England will target the returning ‘sandpaper duo’ Steve Smith and David Warner as Joe Root’s team look to cap “a really special year to remember” when the Ashes begin at Edgbaston tomorrow.
Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft are back in Australia’s Test team for the first time since they sent the sport in their country into a tailspin by ball-tampering against South Africa in March last year. They received lengthy bans, which led to Australian cricket trying to change its image.
England’s vice-captain Ben Stokes believes Warner is the key wicket and captain Joe Root thinks Smith has weaknesses against the moving ball that England hope to “exploit”.
“He [Smith] is a proven world performer, a fantastic player,” said Root. “It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Last time they came [in 2015], when the wickets were good and flat, he made it count with a double-hundred and a big hundred. When it moved around it looked slightly different.
“It will be interesting to see how he approaches it and tries to combat the movement and hopefully we can exploit anything we see early on.”
Of the reaction the trio are set to receive from the raucous Edgbaston crowd, Root said: “I am certainly not going to be out there booing”, but acknowledged that he cannot control how fans react, only promising his team will not be dragged into any Ashes carry-on.
Root added: “We have a way of playing our cricket and don’t want to get involved in anything that is unnecessary, we just want to play good cricket and for it to be entertaining and the crowd to enjoy themselves. We want it done in the right way. We want to make it a really memorable series. It’s been a great summer for us so far and it’s an opportunity now to build on that and hopefully make it a very special year to remember.”
Root’s planning for the series, which has been going on throughout their World Cup campaign, has been shaped by the hurt of the 4-0 drubbing his team received in Australia in 2017/18.
“The experience of how things unfolded down in Australia, there’s been quite a lot of learning from that,” said Root, who will move up to No3.
“We have come quite a long way in the past couple of years as a team. We have plenty more options, especially with the ball — different pace, different angles we can go to. We have struggled away from home, but we come off the back of managing to win a difficult tour in Sri Lanka and feel like we are slowly building momentum as a team and getting to where we want to, which is the No1 team in the world.”
England have decided Jofra Archer is not fit enough to get through this Test, but James Anderson is over his calf injury and will join Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes, who bowled Ireland out for 38 on Friday, in the seam attack.
Root believes this will not be the final home summer, however, for Anderson, who turned 37 yesterday and boasts 575 Test wickets — more than any other fast bowler.
“No,” said Root firmly when asked if this was Anderson’s last hurrah. “He gets better with age, he wants to keep going. He has had a couple of niggles over the past couple of years, but every time he has come back stronger.
“Look at the workload he had over in Australia, I think he proved a point out there, he was by far our best seamer.
“In the past couple of years in England he’s proved to be very difficult to come up against, so although it might be his birthday, he seems to keep that desire and hunger, and there are no signs of slowing down.”
Australia are yet to make a decision on their final pace bowler, with Peter Siddle and Josh Hazlewood competing to join Pat Cummins and James Pattinson. Mitchell Starc looks set to be saved for the Second Test at Lord’s, which starts in a fortnight.
