English cricket pundits are rinsing their team after the tourists buckled badly against Australia to lose the Ashes opener.
England lost their final eight wickets for just 74 runs on Saturday, leaving Australia to chase just 20 runs for victory on day four at the Gabba.
A day that started with plenty of hope for England, as skipper Joe Root and Dawid Malan arrived at the crease on the cusp of centuries, was all over before 2pm local time.
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Isa Guha, who played eight Tests for England, described it as a “horrible loss” as the British press blasted the poor performance.
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It left Sir Geoffrey Boycott asking: “Why are we so bloody stupid?” in a column for the UK’s Telegraph.
Calling out Root, he urged the skipper to face the reality of just how far England has fallen.
“Face up to the fact that England made mistakes which didn’t help our team,” he wrote.
“For a start, your batsmen and bowlers looked underdone and should have had three or four competitive matches before the series. The planning was all wrong.”
In particular, Boycott called on the Poms to stop expecting miracles from Ben Stokes in his return from injury.
“Ben Stokes needed to play more cricket,” he wrote.
“All the hype that he’s back and what he brings to the dressing room is bulls***. He is not a messiah. He can’t bat and bowl for everyone.
“My experience tells me when you are out in the middle, batting or bowling, each player has to do his own thing. You are on your own with decisions to make about where to bowl or what shot to play.
“Ben hasn’t played for five months, had a finger operation and rain ruined his practice. Then his first knock was on a testing pitch against, in my view, the two best seam bowlers in the world – Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
“That would be tough for any batsman in good form. Too many players expected some magic from our talismanic all-rounder.”
The loss spells bad news for Root’s legacy, according to the UK’s Telegraph cricket scribe Nick Hoult.
“Joe Root flies to Adelaide on Monday with his lifetime ambition of becoming an Ashes-winning England captain fading fast and his team reeling from another batting collapse,” he said.
“Selection will be crucial for England, and they have to be smarter and more alive to thinking on their feet, gauging conditions rather than relying on the data to pick their team.
“James Anderson will play and Stuart Broad will surely replace Leach, Root’s spin enough for England under the lights and England needing their two legends to turn back the clock. It will be a pivotal week in the career of England’s captain. Root knows what’s at stake. Time to end the self sabotage.”
Former England captain Mike Atherton was on a similar page, writing in The Times: “Batting first was a mistake. Batting badly was a more costly mistake.
“Time and again, England’s batting line-up underwhelms and Root himself can only carry so much weight.
“The first-innings total was a hundred runs below par; with a competitive total it was possible to see a route to success batting first. Poor batting and missed chances resulted in a deficit too challenging to overcome.
“Root knows that this is his last chance to become an Ashes-winning captain. He’s had two goes at it already, in 2017 here and two years ago in England. It is rare for an England captain to get a third opportunity.
“He is four years into his captaincy already, a point in time where most of his predecessors have started to feel the pinch. This is it; no more chances. Which is why the defeat will hurt so much.”
Simon Wilde didn’t mince his words in the The Times.
“As ever, it was the hope that killed England’s followers. The dream — far from insubstantial — that the Australians might be pushed hard for victory after the long unbroken partnership between Dawid Malan and Joe Root was brutally shattered,” he said.
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“On a bitterly disappointing morning, Malan, Root and Ollie Pope all fell before the second new ball — ten overs away when play resumed — even became available.
Lawrence Booth was even more ruthless in the Daily Mail.
“England slipped weakly to a nine-wicket defeat – predictable enough after the events of the first two days, but an unmitigated letdown after their fightback on the third,” he said.
“Gone was the sound judgment and crisp strokeplay that the evening before had helped England to 220 for two at stumps. In its place came a litany of overawed prods and pokes as the gap between the teams widened once more.”
Telegraph chief sports writer Oliver Brown questioned whether Ben Stokes needed to be dropped for the Adelaide Test, based on his lack of match fitness.
“It was a seductive illusion, the idea that England’s star all-rounder could rescue their Ashes tour the moment his left index finger healed from a severe break. But the sheer quality of Australia’s pace attack exposed the awkward truth that he should have been nowhere near this Brisbane Test,” Brown wrote.
“His reinstatement to the England camp was initially greeted with breathless joy, as though he could disguise the team’s batting deficiencies with a few heaves of those lumberjack arms. But it is unrealistic to expect any individual talent, even one of Stokes’ transformative qualities, to be Ashes-sharp on the strength of a few looseners in a warm-up against the England Lions.
He added: “The setting at the Adelaide Oval this week should be to his taste: there is the novelty of a pink-ball Test, the promise of a febrile atmosphere under the lights, not to mention a side of cocksure Australians crying out to be brought down a peg. If Stokes cannot rise to the task with his trademark belligerence, the Ashes will be as good as gone.
“An immutable maxim in international sport is that by failing to prepare adequately, you are preparing to fail. Stokes, so far, is living proof of that logic.”
Also writing in the Telegraph, former Middlesex captain Isabelle Westbury declared England must stop “pretending” Jack Leach is up to the standard of Aussie counterpart Nathan Lyon.
“In knowing that Lyon would feature in Australia’s starting eleven no matter what, a final eleven which had been confidently announced some days before the start of play, England had it clearly laid out that playing a frontline spinner at the Gabba was imperative. In having the luxury to trust in the spin of Lyon therefore, Australia arguably spooked England into not picking Stuart Broad,” she wrote.
“David Warner, if no-one else, owes Lyon a pint or two. More so because it was he, so vulnerable to Broad’s seam in the last Ashes, who was responsible for hitting Leach out of the attack on day two at the Gabba, with two belting sixes in just Leach’s second over.
“England, under Joe Root, had refused to pick a frontline spinner throughout the English season just gone. The presumption therefore, was that as soon as England went overseas, they’d pick Leach.
“Root, in truth, had probably got to a point where he felt he couldn’t not pick him. It was the right thing to be seen to be doing and this is an England who are very concerned about those optics. A Jack Leach to Australia’s Nathan Lyon and all would be well with the world.
“Only, Jack Leach is not Nathan Lyon.”