England greats have once again panned their team’s performance, after the visitors toiled their way to just two wickets on a frustrating opening day of the Ashes Test at the Adelaide Oval.
Speaking on BT Sport, former wicketkeeper Matt Prior praised wicketkeeper Jos Buttler’s early grab to dismiss Marcus Harris, but it was all downhill from there.
Buttler twice dropped Marnus Labuschagne, the second an absolute sitter.
“There was a great take down the legside to start things off and Jos did that by taking an initial step and then stepping again to give himself a really good foundation,” Prior said.
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“But with the first drop he got stuck. He didn’t get a big enough step in and then he wasn’t able to go again. He threw his hands at the ball because he’d only covered half the ground of the first catch. Then for the second drop he got stuck again.”
Prior, one of England’s best keeper-batsmen, said everyone thought it was the hands “that get you the catch”.
“It’s not, it’s your footwork. And your hands follow,” he said.
“There were a couple of takes where Jos had a dive, that’s lazy wicketkeeping. You want to dive as little as possible.”
England had been scrutinised heavily for excluding James Anderson and Stuart Broad from the team for the opening Test at the Gabba.
With the first day of the Adelaide Test ending with the pair combining for just the solitary wicket, the gamble isn’t paying off.
“Root had warned against putting all their apples in the day-night, pink-ball basket, but it felt like that is what the selection was doing, loaded as it was with the kind of attack England had promised not to revisit after some days of toil on the 2017-18 tour,” wrote former England captain Mike Atherton in The Times.
“England are not doing much right now that makes cricketing sense and this selection looked counter-intuitive.”
On a green pitch under gloomy skies in Brisbane, England had chosen a varied and balanced attack; now, under piercing blue skies and on a dry, biscuit-coloured pitch, that variety and balance is lacking.
“Some say England always seem to be thinking about the game but one in front of them; here, it looked like they were playing the game behind,” he said.
Atherton also slammed the visitor’s over rate, calling it “predictably poor”.
In The Telegraph, Scyld Berry was full of praise for Australian opener David Warner, saying he had elevated himself to become one of a rare few elite opening bats who can perform in all formats.
“Warner has not teed off against England’s opening bowlers. Not at all,” Berry said.
“He has ‘given the first hour to the bowler’ according to the ancient dictum of batsmanship, without any aggression except, crucially, in running between wickets.
“In this second Test Warner did not get off the mark until his 20th ball, his slowest ever start in 88 Tests. In a T20 game he could have slapped exactly the same bowling for 50, but no.
“That is versatility for you, and innate aggression – from the rough western suburbs of Sydney – combined with humility, as his lesson from the criticism heaped upon him for ball-tampering in South Africa.”
Berry said Rohit Sharma was yet to master the Test format, leaving “Chris Gayle, Virender Sehwag and Warner.”
Australia will begin day two in a fantastic position at 2-221.
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