Nasser Hussain: England missed opportunity with new ball on day one of second Ashes Test
Written by News on 03/12/2017
England bagged four Australian wickets on day one of the day-night Test in Adelaide – but could have taken a few more with better use of the new ball, says Nasser Hussain…
Having seen the pitch and with Australia now at 209-4, you’d say it was a bat-first day.
We won’t know that until the end of the Test match but David Warner pulled a face in Moeen Ali’s opening three or four overs as if to say "that spun quite a lot" – on an old Adelaide track it if turned on day one you’d be thinking it will be raging Bunsen by the end.
This is a drop-in pitch and under lights so nobody really knows how the deck will behave, but England will be concerned that it could spin massively for Nathan Lyon on days three and beyond.
As Michael Atherton alluded to, the last two sides to have won the toss and batted first on this ground in day-nighters – New Zealand and South Africa – have lost, so that was probably a factor in Joe Root’s decision to bowl.
When you insert a side you are expecting a little more movement than what England saw but I don’t think the bowlers did that well to start off – they were too short with the new ball, as they have been at times over the years.
Stuart Broad, James Anderson and Chris Woakes bowl naturally just back of a length but, on this pitch, it looks that if you bowl in that area the ball does nothing and sits up nicely for the batsman. A fuller length is the way to go.
The classic wicket was Craig Overton getting Steve Smith – if you can get any batsman coming forward it nibbles a little bit and offers you something. Batsmen don’t have time to adjust.
Anderson and Broad generally struggle when you want them to go half a metre fuller – they did it after the rain break and I thought Anderson was a bit unlucky, but they missed their opportunity with the new ball.
You shouldn’t confuse Australian pitches with English ones – you can’t always insert a side over there and expect them to be bowled out for very little.
You’d probably think 250-7 would be a decent return, so England are a few wickets short of where they wanted to be, though they have at least contained the run rate.
Their fielding was pretty good, too, save for Mark Stoneman dropping Usman Khawaja on 44, but they do lack a cutting edge on a slow pitch, something different in the absence of movement.
I thought Overton bowled nicely on debut and perhaps showed that a fully fit Overton is slightly better than a little bit unfit Jake Ball. His delivery to Smith was a very good one and to get him as your first Test wicket bowled out, not caught at cover or mid-off, is a great effort.
As a tall lad he managed to extract some bounce which makes him quite hard to drive – I remember him going past Warner’s bat – but the main thing was that on debut in a crucial Ashes Test, under the lights, he handled himself and the pressure well, right from his first ball.
Moeen Ali started well, too, but he then got a bit quicker and flatter after he was hit over the top by Usman Khawaja a few times and Khawaja then played him well off the back foot.
I don’t think Moeen looked too troubled by his cut finger – there were a few full tosses delivered but he has always done that when he aims to bowl slower and fuller.
England are going to have to strike with the new ball on Sunday because, throwing things forward, they won’t want to be starting their innings at 7.30pm at night against a new ball – they will want to be in and set well ahead of twilight.
England can’t get carried away with the short stuff to the tailenders as they don’t have the pace of the Australian attack, so they need to mix it up and deploy in-out fields for Moeen Ali. Then have Broad use the bouncer wisely, which he has proved he can do.
Of course, plenty of eyes will be on Canterbury tomorrow when Ben Stokes makes his debut against Otago – there will be more media there than there has ever been!
England need to switch off from that, though, and not get caught up by what he is doing with bat and ball. They are in the middle of a Test match and Stokes can have no bearing on what goes on in Adelaide.
(c) Sky News 2017: Nasser Hussain: England missed opportunity with new ball on day one of second Ashes Test
