1st Test: Old failings return to haunt England (25 November 1998)

25 November 1998

1st Test: Old failings return to haunt England

By Martin Johnson

WE ARE now beginning to lose count of the number of Ashes series that have begun with a renewed surge of optimism but it rarely takes long for reality to strike home. The plain truth of the matter is that England remain the kind of cricket team more than capable of giving Australia a bloody nose on one day and barely a match for Brisbane Girls' High School the next.

Furthermore, whoever penned the old proverb about practice making perfect could not have been much of a cricket buff, as no side gets more practice at attempting to save Test matches than England, with no discernible evidence that they are getting any better at it. When yesterday's tropical storm arrived, lighting up the Gabba like Castle Dracula, the only people who would have given England any chance of avoiding defeat would have been eating their meals with plastic cutlery from the inside of a padded cell.

As angry shafts of forked lightning knocked out the Channel 9 communications centre (which in terms of sophistication makes the deck of the Star Ship Enterprise look like a Morris Minor dashboard) there was something of a contrast in voltage from an England dressing room that would barely have powered an electric toaster.

There was, as ever, talk about "taking the positives" out of the game, although just at this moment nothing seems more positive than Australia making it six consecutive Ashes victories by the end of this winter. There were certainly good individual performances - not least from Mark Butcher and Alan Mullally - but then again England have always been good at producing posthumous VCs. As ever, in the collective scheme of things, Australia are the side who pull together when the hand-to-hand fighting hits the battlefield.

There is never a moment when experienced England watchers feel safe, not even if they should ever get to 300 for none. Graham Gooch is already imploring England's lower order to put a higher price on their wickets, after respective batting performances in which one side's price tag came from Harrods, and the other from Woolworths. Australia's last five yielded 307 runs and England's last five, 60.

Before this series began, Gooch curiously said that England would be unhappy if Shane Warne was not fit to play, yet if a fully fit Warne had been playing, this Test match would have been over long before yesterday's tropical storm turned the Gabba into a more appropriate venue for wallowing hippos.

Even so Warne's apprentice, Stuart MacGill, would probably have finished the job had the weather not intervened and thereby caused - not for the first time - a certain amount of embarrassment for the England coach. When England were 299 for four at stumps on the third day, David Lloyd could scarcely disguise his glee as the team downed a couple of (then) well-earned beers back at the hotel. "Stuart MacGill?" he chortled, dismissively. "Stuart Bloody MacGill?"

Dangerous stuff. Lloyd is an emotional character and while his devotion to his team does him much credit, his apparent unwillingness to embrace dispassionate analysis occasionally bubbles over into near Barmy Army-style allegiance. It is doubtful whether, on the following night, Lloyd was heard chuntering: "Dominic Cork? Dominic Bloody Cork?"

Cork's first-innings batting performance against Glenn McGrath marked him down either as a cricketer short of the required intelligence at this level, or else as someone so immersed in projecting a Clint Eastwood-style machismo that it verged on the pathetic. McGrath was unable to get at him in the second innings because of the fading light but the thought of Cork as a Test match No 7 has already nailed down policy for Perth next week: John Crawley as the extra batsman, and cheerio Robert Croft.

Top marks here, though, for Butcher, who came into the match with less first-class runs behind him than the 10 stitches he had inserted in his head wound, and to Mullally, whose aggression is something the Australians find a good deal less hilarious than Cork's.

There was, however, an unsettling contrast between the two captains here, with Mark Taylor making all the positive moves. For some reason Alec Stewart has been portrayed as some kind of tactical D'Artagnan, but his dad was never one to embrace the cavalry charge, and if Alec is not quite a chip off the old block, he is at least a sliver.

England have not won a Test in Brisbane since 1986, so the locals have time to practise their jokes. Yesterday's winner of the Channel 9 crowd banner competition was: "What Do You Call a Pom Who Makes Five Runs?" Answer: "In Form." England's cricket team are a national mickey-take over here and sadly show no sign of running out of steam just yet.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)