The Ashes 2013-14: The Aussies and the mental game

Aussies with the Urn

A 3-0 defeat looked comprehensive, but was it comprehensive enough for English players to pee on the pitch (which they did at the conclusion of the first leg of the Ashes at the Oval)?

We looked for answers in Brisbane. Life would be made a little more difficult by the home team, and even the Ashes urn could change hands. Or, the English could polish themselves a little more and show Clarke and Co. who was boss, like the last time, in 2010-11.

The jittery top order deceived Australia again. Reduced to 132 for 6 by Broad, wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, both of whom would have a significant effect on the series, teamed up to slowly grind a recovery. The marking point came in England’s innings.

When Johnson started bowling, he suddenly looked different. He had a big handlebar moustache, but more importantly, a gait and a look that said, ‘No one’s to mess with me.’ He seemed at ease, too, despite getting his line a little off the mark, as if he knew it was only a matter of time before the English will hop and duck at the crease. Is this the Australia of old?

Johnson, Harris and off spinner Nathan Lyon caused a collapse. Johnson’s bowling, especially, created panic. The visitors were shocked, eventually suffering a 381-run defeat, and they couldn’t recover from the blow for the entire tour. The loss was rubbed in by Clarke’s advice to England’s No. 11 James Anderson to ‘get ready for a broken f****** arm’ at the closing stages of the Test.

On a seemingly placid batting track in Adelaide, Johnson created terror again by taking seven wickets in the first innings to place his team on a winning position. The third Test in Perth, where the Ashes were regained by the home team, was a bit more evenly contested, but even then it was as if England’s survival in contests was only temporary. All of Australia’s plans seemed to work, be it troubling Cook with a nagging line by Harris, or trapping the hard-hitting Kevin Pietersen on the leg side. All of their bowlers seemed to have a hold on the batsmen. And when their batting failed through a top-order surrender, Haddin would rescue them.

Swann’s announcement of retirement dug yet another hole on the sinking ship. It seemed England would muster some resistance, and with the quality they had, they were expected to. In the Boxing day Test, their batsmen played in an attritional manner to manage 255, and then their bowlers caused an Australian collapse to reduce them to 164 for 9 at the close of day two. But would they continue their dominance the next morning?

It seemed they didn’t want to. Lyon and Haddin reduced the deficit down to 51 runs, scoring 40 runs for the last wicket. There were defensive field settings, many small meetings between players on the field to suggest confusion, and an overall negativity in their approach. Lyon’s five-for in the second innings catalysed the English collapse and paved the way for yet another resounding win. In the final Test at Sydney, too, England looked a side without any plan or confidence.

Ian Bell, one of England’s pillars in batting, smiled in awe at the crease at one of Johnson’s powerful deliveries, as if he had given up. He indeed had, for he guided handsomely an innocuous wide-ish delivery outside off stump straight to gully for 16, to speed up the collapse: quite symbolic of England’s struggle in the series. Some analysts pointed out he, alongside other English top-order batsmen, were ‘out of touch’. It looked more like psychological damage.

Cook’s statement, ‘We have to look at ourselves, at where we want to go,’ at the end of it all was an interesting one, for it smelt of helplessness that a person encounters in a lost path. The confidence in their style of play, which has helped them stand mightily in the Test ladder for a long time, was shaken by their opposition: the small worth of playing your own game, and not be dictated by others. Australia were smart enough to turn it around.