Australia find their aggressive edge

While Australia have drawn criticism from some quarters for adopting an overly aggressive approach in the ongoing Ashes, even going to the extent of Michael Clarke threatening James Anderson with a broken arm, David Rowe, writing for the Conversation, believes that such an attitude, though not pretty, has been one of the major reasons for the hosts' dominance over England in the first two Tests.

This overt aggression - lost for a time under the previous technocratic, high-performance management regime of player rotation and self-reflective player homework - had returned in all its animalistic hirsuteness. It found expression not just in Johnson's bouncers and death stares and in the clubbed sixes of David Warner, but in the vigorous sledging for which Australia had been previously renowned.