Mitchell Starc has told England’s tail-enders to expect more of the same for the remainder of this Ashes series after Australia’s attack blew away their opposite numbers for the second time at the Gabba.
The fourth and decisive day in Brisbane was another case of Starc – nicknamed The Mop for his ability to clean up – and his colleagues exposing the lack of solidity in Joe Root’s side beyond No8, with their final four wickets falling for 10 runs in the space of 20 balls. The left-arm paceman Starc, who finished with three for 51 as England’s 195 all out set up a lowly target of 170, said: “We have spoken about their tail. The way our boys bowled against them four years ago [in the 5-0 whitewash] is the blueprint and they can expect some more short stuff as the series goes along.”
Though Jonny Bairstow was among the collapse, the ramped cut shot that picked out Peter Handscomb at third man on 42 off the bowling of Starc, while injudicious in itself, betrayed a lack of confidence in his partner Stuart Broad and what was left to come in Jake Ball and Jimmy Anderson.
As in England’s first-innings slide from a promising 246 for four to 302 all out, it highlighted the loss of Ben Stokes in this line-up while he continues to wait for the outcome of the police investigation into the Bristol incident two months ago and any cricket punishment that may follow.
Though much was made of England’s middle-to-lower-order strength in Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes, the switch around has left three vulnerable tail-enders beneath, all of whom have been peppered by Starc and Pat Cummins with just one Broad cameo of 20 to show for it.
“[Stokes] is always going to be a miss,” said Moeen, whose move to No6 has shown encouraging signs with scores of 38 and 40. “The tail is a lot longer. It’s quite dangerous when we have guys who can score big runs down there and it also stops us from losing wickets in clusters. He is a big part of this team but we just have to get on with it.”
Starc also highlighted the poor returns of Alastair Cook in his first two innings and that Root had been pinned lbw twice in the match, the second of which came the ball after bringing up his 33rd Test match half-century. With only 10 centuries to date, the captain’s failure to make it count more regularly in some ways highlights one of the issuesproblems.Moeen said: “From an individual point of view you want to come here and score hundreds. We’ll be itching to do that. In the first innings we got 302 without Cook and Root. It’s difficult to take positives, but that is one. The new guys played well. [Australia] are a good side, but maybe not as good as we make out. We know we have to compete very well in the next four games.”While Moeen has always seen himself as a batsman first, he has been palpably out-bowled by his opposite number, Nathan Lyon. After coming into the series light on overs after a side strain in the warm-ups, the 30-year-old is also suffering from a nasty cut on his spinning finger.
He added: “ It happened after 15 overs in the first innings, I ripped my spinning finger [on the hard Kookaburra ball] and it’s not been easy since then. I have had to glue it and file it, to try to keep [the skin] hard. Today it felt better but I didn’t bowl well.”
