The importance of knuckling down

Not too long ago, there was a lot of talk about boring Test series, boring matches and plenty of drawn games on pitches that offered little to aid aggressive bowling or bold strokeplay. This Ashes series has so far been a prime example of what has now become the trend - attacking cricket, outright results and huge margins.

Teams are getting consistently blown out of the water and it is difficult to put your finger on why. It's not as though it is one set of conditions creating the issue, as we have seen such margins in matches played in swinging and seaming environments, on dry, flat pitches, and on slower surfaces also. The Tests at Edgbaston, Lord's and Cardiff took place on three contrasting wickets - the one consistent thing was the wide margin of victory for whoever started best.

After the first day in Birmingham, Chris Rogers stated that there were some times in matches where you just have to find a way to get through a single spell of bowling. That, I think, is central to why these margins have developed. Batsmen don't seem to be quite so adept at getting through spells now. Countless times during my playing days we spoke as a team about getting a feel for moments when you know you just have to knuckle down and get through.

Two examples of tough spells spring to mind. In Perth in 1999 I batted alongside Justin Langer during a witheringly fast spell from Shoaib Akhtar, among the quickest ever recorded by a speed gun. There was plenty of pace and a little bit of movement in the pitch, and we hung on dearly through that spell after Pakistan had taken some early wickets. Justin was smart enough to spend most of Shoaib's overs at the non-striker's end. Somehow we got through.

Another, more protracted, period of tough spells was the final day of the Old Trafford Test in 2005. Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison and Simon Jones were all reverse-swinging the ball at high pace through the day, and I was stretched to my limit in trying to cope with that. I managed to put a few balls away - enough to stop myself from feeling completely hemmed in - and made one of my very best hundreds. We narrowly got out of that day with a draw, though the final series result showed they were able to get through us more often than not.

The deficiencies that make it hard to survive when the bowlers step up generally relate to defensive technique, but there can also be a state of indecision about whether to play freely enough to put pressure back on the bowlers. If your defence isn't tight enough you'll be in trouble, but you will also be struggling if you think you should attack but only do it in a half-hearted way.

Chris did his best to knuckle down on day one at Edgbaston, and alongside Adam Voges was not actually that far away from getting Australia into a good position. Instead, we saw James Anderson come back for a highly destructive spell after lunch that broke the back of the tourists' first innings, and the continuation of the theme.

You just don't see the old-fashioned blunting of the new ball, or players scrapping through a tough spell. It seems as though when you lose one wicket you lose four or five in a rush, and the game goes with them. England were perhaps deficient in their game awareness on the second morning, when Mitchell Johnson bounced out Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes. Logic said that sort of spell was coming, and that it would need to be weathered for three or four overs at most.

I don't see any reason why these spells can't be dealt with. To blame batting collapses on aggression is wide of the mark, because you can show great intent or even aggression in the way you leave or defend the ball. I've always felt a good measure of how someone is playing is how well they are leaving the ball. It might sound counter-intuitive, since the game is generally about hitting the ball, but showing a bowler how certain you are of where the ball is going will put doubt in their minds just as surely as a few boundaries will.

That is one area the Australians will have worked on this week, because the numerous instances of batsmen getting out to balls they were clearly thinking about leaving alone betrayed a mindset of indecision. By contrast, England's captain Alastair Cook has left the ball well, even if so far he has not made all the big scores to show for it.

Cook is one of few players left around the world now who have a consistently demonstrated ability to grind out a hundred over the course of a whole day. In Australia plenty of people will be asking questions about who might emerge to replace Chris when he retires, though for Western Australia and on the current Australia A tour of India, Cameron Bancroft is showing a desire to stick around. The amount of T20 cricket and limited-overs cricket the younger generations are playing means it probably will be less common to find the sort of player Chris has been, or Ed Cowan before him.

As for Australia's chances this week, the main thing they have to do is try to erase any memories from that last game straightaway. They had a chat about it in the rooms at the end of the third day, spoke about what went wrong and what they need to do to get better. From there they need to find a way to improve on the performance, knowing how good they were only a few days before that, at Lord's.

It's not like they were really out of form or playing bad cricket, it's just that one week where things didn't go well. Anderson, Steve Finn and Stuart Broad bowled well, and Australia were under pressure and they didn't respond well, but that doesn't mean they can't play well again this week. One of the strengths of Darren Lehmann as coach has been to ensure the team stays fairly neutral - not too high on success nor too low on failure. The team needs to harness that sort of feeling more urgently this week than ever.