DAY 3 TAKEAWAYS
Follow UsHameed frustrates but gives England plenty of reasons to be optimistic
There is no question that Haseeb Hameed would be sitting in that English dressing room right now cursing himself incessantly. He’d done all the hard work in the first 40-odd balls he faced, even saw off a brutal Cummins spell, and was finally starting to grow in confidence. The off-radar mid-session spell from Starc provided his innings with the momentum injection it needed.
But then he threw it away just like that, to a nothing delivery down the leg-side that should, 10/10 times, have been put away to the fine leg boundary. Up there as one of the worst ways to get dismissed in Test cricket.
But even though Hameed left a lot of runs behind, England should be pretty encouraged by his showing in this Test, across both the innings. It bodes pretty well for them for the rest of the series.
In both the innings Hameed brought a calm presence to the crease and showed that he has a mind and technique solid enough to see off hostile spells. Today, for instance, he was hit bang on his arm-guard in the very second ball he faced, off a ball from Starc that just took off after pitching, but he was quick to put it behind and play the other balls according to their merit.
He occupied the crease for two hours in both outings and displayed no particular weakness that the Aussie bowlers were able to target. Dismissing him proved to be hard work, mainly due to him being comfortable on both front and back foot.
England, no doubt, would have loved for Hameed to go on and get a pair of fifties but clearly, there exists a solid foundation that can be built upon.
The challenge for him going forward in this series will be to channel someone like Labuschagne and make the initial hard work count. If he can, then there’ll be a real reason for England to remain optimistic heading forward in the series, particularly with Root and Malan displaying the kind of form and dexterity they did today.
Ineffectiveness of Starc and Lyon with old ball continues to plague Australia
Against all odds, India pulled off one of the greatest heists of all time last summer in Australia, but particularly across the last two Tests, they were aided by the ineffectiveness of Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon with the soft kookaburra ball. Between them, Starc and Lyon averaged 122 and 59.5 between overs 20-80 against India, and often their futility ended up putting too much pressure on Cummins and Hazlewood.
Early days, but evidence from Day 3 suggests that Australia might be required to keenly monitor the same issue as this series progresses.
Starc lit up Gabba a couple of days ago by bowling Rory Burns on the first ball, but the issue with him always has been the dwindling impact as the match/series progresses. Even against India Starc did a fine job with the new ball, but his struggles emerged once the ball got older and softer. Far too often he was off-radar and ended up undoing the good work done by the other seamers.
Even though he managed to pick the wicket of Haseeb Hameed, Starc was off-color today, particularly towards the latter half of the day. He bowled a couple of hostile overs up-front that tested England, but became more and more ineffective as the day passed.
The same is highlighted in his spell progression for the day.
Starc started off asking plenty of questions of the batters, but became increasingly innocuous as the day passed. Across his last two spells, he drew a false shot percentage of under 10% and both Root and Malan had over 90% control.
This isn’t too bad in isolation, but take into account what happened last summer and there’s a dangerous pattern emerging: Cummins and Hazlewood are expected to break partnerships almost every single time.
Starc isn’t the only one to blame, of course. This imbalance in the potency of the Australian attack has also been created by the never-ending drought of Nathan Lyon, who it feels has been stuck on 399 wickets for eternity.
For a large part of the previous decade, Australia were very, very difficult to beat at home and a big reason for the same was the presence of Lyon. He simply provided the side with key breakthroughs every time he was brought into the attack. In the 2017/18 Ashes, for instance, Lyon took 21 wickets in total, striking every 74 balls.
This figure rose to a concerning 124.6 against India last summer, one of the reasons for Australia losing the series, and now 198 balls into this series, the Kangaroos’ premier off-spinner is yet to strike a single blow. This drought is having a cascading effect on the bowling unit.
To his credit, Lyon did well against the left-handed Malan today. He drew 20.5% false strokes and could so easily have got his man on two different occasions, both bowled. It was just bad luck that prevented him from getting the wicket of Malan and subsequently getting to the 400 mark.
Contrarily, however, the 34-year-old was ordinary against right-handers, in particular Root. He got his line wrong, often straying too straight, and hardly threatened, drawing a false-shot percentage less than 8%. Root swept, reverse-swept and pulled him with ease and milked runs without working too hard.
To the naked eye it felt Lyon was too eager and impatient to get to that 400 mark that has been evading him, but, according to CricViz, for a second summer running, the off-spinner just isn’t getting enough drift. Maybe that explains why Root was able to negotiate him effortlessly.
All said and done, though, life as captain won’t be easy for Cummins if his premier spinner continues to fail to pick wickets in the crucial 20-80 overs phase. Wicketless in 33 overs is not a good look, but the Aussie skipper will be hoping that this is nothing more than just a psychological barrier, and the wickets start to pour from the hands of the ‘GOAT’ once he breaks the 400 duck.
Should this drought extend deep into Day 4, then Cummins might potentially be staring at the prospect of having to devise a strategy to save the Test on Sunday.
