What a way for the Ashes to end. England’s performance with the bat across the series was terrible, with that final-day collapse completely in keeping. I was a bit taken aback by the pitches. It is a tough enough task to face Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland on decent surfaces but these were very bowler-friendly, and with the ball moving around at pace, poorly prepared tourists relying on young batters were never likely to excel. It is certainly not fair to look at the lower order in these circumstances, but the final impression was of Ollie Robinson backing away so far that he could hardly reach the ball when it was aimed at the stumps – a fitting denouement to a miserable tour.
Teams get outplayed by better sides, that’s part of sport, but to lose the Ashes inside 12 days indicates something has gone seriously wrong. There were mitigating circumstances in terms of the team’s preparation, which would have been poor even if it hadn’t been affected by bad weather and left Ben Stokes, in particular, coming into the series with hardly any cricket in him. But that’s where the sympathy stops.
The tactics and team selection were particularly hard to understand. England went into the first Test on a green pitch without James Anderson and Stuart Broad, and then the second Test in Adelaide, where spin was always going to play a part, not only without a spinner but also our one fast bowler in Mark Wood. It was when Chris Silverwood came out after that match to insist that, even with the benefit of hindsight, he had picked the right team that he lost my confidence.
Silverwood had spoken at length over the two years since his appointment about building for the Ashes, but when the team arrived whatever he thought he had constructed turned out to have no foundations. He is a nice guy who I know well, but decisions like batting first at Brisbane and leaving Jack Leach out in Adelaide suggested that he was approaching games with a pre-planned template rather than looking at the conditions in front of him. Tactics and team selection are his responsibility, and he has to carry the can for their failure.
Ashley Giles, the ECB’s managing director of men’s cricket, gave a very uninspiring interview before the fourth Test when he talked, as a man whose job is under threat might, about the need to change systems rather than individuals. He has been in post for three years and again there are mitigating circumstances with Covid, but he is the man who appointed Silverwood, handing him all the power to determine selection and tactics, and his other key contribution has been to completely wipe out the support structure that England had build up over many years at Loughborough.
As we look ahead to the promised reset of England’s Test team I think the positions of both Silverwood and Giles are untenable. A new head coach has to know the English game, have experience across formats and their own ideas for how to reshape the side. Look at what happened to the one-day team between 2015 and 2019, but this process will take a little longer. We simply don’t have top-order batters scoring lots of runs in domestic cricket, so we’re picking on potential rather than evidence. There are lots of important series and the focus on Australia is often excessive but it makes sense to plan in a two-year cycle, which takes us to the next Ashes. Gary Kirsten has said he would be interested and would make a very interesting candidate.
There are two names that come instantly to mind as replacements for Giles – Andrew Strauss and Alec Stewart. Both have experience, knowledge of English cricket and the gravitas to make things happen. We know that commercial considerations are paramount at the ECB and that is unlikely to change, but this defeat has been so emphatic and the reaction so strong that some things must. Their recent priority has been the Hundred, which has had several positive impacts, putting cricket back on the BBC and having the women’s competition running in parallel, but young players should be encouraged to aspire to face the ultimate challenge, and that is Test cricket.
In Australia we saw three young batters in Haseeb Hameed, Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope learning on the job, trying to bridge what has become an enormous gap between facing county seamers in April and an Australian Test attack in unfamiliar conditions. One thing I do agree with Giles about is that we need to get counties on board, and give players more opportunities to play pressurised and higher-quality matches. England Lions are meant to be that bridge and there will hopefully be more of a focus on their tours in future, but a couple of other fixtures could be squeezed into the calendar – Lions against the best of the rest, perhaps, or north v south.
Joe Root spoke after the final Test about his ambition to lead the team through the turbulent times ahead, and outlined some of his own ideas for the future. One of the failings of Giles and Silverwood is that we have got to this point with a complete lack of contenders for the England captaincy, so it is just as well that there is no need for a replacement. Despite the embarrassments of the last few weeks Root has done enough to keep his job – but not everyone involved can say the same.
