Australia's empty words exposed by England

Oh what Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon would have given for a mere 11 overs to save this Test. When speaking about erasing the memories of Cardiff 2009, Australia's cricketers did not quite have this scenario in mind. Not only were they beaten, they were obliterated.

An England side still finding their way with a new coach in tow will gain as much confidence from this result as Australia did in Brisbane 19 months ago. An Australian team who had been confident, if not outright haughty, are left to ruminate on a very evident mortality.

It will be acknowledged that they could have bowled better and, on the first morning, caught better. Brad Haddin will forever be clutching Joe Root's edge with two gloves in his sleep, having failed to do so when it mattered. Nevertheless, this was a batting calamity, a collective failure of such magnitude as to match Lord's two years ago, another week when the top six showed all the survival instinct of lemmings.

They would do well to run their eyes over these words from Michael Clarke before the match. He laid out, more or less, what would be required of the batsmen in English climes.

"Once you get in as batsman over here, you have to go on and make a big score," he said. "You're never out of the game as a bowler, there's always something there - whether it's the slope at Lord's or you get some overhead conditions, or you take the second new ball, there's always an opportunity with the Dukes ball. So as a batter you need to know that. In Australia when you feel like you're batting well and get to 40 and 50, things become a little bit easier. Sometimes here it's not the case, you've got to work your backside off for your whole innings."

Clarke has uttered similar words at other times, from the 2013 India tour and the visit to England that followed it, to a match against South Africa in Port Elizabeth and a two-Test sojourn in the UAE against Pakistan. The words come easily, and Clarke clearly knows them instinctively. But whatever the reason, the actions that should flow from them do not.

Australia's batsmen did not work their backsides off in either innings at Cardiff. On the second day they made a passing effort, getting established and pushing through the early period before relaxing into a rhythm and getting themselves out. On the fourth day, faced with a record Ashes target, they did not even do that. Like the crayon lodged somewhere up Homer Simpson's nose, there is something that repeatedly affects Australian cognitive function on pitches such as Cardiff's, and against bowling that requires a measured response.

Part of it is a belief that pitches such as these are not a true test of their skill, and that the way the game is best played on them is a version of cricket they would rather not engage with. This was certainly true of Australia's bowling on the opening day, when the desire of Mitchell Starc and Mitchell Johnson to see the ball flying through to Haddin saw them offer Root far too much short stuff, a diet on which he completely changed the complexion of the morning. Peter Siddle had looked Australia's best bowler for this surface in the two training days before the match, but at selection time he was thought inferior to others with more Antipodean methods.

With a more balanced bowling attack England showed, in a quite exhilarating fashion at times, that slow surfaces must not always be associated with stodgy, risk averse play. In 2009 and 2013, the ways of Andy Flower had England playing the percentages with conditions in their favour.

This time they allied their conditional knowhow to courageous, inventive and intelligent cricket, of the kind Trevor Bayliss used to be a part of with the NSW teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The mentality was aggressive, and the game kept moving, but the cricket was smart rather than foolhardy. One exemplar of this was Ben Stokes, who played a pair of positive and influential innings while also playing an understated but important role with the ball - his dismissal of Adam Voges via variation off the pitch was Australia's point of no return.

Stokes' opposite number was rather more problematic for Australia. By the time of what was surely Shane Watson's last lbw review Passion play, the match had well and truly gone. But his Australian method, plonking the front foot down the wicket and not allowing himself room to combat any movement or variation, speaks as bluntly of bowling machines and flint-hard pitches as anything else in Clarke's team.

Much like in the first innings, numerous batsmen played shots untempered by any sense of the match situation, nor the plans of the bowlers to outsmart them. Clarke's vague waft at Stuart Broad will not be appearing on any of his highlight reels, and Haddin's mow at Moeen Ali rivalled his infamous slash during the 2011 Cape Town Test.

Clarke said batting for long innings was all about hunger. If so, then his team showed little interest in being fed at all. "The hardest part about batting is getting to 20 or 30," he said. "Once you get there you've got to have that hunger inside you to want to go on and make a big score. Once you get to 50 turn it into 80, once you get to 80 turn it into 100 and look to make a big hundred.

"But that's the game as well. You get a good ball whether you're on zero or you're on 50 it can get you out. It's the hardest part about batting. When you're in form cash in, when you're out of form find a way to scratch your backside off to get in form. I think the shot selection wasn't as good as it needs to be. The fact that we all got starts especially in our first innings we need to have more discipline there. At least one, maybe two of those guys - me in particular - we need to go on and make a big score."

There's nothing wrong with these words. Like those Clarke said before the match they make perfect sense. But they are just words, and for a long time now Australia's words have not matched their actions on foreign surfaces. To win an Ashes series in England for the first time since 2001, and to do so from behind for the first time since 1997, Clarke's men have to show a hunger that goes beyond the homilies.