion of the Edgbaston Test - presumably to focus on their putting - before spending Sunday and Monday in practice sessions at the Home of Cricket.
Teenage leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed was called up the squad to join the pre-match preparations, provoking rumours that he may be drafted into the starting XI at the expense of Moeen Ali, who was unable to bowl by the end of the First Test after suffering a tear in the skin of his right index finger. In fact, neither of the slow-bowling options have been selected this week, with rising star Josh Tongue brought in for Ali as the only change.
Having been a surprise inclusion for England’s sole warm-up match before the Ashes kicked off, the five-wicket haul collected by Worcestershire’s Tongue in the second innings against Ireland at Lord’s must have played a considerable part in bumping the right-arm fast-medium pacer up the pecking order over the likes of Chris Woakes and Mark Wood.
Following a theme of the Ben Stokes era, it is an unexpected team selection, but also one where the logic of the call is quite clear. All of the decision-making processes around the England cricket team in the last thirteen months appear to have been stripped back and simplified. Tongue bowled well at Lord’s four weeks ago; well that means he can bowl well at Lord’s again. The size of the occasion and the quality of the opposition seem to bear minimal significance.
Whilst the single-mindedness of Stokes and Brendan McCullum is admirable, it does leave plenty of room for scrutiny. Even if Stokes is included as a genuine bowling option right now, which is highly questionable, five right-arm seamers of indistinguishable pace is an attack that is unlikely to put too much fear into their opponents. Beyond that, England have Joe Root as their frontline spinner, which is the sort of burden that the new number one ranked batsman in the world should not really be carrying, and the military medium ‘dibbly-dobblers’ of Harry Brook.
Their opponents are yet to announce their starting line-up. As with the first test, England have gone early in that regard, whereas the tourists are playing the long game. The expectation is that Mitchell Starc will be the only change for Australia given that he was designated to be on pre-match press duties on Monday. Injury permitting, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon are nailed on to play in all five of the tests in the series, so it will be either Scott Boland or Josh Hazlewood to make way should Starc enter the fray.
The thought alone of a tall left-arm Australian quick named Mitchell is enough to bring any England fan out in cold sweats with ‘Vietnam’-esque flashbacks of bright yellow stumps being shattered and that haunting handlebar moustache.
Starc hasn’t yet had quite the same Ashes impact of his namesake. He will be looking to Lord’s as an opportunity to make his mark in the same way that Mitchell Johnson had done at the same venue in 2015. With match figures of 6/80 in 30.1 overs, it was one of the few occasions in which Johnson showcased his devastating 2013/14 form on British soil. Australia won that match by a mammoth 405 runs.
The Lord’s Test eight years ago, much like Edgbaston last week, was a forgettable one for James Anderson. Despite being the leading Test wicket-taker at the ground, with 103 wickets in 23 matches at an average of 23.89, Anderson failed to pick up any wickets and went at over four runs an over throughout the game in July 2015. England’s record-breaking talisman then missed the rain-affected drawn Lord’s Test in 2019 due to injury, meaning it is now nearly 10 years since Anderson has taken an Australian scalp at the Home of Cricket - bowling Peter Siddle with a vintage top-of-off delivery [5:35 of this video: Ashes 2013 highlights, Lord's - England beat Australia by 347 runs] in the 2013 series. You’re due one, Jimmy.
To say victories over Australia at Lord’s have been scarce for England would be an understatement. They won back-to-back Ashes Tests at the ground in 2009 and 2013, but those are the only two positive results that the hosts have had against the Aussies at their premier venue since 1934. Memories of Glenn McGrath’s 8/38 in 1997, or Glenn McGrath’s 5/54 and 3/60 in 2001, or Glenn McGrath’s 5/53 and 4/29 wickets in 2005, cast a sizeable shadow of doubt over England’s ability to level the series in the upcoming Test match.
These are different times though. Many current England players will have no recollection of the years of Australian dominance in north London. Vice-captain Ollie Pope hadn’t yet been born when McGrath first took to the field at Lord’s. In front of the media yesterday, Pope was bullish on the subject of England’s tactical approach. "These decisions [such as the declaration at Edgbaston] aren't just a rash thought. They are well thought out and spoken about by senior players in the changing room. We come to a group decision and back that decision 100 per cent. There's no looking back on that decision once it's made, it's about how we can make the most of it.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Marnus Labuschagne was a lot more circumspect with his comments, saying that he felt that Australia were “underpar to their standards” despite winning the opener at Edgbaston. Aside from the excellent Usman Khawaja, Labuschagne was frank in his admission that the other batters in the team were “disappointed” with their performance in the first test. It is hard to imagine Labuschagne and Steve Smith contributing less in another game this series, which is all the more worrying for English fans.
For the English players, however, worry and fear of loss is simply not part of their make-up. Pope would also address this at his press conference. “There’s no fear of losing. That’s something that this team is never gonna have… If we go 2-0 down, we’re gonna see it as a chance to win 3-2. That’s just the mindset that we wanna have and that’s gonna hopefully reward us over the long run in this series.”
On a more bowler-friendly pitch than last week, which admittedly isn’t saying much, it can be reasonably expected that runs will be harder to come by at Lord’s. Digging in and seeing off difficult spells are the forte of much of the miserly Australian top order. Contrarily, these are not things that come naturally to the likes of Ben Duckett or Zak Crawley, as evidenced by the dark 25 minutes that England had to face on day three of the first Test, in which both openers were dismissed cheaply.
First and foremost, England must improve their discipline in the field to stand any chance of restoring parity in the series. The wicket-keeping of Jonny Bairstow is firmly under the spotlight after a spate of missed chances behind the stumps. Experienced and reliable bowlers need to get their marks sorted for their run-ups and their feet behind the line in their delivery stride. It sounds simple, but it was these basic errors that cost England dearly in Birmingham. The misfield which led to the boundary that won Australia the match was emblematic of a general rustiness across the team.
Even if England can improve in this area, it is difficult to see past another Australian victory at Lord’s. It is not necessarily a game which could be described as ‘must-win’ for England, but it is precisely the sort of game that would be categorised as ‘must-not-lose’ in a series of yore. This England team doesn’t do draws, which makes the difference between the two somewhat redundant. That being said, if the deficit were to remain one-nil to Australia heading into the third Test at Headingley, hope of England regaining the urn would at least still be alive. Two-nil and it would surely be over.
Let’s hope for another classic, but this time, for the sake of the series, with England scraping over the line.
This article was written by James Ablett and published first on www.kanubelieveit.com on 27 June 2023.
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