The grim sense of foreboding that Tuesday might not be England’s day against the old enemy came in the preliminaries: a damp build-up producing a greenish, under-prepared wicket, Jason Roy’s lingering injury, the dwindling confidence of a team who had lost to Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a venue that tends to blunt England’s free-spirited batting, Liam Plunkett discarded again…
Then, something positive. Eoin Morgan won what, it seemed, was a particularly important toss. Bowling first was the obvious strategy and even if the lengths may have erred marginally on the short side England bowled pretty well – it was just a bit of a shame that they failed to take a wicket until almost half the overs had been done.
This has not been a tournament where England’s bowlers have disappointed, however. Far from it. They roared back in the second half of the Australian innings, spurred on by an increasingly bullish crowd. Wickets were shared around, Aaron Finch got to 100 but was gone the next ball. Marcus Stoinis glared at Steve Smith after he was run out in comic fashion — the former captain refusing to respond to Stoinis’s call for a second run and four overs later shovelling a catch to long-on. England bossed the death overs and needed an eminently gettable 286 to win.
Before we get to that painful chase, however, I should explain my position on Plunkett. I advocated two weeks ago on these pages that he should be an automatic pick based on his excellent strike rate but he has instead been in and out of the side. The facts now show that England have won all three games in which he has played and only one of the four matches in which he was not selected. The sole victory without Plunkett came against Afghanistan. Even if the stats showed that none of Woakes, Wood or Archer warranted being dropped, England really needed their lucky charm back at Lord’s.
The chase cannot be avoided any longer. Though it is a painful thing to report. Second ball – James Vince bowled driving at a ball swinging into him. Oh, James. I mean, great ball and all that, swinging in late – but why the expansive drive so early? The white Kookaburra, if it swings at all, doesn’t swing lavishly for very long so be watchful, James. 13 Tests and 13 ODIs now for Vince, an average below 25 in both. One has the sneaky suspicion that international cricket may not be his bag.
But that’s OK because Joe Root is so consistent, always gets to 50, you could set your clock by Joe’s unruffled run-a-ball scoring rate so let’s just settle in and watch him… trapped LBW by Mitchell Starc for eight! Australia! You were so rubbish at white-ball cricket for a bit. England played you 10 times in ODIs in 2018 and won nine of them – so why do you have to come good at the World Cup as usual?
Questionable shot selection
Back to that hideous chase now, and two suitably ugly pull shots. First Starc to Morgan, left-arm over-the-wicket pace to left-handed batsman. England’s captain has played this shot a million times. If he’s in form he really could do it with his eyes shut. But maybe because it’s a World Cup, maybe because England came into the tournament as favourites, and maybe because England can’t really afford to lose many more games and this is an ultra-critical moment in the whole scheme of things, instead of that pull being rifled past square leg for four it catches the top edge and drops into fine-leg’s mitts.
The Jonny Bairstow dismissal is probably worse, because the ball he gets is very wide of off-stump and should probably be cut rather than ballooned out to deep midwicket. Used well, the short ball is an effective weapon at Lord’s. In the 2009 Ashes Test, James Anderson took loads of wickets using it as a change-up option. But this isn’t any old batting side, this is England in an ODI in 2019. They are usually tremendous pullers of a cricket ball.
There’s no question that Jos Buttler’s dismissal is the worst of all. He manages to get into a weird neurotic tangle attacking a perfectly ordinary gun-barrel straight ball on a good length from Australia’s least frightening bowler, Stoinis. He should be stepping out to monster it off the front foot over long on, not staying in his crease to timidly flick it to the catcher at deep square leg. But brains are addled by now, plans are being torn up. In the crowd, fans look deeply miserable. The game is up.
The excellent run of form that propelled England to be the top-ranked side in ODIs came on flat wickets, home and away. Once the mind has hard-wired itself to believe that balls won’t swing or seam then it is hard to adjust one’s technique accordingly. It is a fact that from September 11, 2015 to the start of this tournament, England did not lose a single game of the 19 home ODIs in which they batted second. In this World Cup they have lost chasing against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and now Australia. They have gone from a situation in which no chase seemed insurmountable to one in which 233 proved too difficult against Sri Lanka and 286 completely out of range against Australia.
They have been knocked sideways by the loss of Alex Hales, and latter Jason Roy - but it’s also the case that some of these wickets have been so much harder to bat on than what they have come to expect that has been every bit as disorientating. This batch of Kookaburra balls seems to swing a bit more than normal, while the damp weather in the early part of the tournament has certainly provided a swathe of seam-friendly tracks. Interestingly, a spell of warm, dry, settled weather is on the horizon and that might yet be a crumb of comfort for a team whose sudden batting frailty has left them uncomfortably close to the exit sign of the World Cup 2019.