The Australian reaction to their 169-run defeat in the first Ashes Test has been a bout of deep soul-searching. Previously buoyant and confident of a first win on English soil in 14 years, the antipodean press have drastically reassessed the merits of the world’s second-ranked Test team.
News.com.au described Australia as “pathetic”, saying: “Australia’s overseas batting capitulation horrors returned – leaving the futures of Shane Watson and Brad Haddin shrouded in doubt.” Elswhere on the site, Tyson Otto wrote that Australia melted in the face of England’s seamers.
Otto also asked if Australia had an attitude problem. A familiar question from England fans, perhaps, but Otto accused them of folding too meekly. Anthony Sharwood took a similar line, saying that England won because they played like a team.
“England hunted as a pack,” wrote Sharwood. “They had unity. Even from the couch, you could really feel the players urging each other on. England’s players actually seem to – gulp – really like each other. Certainly there appear to be no petty resentments simmering away in the background as there was when Kevin Pietersen was around.”
Let’s leave that one there. With eight of the Australia XI coming from New South Wales, there is keen interest in the match from the two main local newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Mike Colman, writing in the former, wonders if England’s performances over the last few years were designed to lull Australia into a false sense of security. “Wasn’t this supposed to be a walkover?” he asks. “Weren’t they a joke, a rabble, a laughing-stock stumbling from one Kevin Pietersen PR disaster to the next?”
In his match report, Ben Horne says: “For a moment it was Cape Town 2011 and Lord’s 2013 all over again as the wickets tumbled.” He also suggests that Brad Haddin and Shane Watson’s futures were in doubt. Horne also reports that Ian Healy is leading the calls for Watson’s career to be ended by the selectors and that Australia could benefit from picking Peter Siddle for the second Test.
The Sydney Morning Herald also does not hold back in its criticism of Watson, who has come under attack from all quarters. In an excellent piece carrying the headline “Shane Watson exhibit A, B and C of First Test loss to England”, Greg Baum is scathing.
“Cricket is a game of many moods and humours,” writes Baum, “but rarely the sort of black comedy seen at Swalec stadium when Shane Watson got out on Saturday in a way that surely will occasion the first instance of the word ‘ibid’ in the scorecard’s footnotes. Played forward, beaten past the inside edge, hit on the pad, given out lbw, referred, but be damned if that ball still wasn’t hitting the stumps, complete with computer-generated death rattle (see Watson, previous).”
Elsewhere, Tom Decent lists four Australians whose places are under threat for the second Test (we bet you can’t guess who number one is) and a rather delighted Geoffrey Boycott says “Alastair [Cook] had his best match as captain that I have ever seen.”
Writing in The Australian, Peter Lalor says that England will take confidence from the size of their win into the second Test at Lord’s on Thursday. Cate McGregor echoes this, describing a “bold new England”. It is left to Gideon Haigh to mull over where it all went wrong for the Aussies, noting that this was a defeat “30 months in the making” and criticising David Warner for his uncharacteristically unsure performance.
Fox Sports have little time for Australia’s bluster about “playing their natural game”.
“Let’s hope they keep that natural game up, because I think we’ll win 5-0 if that happens,” says Derek Pringle, with Stuart MacGill adding: “‘Natural game is a smoke screen that’s put up by people that really haven’t come to terms with the truth.”
In a separate column, Pringle joins Boycott in praising Alastair Cook, saying: “Clarke had one of his least funky games as the world’s funkiest captain, being outshone by Alastair Cook at almost every turn.”
He is also withering in his assessment of Steve Smith. “Smith came into the series being lauded by his countrymen as the greatest batsman currently in world cricket. He made 33 in each innings but to this observer he looks too fidgety to be worthy of such a grand claim. His dismissal yesterday, to a ball many would have done well to reach, does not suggest the inner calm possessed by the true gods of batting.”
Finally, Fox decides to follow the old “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” maxim and runs a recap of all eight of Watson’s failed lbw referrals in Ashes Tests. You can enjoy that here.
