The Ashes: Are Australia strong favourites to beat England?
Australia favourites to win third successive Ashes series on home soil - but there are areas England will feel they can exploit; how will Pat Cummins fare as captain and fast bowler and is the batting depth there behind David Warner, Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith?
Tuesday 7 December 2021 19:38, UK
9-0.
It's a scoreline Southampton need no reminding of following their Premier League defeats by that margin to Leicester City and Manchester United but also one that tells the story of England's last two away Ashes tours.
Swept 5-0 in 2013/14 by a searing-paced Mitchell Johnson and his pals and then going down 4-0 in 2017/18. The only Test England have not lost in their previous 10 in Australia came on a Melbourne featherbed four years ago.
With the statistics firmly in Australia's favour, it is no surprise they are the bookmakers' favourites to knock off England and retain the urn they previously retained away from home in 2019 by dint of a 2-2 series draw.
But, ahead of the Gabba opener, there is a sense the teams are a lot closer together now.
Australia have not played a Test since losing to India in Brisbane in January - their first defeat at the ground since 1988 - while England were in five-day action as recently as September.
Due to lengthy quarantine and a truckload of rain, match practice has been pretty threadbare for both sides but England did at least get some action in while Australia have played no warm-up game.
With wet weather forecast for the Brisbane Test and potentially two day-night matches during the series depending on where the fifth Test, moved from Perth due to Covid-19 restrictions, ends up, England's pace attack should have a spring in their step, too.
Plus, England have not had to change their captain weeks out due to a sexting scandal. Put bluntly, this is not an Australia side without its issues, even if they are ones they will expect to overcome.
Take the batting, for example. Yes, David Warner (Test average of 48.09), Steve Smith (Test average of 61.80) and Marnus Labuschagne (Test average of 60.80) are world-class operators and all feature in the top 10 of the ICC rankings, with Smith the highest at No 2 - but beyond that?
Travis Head, who will bat at No 5, averaged below 19 for Sussex in this year's County Championship and while Marcus Harris, who will open with Warner, did considerably better for Leicestershire with 655 runs, including three hundreds, at an average approaching 55, he averages below 24 in Tests.
No 6 Cameron Green is still in the 'promising' stage of his Test career with just four games under his belt, albeit that promise is huge, with the 22-year-old - who will also act as fourth seamer - averaging close to 53 in first-class cricket and having hit his maiden Test fifty against India last year.
Tim Paine's replacement as wicketkeeper Alex Carey has international white-ball experience, even captaining the ODI side, but he will be playing his first Test series, let alone an Ashes series.
So, there are areas England will feel they can exploit and one of them may be with Paine's replacement as captain.
Bowling is a hard, physical job in Test cricket and to combine that with captaincy [will be tough]. It is a hard ask and not ideal. There are five Tests in 42 days – are you going to want to play the same three-man pace attack? There are challenges for Cummins and Australia, even though he is really highly regarded as a character and a man.
Pat Cummins is viewed as a fine man and after injuries earlier on his career, has transformed himself into a supreme, pretty indefatigable fast bowler, who has a healthy lead at the top of the ICC bowling rankings and was one of the main reasons Australia kept hold of the urn in England in 2019 with 29 wickets at an average below 20.
But this series will be a different challenge as he tries to marry frontline bowling and leadership, something a paceman has not done for Australia since Ray Lindwall in 1956.
How will Cummins fare when he has to not only look after his own game but also set fields, make the call on who to bowl next and decide when to bring himself out of the attack? It may not be as smooth as he very often makes bowling look.
Presumably, it also means he will not be rotated out of the side at any stage, so what state will he be in come a potential fifth-Test decider? His body has held up of late but now he has the added burden of captaincy as well, so his mind could also take a battering.
There are also some, albeit not very many, criticisms of Cummins' bowling attack.
Shane Warne did his best to talk Mitchell Starc out of the side after the left-arm gunslinger averaged in excess of 40 in the series defeat to India, while off-spinner Nathan Lyon averaged 55 during those set of games and has played only two matches since April.
Both have been retained for the Ashes opener in Brisbane - Lyon's spot never looked seriously under threat but Starc was under pressure from Jhye Richardson - and they will have great memories of the way they were crucial to England's downfall four years ago.
They both bagged more than 20 wickets - as did Cummins and Josh Hazlewood - across five Tests in the previous Ashes series down under, with Starc's average of 23.54 the best of the quartet. He should not be written off, with his overall Test bowling record in Australia a fine 26.93.
At home in Tests, Cummins averages 21.39 and Hazlewood 24.71 and while Cummins may now not sit out a game due to being in charge, if Australia decide to give Starc or Hazlewood a breather they have able deputies in Richardson, who has taken 23 wickets in four Sheffield Shield games so far this season, and the reliable Michael Neser.
When it comes to bowling firepower, Australia should have the edge - and the same goes for the batting, as Warner, Smith and Labuschagne fill three of the spots in the top four.
While Warner looked a broken man at times during the 2019 Ashes series as he was regularly dismissed by Stuart Broad, bagged three ducks and averaged 9.50, the truer Australian wickets are where he has flourished.
At home in Test cricket, he has scored 18 hundreds, 12 fifties and over 4,500 runs at an average of 63.20, while he will come into the series having impressed at the T20 World Cup where he was named player of the tournament. Different format, yes, but confidence is crucial in sport and Warner should now have it in droves.
Labuschagne, Head, Harris and Green should have a lot of it, too, with the first three having hit recent hundreds in the Sheffield Shield and the latter churning out a number of fifties.
That recent experience in red-ball cricket, achieved while Warner, Smith, Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood were helping Australia to T20 World Cup glory, could give the hosts another edge.
The hostile home crowd, obviously, could be another boon for Australia and this year it will be counteracted by fewer England fans due to stringent coronavirus restrictions.
So, despite a fractured build-up for the hosts and plenty of reasons for the tourists to be optimistic, Australia should still win The Ashes - but, then again, we thought they would beat India last year…
