Anything but another anticlimax

The first Test took England supporters back to the dark days of the 1990s. It wasn’t the fact that their team lost: it was that they lost heavily. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t take wickets: it was that they couldn’t bowl straight. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t make runs: it was that they seemed to be giving their wickets away. The upshot, after all the hype, was a thudding let-down. For the second Test, the fans will take anything but another anticlimax.

The central problem at Brisbane was that the bowlers had a shocker – and then the batsmen did too. Result: first-innings deficit of 445. If Ricky Ponting hadn’t sportingly given them a chance to regroup, they might well have lost by an innings and 300 runs.

It’s being said that everything has to go right for England if they are to get back into the series. That’s overstating it. But everything can’t carry on going wrong. At Adelaide, either the bowlers or the batsmen have to do well in the first innings.

The batsmen began to turn the corner at the Gabba. Four of the top six put together one decent innings, and two of them, Collingwood and Pietersen, even managed to dominate. The two who didn’t come to the party (© Duncan Fletcher 1999) were the two men who have captained England this year.

One of them, Andrew Flintoff, has so much on his plate that he has to be given some leeway. The other, Andrew Strauss, has to make some runs now. He is in form, or was when he last spent long enough at the crease to show it, but he has been out to the hook or pull four times in six innings in Australia. At Adelaide, with its beguiling square boundaries, the temptation to keep hooking will be strong. Let him hook – but downwards. (And let Geoff Boycott remember that he once had a hooking problem too, against Keith Boyce of the West Indies in 1973.)

When one of the batsmen gets to 80, as Collingwood and Pietersen did at Brisbane, he has to get 80 more. Even that may not be enough: Michael Vaughan made 177 at Adelaide last time, and still England lost by an innings, because nobody else passed 60. But England need to make their big runs bigger. The majority of their hundreds in Fletcher’s time haven’t made it to 125. Strauss, curiously for someone so level-headed, has yet to reach 150 in a Test. This is the moment.

The bowlers need to shape up as swiftly as the batsmen did at the Gabba. Somehow, they have to break through Australia’s top order. In home Tests since England last toured, Langer, Hayden and Ponting have made 7,188 runs at 70. The good news is that England have already had Australia three down for hardly any once this winter – in the one-day international at Jaipur. The bad news is that the man who did most of the damage was Saj Mahmood. And Langer and Hayden weren't playing.

England can do it, but only if they show intensity in their whole game, from bowling to captaincy. Memo to Flintoff: have a third man for Langer. Put three catchers on the drive for Hayden, not just one. Bowl full at Ponting, eight inches outside off, with the odd one jagging back for the lbw. Get Monty on early, and don’t be too bothered if they try to bully him. And give yourself the new ball: until Harmison recovers, you’re the spearhead.