England have selected three seamers for their warm-up match here, with Jimmy Anderson rested and Jake Ball recovering from a week-old sprained ankle. Although the pitch is much more sluggish than the quick deck at the Gabba and the opposition plenty poorer than Australia’s top order, those three seamers – particularly Chris Woakes but Stuart Broad and Craig Overton, too – stuck right to England’s plan of the first Test.
That plan has been devised by Shane Bond, the former New Zealand quick who might just want to win the Ashes more than most Englishmen do. “Everyone wants to beat Australia,” he says. “You want to be on the side versus Australia, no matter where you’re from. I want to beat these guys.”
Bond is with England until the end of the second Test, when he rejoins Brisbane Heat as bowling coach, working under his former international team-mate Daniel Vettori. Chris Silverwood will coach England’s fast bowlers soon but Bond has been briefly hired because of his expertise with the Kookaburra ball and understanding of Australian conditions.
“Sheez no,” is his response when asked if he will be doing anything technical with England’s quicks. His remit is tactical. “I’ve got a pretty good understanding of the way the game is played over here and it’s about instilling little bits of that in the guys,” says Bond, whose impact at international level was cruelly curtailed by a series of injuries. He managed only 18 Tests between 2001 and 2009 but picked up 87 wickets at 22.
“England play the game differently to what we do in this part of the world,” he says. “It’s about getting them to understand that. They need to understand what attacking looks like and align our strengths to different fields and match them up against their batsmen.”
So what does attacking look like? It might look rather defensive, actually. Broad has spoken on this tour about “swarming” Australia batsmen early in their innings, then retreating a touch. Joe Root has already employed some curious fielding positions, such as a closer catching point at the start of this match, while James Vince learned how busy life in the gully can be, with three fine catches, taken at speed. Bond says: “Joe and the analyst are doing some great work. By Brisbane we will have a very clear way of how we want to attack.”
Bond has recognised that England do not have bowlers of express pace – Woakes will be the swiftest, touching 88-90mph at his quickest – but do possess accuracy and skill, so it is about making it hard to score. England found lateral movement on day one here but it was never substantial. Locating even the slightest bit of seam or swing from the Kookaburra will be vital.
“The ball doesn’t move as much,” he says. “The pitches are harder. You have to set your fields differently. Listening to the boys about England, they know there’s always something in the wicket. Here, you won’t get that sideways movement or massive amounts of swing. If it swings it won’t be there all the time. You have to find different ways to skin a cat.
“Our bowlers are quality and they get bounce, which is massive. If we can get it to go off the straight just a little bit, we are accurate enough that we can cause trouble.”
With the exception of Anderson and Ball, the tourists were all over the shop in the opener in Perth – too full or too short and too English – but in Adelaide last week Woakes and Overton pulled their length back a touch and were excellent. Broad took only one wicket here on day one but was never easy to score off. “Today we were difficult to get away and created more chances than the nine we took and we were really consistent and testing,” Bond says. “Regardless of the opposition, we will be hard to beat if we do that.”
Bond sees England’s attack as a counterpoint to Australia’s, which will be pacier but shorter on street-smarts. “You know what you will get out of Australia,” he says. “[Mitchell] Starc will try to swing it back in and bowl over and across you, then go round the wicket and try to knock your off pole out. [Josh] Hazlewood will be accurate, then [Pat] Cummins will mix his length and bowl short. We are different. We have to control their run rate and chip away at their batting lineup, and take it to day five.”
Anderson is the smartest of all and Bond is enjoying discovering that coaches can learn from their students. “Hopefully I can give him little nudges about fields and the like,” he says. “But he’s a great of the game, so it’s great to see how he goes about his work, what makes him so good, and see what little subtleties I can learn from him.”
