Australia are vulnerable without their main man (19 November 1998)

19 November 1998

Australia are vulnerable without their main man

By Christopher Martin Jenkins

IF ENGLAND have not won the Ashes by the end of the gruelling seven-week series which starts in Brisbane at midnight GMT tonight, they will have come very close to doing so. Despite the odds on Australia, understandable as they are given an outstanding record against all comers since they defeated the West Indies in the Caribbean in 1995, a drawn series at least is within the capabilities of Alec Stewart's team.

Mark Taylor, playing his 100th Test, batting as well as he ever has and in command of a side who have frequently passed the acid test by winning overseas against all their opponents except India in the last three years, has every reason for the honest, cheery confidence he was expressing yesterday.

Recently, two of his right-hand men, Steve Waugh and Ian Healy, predicted that Australia would win the series 3-1. But without one of their two great match-winning bowlers, Shane Warne, for at least the first two Tests and as inappropriately prepared for the start of this Ashes series as for the last, they are vulnerable.

To achieve parity, or the greater prize of being the first England team for 28 years and only the fifth this century to regain the Ashes in Australia, Stewart and his fellow selectors have to be positive when they choose their final XI to play on a hard, true-looking pitch which is covered with such an even spread of dry grass that it might be made not of turf but of light green plastic.

That suggests two things, assuming showers and clouds are not to be the dominant weather pattern over this weekend: that bowling will be hard work once the new ball has lost its shine; and that variety will help.

Following his improved all-round effort in Cairns, Robert Croft, who was named yesterday along with all seven batsmen and the four expected fast bowlers, deserves to be given the chance to resurrect a Test career which has been far more successful overseas than it has at home.

True pitch or not, there will probably be a result here - Adelaide is likely to produce the only draw of the series - and England have to try to win rather than setting out not to lose. The Australian Cricket Board allowed the tour of England last year to be immediately preceded by a demanding tour of South Africa and England duly swept to victory in the first Test at Edgbaston. The board again have done Taylor and his team no favours by agreeing to a tour of Pakistan which, for the Test players also included in the one-day team, lingered on into last week.

Those returning from a succession of high-scoring one-day matches on slow, grassless wickets include Glenn McGrath, a fast bowler to be mentioned in the same breath as Allan Donald and Curtly Ambrose. He may not have his opening partner from 1997 to help him until next week's second Test in Perth because Jason Gillespie is expected to be 12th man here.

McGrath is a high-class bowler but he only has to get his length wrong here as he did at Edgbaston (two for 149 in the match) to squander Australia's best chance of exploiting England's uncertainty against the new ball.

Michael Atherton's back inflammation seems to have responded to treatment and he is expected to play but Mark Butcher has recovered only his unblemished features, not his confidence, since he was cut above the eye in Perth, while being punched to the ground by a thug has not helped the preparation of the reserve opener and possible seventh batsman, John Crawley.

Crawley could yet play anyway in preference either to Mark Ramprakash or to Butcher, who was hitting the ball freely in the nets at the Gabba yesterday. Butcher, however, deserves to retain his place given the enterprise with which he dealt with Donald and Shaun Pollock last season and although Ramprakash's best score against South Africa in nine innings was only 67 not out, he has been a stabilising influence at No 6 in England's last nine Tests.

All the batsmen will have to produce if England are to give their steady but ordinary bowling attack a fair chance. Atherton averages a relatively modest 34 from 24 Tests against Australia; Stewart an unworthy 26 from 19 games. Atherton has been defeated by McGrath nine times in eight games but he has to win that battle this time, as well as the one against his back pain, if England are to prosper. Graham Thorpe, by contrast, has relished Australian competition so far - he averages 49 - and Nasser Hussain is playing better than anyone.

At the other end of the team, England's hopes rest mainly on Angus Fraser's reliability, on Dominic Cork's contributions with ball and bat and, above all, on the partnership of Darren Gough and Alan Mullally.

The laconic Mullally is suddenly a key man in the team. Ian Chappell wrote recently that he failed in Sheffield Shield cricket but although there has been some rubbish talked about his 'sudden' discovery of a lethal inswinger, he is a far better bowler since he shortened his run, got closer to the stumps and strengthened his upper body.

Even to arrive at this first Test with an undefeated record has required an extremely fallible England team to scrap and scramble. They have not, generally, played very good cricket and especially they have struggled against the new ball, the period in which most matches in Australia are won or lost. But they are still looking the hardest and best-organised England side of the decade and the law of averages suggests that they will at last have more than their share of good fortune.

The Gabba is a mess at present, with the famous Cricketers' Club swept away as the builders turn a ground which still had some character into another concrete bowl. It will hold 50,000 for the Olympic football matches in 2000 but for this game, its capacity has been reduced by construction work to a mere 15,000. Still, it is the pitch which matters and the groundsman, Kevin Mitchell, who, like Paul Brind at the Oval, took over from his father, thinks it is the best he has produced in six years.

In that time, Australia's lowest first-innings score here has been 379. If England are to win, they must reduce that figure and produce a similar or higher total themselves: in the first innings, not the second.

Teams

AUSTRALIA (from): *M A Taylor, M J Slater (both New South Wales), J L Langer (Western Australia), M E Waugh, S R Waugh (both NSW), R T Ponting (Tasmania), -I A Healy (Queensland), D W Fleming (Victoria), J N Gillespie (South Australia), M S Kasprowicz (Queensland), S C G MacGill, G D McGrath (both NSW).

ENGLAND (from): M A Atherton (Lancashire), M A Butcher (Surrey), N Hussain (Essex), * -A J Stewart, G P Thorpe (both Surrey), M R Ramprakash (Middlesex), J P Crawley (Lancashire), D G Cork (Derbyshire), R D B Croft (Glamorgan), D Gough (Yorkshire), A R C Fraser (Middlesex), A D Mullally (Leicestershire).

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