UK Edition
James Anderson bags four wickets after rookie opener Josh Philippe puts England under unexpected pressure
A very mixed first day in an Australian field. On the one hand, England’s lack of an outright fast or left-handed bowler, such as Australia have, was painfully clear at times. On the other, James Anderson has not lost it yet, even aged 35, while Jake Ball and Mason Crane were promising in the two-day game against a Western Australia XI which ended in a draw.
The discouraging feature of England’s bowling was that nobody could make the new ball swing more than minimally. Anderson and Stuart Broad tried first, for five overs apiece, then Chris Woakes and Craig Overton, also for five overs each, and the ball refused to swing even with the aid of a crosswind. Thus the home side racked up 108 runs from the first 20 overs, merrily driving anything pitched up, while the one wicket that fell was a bouncer scooped to fine-leg.
It was becoming rather embarrassing. Josh Philippe is a 20-year-old grade player, son of a mother who represented WA and a father who coached the women’s team. The son had never represented his state’s first team in any format, and had not opened since U15 level, but there he was driving and hooking 16 boundaries off 92 balls from England’s finest. Apart from the captain Nathan Coulter-Nile, the home side boasted a grand total of 13 first-class appearances.
Root needed someone to give him control before a wheel fell off - and would the Australian media have loved that. It took one gesture on the opening day of this fixture for them to pile into the Poms. After copping a ropey decision, Root had glanced ruefully towards the umpire - nothing more - and the whole of the back page of the local Sunday paper was devoted to a photo and the headline “Average Joe”.
It was the pairing of Ball and Crane - or “Mison Crine” as pronounced here - that gave Root some control, by bowling 16 overs together for 50 runs. Ball was the best of England’s pace bowlers, save for Anderson in his second and third spells. He would have dismissed Philippe if Root at second slip had not pushed an edge over the bar. Overall Ball bowled a consistent line, got threatening bounce and in walking back to his mark with coat-hanger shoulders gave a passable impression of Shaun Pollock.
Crane’s first spell of 13 overs either side of lunch was much more impressive than his second after tea, when those five overs cost 37. Bowling from the Gloucester Park end into the prevailing wind, he was at his best when content with flighting his legbreaks on a fullish length. Above all, he made them turn sufficiently to make the batsmen think - and to beat Philippe’s bat when he ran down the wicket. It was when Crane tried a variation on his legbreak theme that the “half-tracker”, as they prefer to call the long-hop, appeared.
After tea, Crane’s length varied too much, three consecutive rank balls were smacked for four by Tim David, and it rather looked as though he was competing with players his own age - not least, being 20, because he was. Yet he persevered, and the next ball was a legbreak of fullish length, which tempted David to run down the pitch and loft to deep mid-off. Crane persevered in the field too, where he is livelier than Adil Rashid, if nothing like so good a batsman.
Then Anderson reasserted himself as the leader of England’s attack. He took hold of the ball halfway through its life-span and made it dart around. Such a relief this must have been for Root, on an afternoon when the temperature reached C32, to see his record-breaking bowler find a way of taking wickets with an old ball.
Anderson took two wickets for nine runs in his second spell of five overs, and two more for no run in his third spell of three. The reverse-swing kicked in: he had two lefthanders caught off the outside edge, and two righthanders caught behind off the inside edge. Bairstow, having missed his first chance, accepted all of the next five chances that come to him.
“It was our first day in the field and there are going to be some guys more rusty than others,” Anderson said. “The lengths here are very different to England - you can’t be as full - and it’s just trying to get your head round that.
“You could probably see from the first session we were a bit rusty as bowlers and didn’t quite get it right. I didn’t have much rhythm first up and not much swing with the new ball, but I thought I got better as the day went on and most of the bowlers would probably say the same. And I thought they played pretty well, they put pressure on us, but once we got our fields right we bowled pretty well.”
The most encouraging feature of England’s fielding was the promotion of Dawid Malan into the slips, where he fields for Middlesex, and where he took his two chances smartly. Malan has replaced Tom Westley, who was third slip for England last summer. But the zest of Ben Stokes, the best of all England’s fielders, was missed and for Root to have to field at slip now for the spinner may prove a multi-task too many for the captain.