You cannot arrive at the million-pound question and say: “Chris, I’ve thought about it, final answer... E.” Nor can you ask Carol Vorderman for two from the top, four from the bottom and a side of onion rings.
So, while the analysis of England’s batting brain-fade will be framed in some quarters as yet another debate over the merits or ills of Bazball (apparently, Brendon McCullum has now given up and come to terms with that label), really, that is to miss the point.
England’s philosophy is built on taking the more aggressive option and, quite simply, you cannot choose one that is not on the table. With the caveat that clearing the fence is technically always “on”, the batter’s one risky trump card to render all fielders obsolete, the cluster of England wickets that fell on the second evening here were each the result of woeful shot selection for the situation at hand.
In a baffling 45 minutes, Ollie Pope, Ben Duckett and Joe Root all wilted trying to take on Australia’s short-ball ploy in a flurry of top-edges and toe-ends that flew to men stationed in positions that telegraphed the trap.
Pope’s exit should have been a warning to the rest, as should Root’s reprieve to himself, after he was caught on one off a Cameron Green no-ball. Neither warning was heeded, though, Root taken for a second time low by a diving Steve Smith after Duckett had already made the slow trudge back through the Long Room having hooked to David Warner on 98.
The opener insisted afterwards that while he was “gutted” to miss out on a third Lord’s hundred of the summer, he had no regrets over the specifics of his undoing. “I was trying to hit that ball along the floor,” Duckett said. “If I was trying to slap it over midwicket for six, then fair enough.”
Which, of course, is near enough how Pope had succumbed.
Smith, who had earlier completed an almost chanceless 32nd Test hundred, was asked whether England’s approach had played into Australian hands.
“At times today it certainly did,” he confirmed. “You can only go to the short stuff for so long, and if they get under a few and the boys get tired and it doesn’t look a real option, then we probably revert back to something else. While they kept playing for them, we felt like we were in the game.”
Run towards the danger has been the England mantra, but off the edge of a cliff? Well, that would be unwise.
Thankfully, things never got quite that bad, and yesterday was still England’s.
Thanks to a top-order platform superbly set, Ben Stokes’s better reading of the game scenario and Marnus Labuschagne’s drop of Harry Brook, the hosts resumed this morning on 278 for four, 138 runs behind Australia’s first-innings total.
It might, though, have been so much better — and this was only the latest example of a failing displayed already by both teams across the course of a Test-and-a-half.
The old guard have been chuntering into their cereal for weeks now about the apparent niceties between rivals that, presumably, ought to be having punch-ups at every turn; too many friendships forged in Rajasthan and Hyderabad to keep ancient hostilities alight. Any hands across the water ought to be cut off, olive branches swiftly burnt — though, weirdly, send-offs are apparently off limits.
Granted, there is probably some middle-ground between rolling out the red carpet for a pair of openers and telling a bloke to naff off after he has made 140, but both England and Australia’s greatest crime so far this week has been in letting the other off the hook.
Those three English wickets at the exact point where, having lost spinner Nathan Lyon to a calf problem, Australia looked there for the taking, came with eerie similarity to the previous evening, when Travis Head and Green had gifted wickets in the same over to Root just as England looked ready to implode.
Creating moments has been no issue, but both sides must get better at seizing them.
