I only caught the first two days of the second test because on Day 3 I was flying to Thailand, where I am now.  By the time I arrived, the match was all but over.

Having predicted in my previous post that England would edge this match, I could not have been proven more wrong with Australia trouncing their opponents in a 405 run win.  In doing so, the whole situation between the teams has now flipped 180 degrees: it is England who will go into the next match pondering personnel changes and wondering what went wrong, and Australia who will look to capitalise on a potentially demoralised opposition.  A bigger response to their first test defeat could not have been asked from Australia, and a more pathetic capitulation scarcely imagined from England.

Australia won the match by doing what they do best: winning the toss, putting on a hefty score, and letting their bowlers do the rest.  Had England won the toss things might have gone differently, but they didn’t and if England are going to be considered even a half-decent team they need to learn how to win batting second on a lost toss.  So does Australia, come to think of it: they’re not much better in this department, and neither team seems able to withstand the slightest scoreboard pressure.  If any weakness in Australia’s batting lineup has been masked by Rogers’ and Smith’s brilliant partnership which took the game away from England on Day 1, it is this.

I watched most of that partnership, and it really was a case of brilliant batting as opposed to poor bowling.  Even Shane Warne said Cook’s captaincy and field settings were as varied and attacking as could be expected, and all the commentators said the bowlers had bowled well, especially Broad.  But they came up against what sometimes happens in test matches, two class batsmen who have played themselves in.  I don’t think it was a failure of England’s bowlers and fielders that Australia scored so many runs (Bell’s drop of Smith notwithstanding, but it was a tough chance): they did quite well on Day 2 once they’d gotten rid of Rogers and Smith, and the pitch was very good for batting.

Where England failed completely was in the batting.  True, the extra pace of the Australian bowlers made the ball do much more than it had coming from English paws, but the capitulation of England’s top order was appalling.  Despite the massive run deficit, here was a chance for England to at least show some fight in response and avoid the follow-on figure (which is usually symbolic when playing against Clarke with Warner in the team), and for some of the batsmen over whom there are doubts to prove themselves, namely Lyth, Ballance, and Bell.  Each failed miserably (Root we can give a pass to as he’s done plenty recently and can’t be expected to perform every match) with the exception of Cook, who was batting steadily with Stokes when my plane took off.  If Cook and Stokes can manage to score 96 and 87 respectively, what is the excuse of the rest?  Lack of form and/or talent is my guess, and both Ballance and Bell should be dropped, Root moved up to 3 or 4, and Lyth told that the third test will be his last if he doesn’t score at least something.

If I thought England’s first innings was bad, their second beggars belief.  It’s not that England had any chance of saving the match, but a meaningful partnership or a century would have done wonders for the confidence of the team and was a good opportunity for some out-of-form batsmen to get some time in the middle without – ironically – too much pressure.  Instead we were all out for 103, which handed the Australians not only the match but an enormous psychological victory heading into the third test.

So with England looking certain to make some changes in their batting line-up at Edgbaston, one would expect Australia to be the ones carrying the momentum and seeking a victory.  But as we have seen, much depends on who wins the toss and the state of the pitch.

And on that note, I would like to say that I find all this talk of pitch “doctoring” to be rather tedious.  I have yet to hear a professional groundsman say whether it is even possible to fine-tune an English pitch to nullify Australian bowling let alone whether it has actually been done in the two tests we’ve seen so far.  For all the talk of Cardiff being a “flat” wicket England took 20 wickets with a day to spare, and hours after the Australian media was wailing that England had prepared “a road” at Lord’s Clarke’s bowlers did the same thing in return.  This must be the first time in cricketting history that two test matches each producing a result inside 4 days have generated complaints about lifeless pitches.  What seems to be confusing the Australians is that the English pitches don’t behave like the WACA, but I’m not sure anyone can help them with that.  If there has been a change in the behaviour of English pitches in the past few years it is most likely to do with the improved drainage which allows play to resume much sooner after the inevitable English downpours.  And that’s what we all wanted, wasn’t it?