For once Ben Stokes' The outfield did not go according to plan and Pat Cummings (left) was able to lead Australia to victory in the first Test at Edgbaston. Credit: PA/Mike Egerton
It was an interesting sight. With two Australian bowlers playing together in the final throes of a wonderful Test, perhaps the most attacking captain that Test cricket has ever known placed most of his fielders along the border. The field, which had been banned by law in one-night cricket after Mike Brearley put all of his fielders on the boundary in 1979, was now used to try to win the Trial of Ashes match.
It almost worked too. Had Ben Stokes held on to a superb acrobatic square-leg attempt with Nathan Lyon when there were still 37 runs to be made, England would almost certainly have taken the lead in the Ashes series for the first time since 2015. Instead, Pat Cummins and Lyon teamed up for a 55-run partnership that instantly became one of the most expensive in Australia's Ashes history.
For their first 4.3 overs, Cummins and Lyon challenged the old ball. Persistence with the old ball for five overs after the new one was available, for both Joe Root and the rollers, betrayed England's doubts about how much help they would get from a second new ball.
Apart from some periods for Stuart Broad, there was little fluctuation in the whole test – a continuation of the trend from the beginning of last summer. The lack of lateral movement throughout the game was the reason James Anderson didn't achieve his best score: in every summer English exam since 2007, Anderson has never generated less seam motion and only once generated less backswing.
When he took the second new ball, Stokes chose two of his best bowlers of the entire game: Broad and Ollie Robinson. Initially, both balls were relatively full, but could not make a significant swing. In their first overs with a second new ball, both were bowled out while serving the ball up.
Nathan Lyon did a good job with the short ball tactic helping the Cummins lead Australia towards the win goal. Photo: Action Images/Paul Childs
Bowling with a second fresh ball when Australia needed 27 more to win, Broad made a single miss. It was a defensive field, but it reflected the realities of the game. On a slow serve with no lateral movement, the ribs were rare, and if they materialized, they were not always carried. In the seamer match, the fielders failed a single trick test, although Ben Duckett ended up in the ravine in the second inning for England.
Ever since the Stokes came to power, England have taken bowling to the extreme. In the first innings, this trick helped finish Australia's innings with a four-wicket spell for 14 runs. All three last wickets fell on short balls: Lyon pulled Robinson on a square foot; Scott Boland teases Broad for stupidity; and Cummins pulls Robinson into a deep square foot. “We felt that playing deep bowling would give them a chance to score a few more runs, so it's a wicket trick, but it's also harder to score when the game is played at two paces,” Robinson explained after the third day.
For Cummins, in particular, this was a continuation of his poor test results against short deliveries: he averages just 10 points against deliveries that throw at least eight meters in front of the stumps, and has been fired 18 times. In theory, bowling against him on Tuesday night in Edgbaston was a way to buy more lottery tickets, maximizing the likelihood that he would make a mistake.
In a way, it was England's misfortune that Cummins found the right moment to overcome their previous struggle with underdeliveries by making 15 of 35 balls when seamers ran short. Close fielders were virtually non-existent as he got Australia closer: there was no slippage, which would have given Cummins more reason to be wary of fuller balls despite the field. More surprisingly, there were no foot slips or gullies, positions that Stokes revived as wicket-taking options. This absence seemed inconsistent with Stokes' captaincy.
Ollie Robinson couldn't call for a delivery that would get either Cummins or Lyon is out. Posted by AFP/Jeff Craddick
“We'll get them in singles,” George Hirst told Maurice Tate when number 11 was gone and England needed 15 to win at the Oval in 1902. Lyon realized how England's position on the pitch created so many opportunities for singles. Until Cummins' last hit, 10 of Australia's previous 14 runs – all but four of Lyon's when Brod tried a fuller ball – were singles.
For most of the ninth wicket partnership, for the first time in a Test, England has been what they hate to be: predictable. Cummins explained that in the second innings, the players expected more short balls. “This is what we all practice,” he said. “We all have pretty big plans. Even the correction from the first inning caused a couple of problems and everyone went on the field with pretty clear plans.”
Aside from Stokes' miss, the closest England came to breaking a ninth wicket post was bowling. fuller length: Robinson's yorker for Cummins and Broad deliveries that barely hit the outside edges of both batsmen. These moments suggest that perhaps England should have gone full more often, or encouraged Anderson to do so. When Boland, the night watchman, was met by a short ball field earlier in the day, he was sacked due to Brod's full serve.
And yet, if England regrets the latest skirmishes on Tuesday evening, this, you suspect, will not be a tactic. Instead, it will be the absence of an Englishman with poison to overcome the most serene height: Mark Wood.
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