The mutual dullness will pass, but for now Australia and England deserve each other | an Ashes 5th Test preview

3 minute read
Sydney has a reputation for being spider-friendly, but it’s a reputation like that of your fat, wheezing friend who used to be good at gymnastics. Some of the raw ingredients are probably still in there somewhere, but no one really expects anything.

Shane Warne is the best Test wicket-taker on this ground – no surprises there – but Stuart MacGill actually moves the equally predictable Glenn McGrath into third place with 53 wickets in just eight matches. After McGrath it’s Nathan Lyon, before the rather misleadingly named Charlie Turner.

So a spin-heavy top four, but shorten the time frame to the last five years and Pat Cummins, Scott Boland and Josh Hazlewood are ahead of Lyon even though Boland only played two of the games and Hazlewood three.

Lyon played all five matches and scored an average of 43.53 in that period. Boland had an average of 8.35; Hazlewood 15.71; and Cummins 8:45 p.m.

Modern Sydney is home to accurate right-arm fast-medium.

Given that only nine wickets have fallen to turn in the first four Tests of this series, one imagines that both Australia and England could continue to play this rather depressing diminuendo where everything else is stripped away.

However, those incredible recent bowling records for Boland, Hazlewood and Cummins did not come about on their own. They may not have taken as many wickets, but Lyon and Mitchell Starc delivered almost as many overs as the other three in the five most recent matches. The contrast that provided will have made a difference and there will also have been a few times when batters that had been given the measure of all the meat and potatoes stuff met an untimely end against one of these two spicier side dishes.

It doesn’t often pay to take these blunt statistics and jump to their logical conclusions.

This is the beating ischemic heart of Test cricket, right? The more you focus on one thing, the more vulnerable you become to something else. You can get away with a narrow approach (whether batting or bowling) for a session, or an innings, or a Test, or even for a whole series, but the more you specialize, the more your Achilles heels will increase, until eventually you’re a great, exhausted, limping jack-of-all-trades, still desperately trying to perform your one lame trick.

It is probably no coincidence that recent Australian testing conditions have suited a fantastic but outdated first-choice pace attack, which would lose its edge and most of its components in a war of attrition. A series in which Lyon was reduced to one Rex Kwon Do-size cameo must surely be as far as this trend goes – not just because of the way Australia abandoned the Boxing Day Test, but because it also allows a touring team that is clearly hugely distrustful of its spin bowlers to go an entire summer without picking anyone who really warrants that label at any point.

So as you can imagine, Melbourne has bottomed out, but there’s still a long way to come back. Last year, neither Australia nor India reached 200 in either innings. We should expect more of the same.

The overriding seam-centric context of this fifth Test could continue to perpetuate this dull, boring idea This is the way simply by shaping the team selection. Even if the field turns out to be completely flat, it’s not easy to imagine Will Jacks reshaping the statistical backdrop for future matches. As for the home team, will Todd Murphy play at all?

Gloomy things – but this too shall pass. Test cricket will eventually encourage this thinking. Perhaps a first glimpse of this will emerge this week. Maybe we’ll see One Of Those Days for one team or both. Frankly, after this series, they both deserve a long, hard reminder that variety is the spice of life.