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The fourth Test of the ongoing Ashes series went England’s way, as the visitors won their first match on Australian solid in nearly 15 years, and first in 19 attempts, with a 4-wicket win that wrapped up inside two days. At a packed-out Melbourne Cricket Ground, 20 wickets fell on Day 1, and 16 followed on Day 2 – paradise for bowlers, a nightmare for batters, and a pitch that has caused plenty of distress in Australia for constituting an uncompetitive wicket.
There has already been plenty said about the pitch and its nature by pundits and media personalities, with the chief executive of Cricket Australia himself stating his displeasure at two-day Tests. However, once Harry Brook had hit the winning runs, the two captains of the teams themselves weighed in.
Speaking at the presentation, Australia’s stand-in captain Steven Smith said bluntly that the pitch was too one-sided towards bowlers, and gave credit to England’s top order batters for softening the ball early on to make it a more achievable chase on a wicket that retained its bowling advantage.
“A very quick game, if we got 50-60 more across both innings we would be in it at the end. They were very aggressive when they came in, softened up the ball. The pitch did a fair amount for the whole game, just probably only when the ball got softened from a few lusty blows from their top order,” said Smith in the presentation.
Stokes credits his batters for batting ‘the right way’ for this surface
Australia were bowled out for 152 and 132 in their two innings, with no batter able to kick on to get a half-century; as a result, despite being bowled out for 110 in their first innings, England came into the chase with a relatively manageable target, which they ran down with aggressive cricket.
“A little bit too much in favour of the bowlers, nobody could really get in,” said Smith of the pitch – but the Aussie captain did realise that this isn’t exactly what the intention from the pitch was. “When you see 36 wickets across two days that’s probably too much. Did more than [the curators] wanted it to, if we drop it down to 8 mm might be a little bit better.”
Along similar lines, Stokes said that it wasn’t an easy pitch to bat on, and that the only way to combat a bowling attack boasting of Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland was to attack them and get the runs quickly, with every ball capable of having a batter’s name on it.
“It was short and sharp, very tricky. We tried to go out there and take the positive approach,” said Stokes. “It was heavily favoured for the bowlers. The way we went about today was exactly the right way to chase it down. Can’t let good bowlers run up and land it on the area that’s dangerous, and the way we combated that was brilliant. Showed bravery, were courageous, in the way we operated.”
England therefore come back to 3-1 in the series, and will be keen on picking up another match in Sydney to bring some resepctability to the scoreline after dropping three matches in a row to start the tour.
